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      No doubts that the rapid development of technology has changed the practical definitions of several terms; victory (from the Latin word victoria) is defined as the defeat or overcoming of an enemy, although the direct definition of the word remains from the past till our modern time, the practical meaning and measurement of victory has significantly changed particularly for the information age; in the past victory was measured by different achievements: the overcoming of an enemy, complete annihilation of the opponent, conquer of a territory etc. Nowadays measuring or implementing a definition of victory is not an easy task, several researches by scholars have been seeking to define the modern meaning of victory in conflict in the information age.

How a concept is defined affects what people think is most important. According to William C. Martel 2007 (Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy), Victory in War's major contribution is a schema comprising four measures of victory. The first and overarching one is the "level of victory" which ranges from tactical, to political-military, to grand strategic. The second is the degree of change to the status quo produced by victory, which ranges from the "limited" (a policy shift on the adversary's part) to the comprehensive (the elimination of an enemy regime and occupation of its territory). The third is the "scale of the state's mobilization of its political, military, economic, and social resources for war." Such mobilization may be "limited"-involving but a small portion of existing military forces-or "extensive," drawing heavily upon a society's military and civilian resources, and requiring a great deal of domestic political and international support. Fourth is the extent of "post-conflict obligations" assumed after military success (economic aid, political support) which can range from "limited" to "protracted" (it is not clear where small but long lasting commitments would fall on this scale). Martel disavows any set causal relationships across these concepts (p. 296), but it is clear that high values on the second, third, and fourth category, are tied to high levels of victory. This is most true for the relationship between alteration of the status quo and level of victory, since grand strategic victory is defined in terms of "a profound reordering in the strategic foundations of international politics" (p. 97). Such dramatic change, he suggests, will require the winner to extensively mobilize internal and external resources, occupy and regime-change adversaries, and commit to lengthy post-war involvements.

Furthermore modern approaches of warfare – information warfare are more driven towards different vector levels of victory, physical harm to human beings or having a high rate of death as a result of a conflict between two countries is no longer accepted. For instance the Whole American society criticized the huge amount of loss of soldiers in Iraq war 2003, the idea of the war was sold to the American society as a necessary precautionary action to protect the country; however the amount of loss of soldiers is not yet justified as there were alternatives to maintain the country’s safety margin, including technological dependant precautions, and more political pressures, the mentioned point of view is not even addressing the fact that the outbreak of war was called by a false alarm.

Nowadays victory victors are spinning around different aspects; political goals, economical goals and superiority in technology, although the concept is not modern; Sun Tzu “To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” To achieve such policy is a great challenge, thus Randall G. Bowdish rephrased the concept by his statement “to compel the enemy to do our will without fighting.” in the information age technology and communication became a powerful tool in developed countries hands to achieve superiority and the philosophical meaning of victory control. While the world’s strategy exemplified in state actors is more towards achieving victory via those instruments, radical under-developed / developing countries are there waving out with the use of force as a resolution of conflicts, taking for example Iran’s demonstrations of military power, with several statement in many occasions threatening of armed wars against opponents, whereas modest states prefer the diplomatic ways in the resolution of conflicts with peers and therefore victory is achieved via accommodation through negotiation, and towards developing countries or non state actors via awarding or prohibiting new technologies whether it is educational, industrial, agricultural or else. On the other side radical states lean more towards the concept of considering victory the complete overcoming of opponents, which is mainly denoted by several religious and ideological factors, and in most cases cultural factors to impose an ideological supremacy.

Clearly the concept of victory has changed even if it must be underlined that this change is not universal but subject to several variables, adding information warfare as an instrument and cyberspace as battle field became a fact in the information age, where the state actors and even non-state actors are seeking a powerful position, where there have been non announced cyber conflicts taken place between countries while outwardly political channels have not been affected and even foreign trades between the opponents remained, for example the new tactics which aims to destroy or corrupt information technology infrastructure which were used against Estonia in 2007 taking down governmental and banks websites down, or Russian – Georgian conflict in 2008 resulted cyber-attack on Georgian information systems, and the malware worm infecting the Iranian nuclear plant by USA. In the previous examples victory had another meaning, where the superiors demonstrated their cyberspace power to their opponents by sending a clear message, whether or not the conflict was announced officially. Apparently the Soviet Union subsequently Russia demoralizing the enemy, gathering intelligence and attacking the enemy through computer networks operations.

The ancient Chinese civilization have been always inspiring in war and peace, when examining Chinese IW theories, the logical place to start is Wang Pufeng’s seminal work. “Information Warfare and the RMA”. Wang defines information warfare as follows:

“Information war is a product of the information age which to a great extent utilizes information technology and information ordnance in battle. It constitutes a "networkization" [wangluohua] of the battlefield, and a new model for a complete contest of time and space. At its center is the fight to control the information battlefield, and thereby to influence or decide victory or defeat.”

The aim of IW in the Chinese literature is information dominance [zhixinxiquan], defined as the ability to defend one's own information while exploiting and assaulting an opponent's information infrastructure. This information superiority has both technological and strategic components. On the one hand, it requires the ability to interfere with an enemy's ability to obtain, process, transmit, and use information to paralyze his entire operational system. This accords with U.S. military conceptions of information dominance. On the other hand, some Chinese commentators assert that information superiority is not determined by technological superiority, but by new tactics and the Independent creativity of commanders In the field, placing much more emphasis on personnel and organization-related components of the conflict.

As a basic conclusion, achieving victory in the information age has been taken to a different level where victory is no more conquer of an enemy in an armed battle or expanding a physical territory, but more to expand information and technological territories and to show the technological superiority, the power of controlling and owning information, taking battles to the cyberspace. The meaning of victory is expanding proportionally with the technological development infinitely.

References:

• Declaration of Principles: Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium

• Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy by William C. Martel Cambridge University Press, 2007

• LOOKING AHEAD: PREPARING FOR INFORMATION-AGE CONFLICT by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt

• Bowdish, R. G. (December1998 – February 1999). Information-Age Psychological Operations. USA: US Navy.

• Robert Mandel, (2007) “Reassessing Victory in Warfare”, Armed Forces & Society

• Gray, C. S. (April 2002). DEFINING AND ACHIEVING DECISIVE VICTORY. USA:

  Strategic Studies Institute.

• http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Estonia-urges-firm-EU-NATO-response-to- new-form-of-warfarecyberattacks/2007/05/16/1178995207414.html

• http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1265720/Black-Hat-2007-Lessons-of-the- Estonian-attacks

• Information Troops” – a Russian Cyber Command; http://www.ccdcoe.org/publications/2011proceedings/InformationTroopsARussianCyber Command-Giles.pdf

• http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/georgia-conflict-may-mean-the-birth-of-modern- cyber-warfare/3935

• The People's Liberation Army in the Information Age, Volume 145, p. 180