A pattern I’ve seen in countries dealing with terrorism is that they try and kill or arrest all members of a terrorist organization. I’m trying to find an example where terrorist cells were destroyed by military force and I can’t find any- it seems the most successful endings are through diplomacy and humanitarian relief to the communities that are vulnerable to radicalization.
I suppose a better phrased question might be “what examples are there of a major military power winning an asymmetric war against ideologically or practically motivated non-state actors”
Essentially let’s see “freedom fighters” and “terrorists” as the same thing for this question.
define “winning”!
keeping a relatively harmless tension with a weakened organization may be what a state may consider a “win”.
why would ‘current rulers’ efface their source of propaganda for the next twenty elections?
p.s. : would you consider the recent resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict an appropriate response to your question?
Actually you pinged on a good point - really it could come down to what the “counter terror” side defines as victory. One example that comes to me is the US in Afghanistan- we really didn’t have a solid definition for victory other than a vague “destroy al-Qaeda” so we ended up there for 20 years and every bomb we dropped just radicalized more people.
For transparency, I wrote this question thinking about the Palestine Israel conflict. Israel’s stated objective is to completely destroy Hamas, but that feels oddly familiar
As far as the Nagorno-Karabakh, I’m not familiar with that conflict, but I did a little peak and the news is saying it’s back up. :/
for Nagorno-Karabakh, and its comparison with Palestine, this was an interesting podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/podcasts/the-daily/armenia-nagorno-karabakh.html