OOCLiberimery wrote:Imperium Anglorum wrote:You can't win a war by defending. At maximum, it would yield a white peace.
The US Revolutionary war, the war of 1812, and the Vietnam war were won by the team playing defense to name three wars. The Russo-Japanese war was a humiliating defeat for Russia, who declared war on the Japanese.
That's an oversimplified viewpoint -- to put it politely -- all three cases:
In the US Revolutionary War, both sides were the "defending" side to some extent: Don't forget that the British-run administration was not only actually the lawful government but also had the active support of a significant proportion of the colonials right through to the end. Then although the rebels mostly stayed at home (There were one or two attempts to seize Canada, and a small-scale naval raid on civilian shipping in one English harbour), their allies France and Spain and the Netherlands were actively attacking British colonies & ships elsewhere... and, of course, France sent troops overseas into America to fight alongside the rebels.
It's arguable whether the War of 1812 really had a winner at all: Despite what some Americans seem to think, Britain certainly wasn't trying to reconquer the colonies .(And, again, the American attack on Canada wasn't exactly a strictly "defensive" move...)
And in Vietnam the North started as effectively a separate nation from the South in which American forces were helping to suppress rebels, and only succeeded in taking over the South -- which they did by an offensive war -- after the American forces had been withdrawn.
), that year wouldn't count. EDIT: Still, amusing.