The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.A country goes to war to achieve certain aims. These aims could include vanquishing an existential threat, territorial conquest, regaining lost territory, regime change, retribution, coercing the adversary to change certain policies, and the like. Success, quite logically, means the durable attainment of those aims. This simple concept is at the heart of many of America’s troubles with irregular wars.Decisive victory, gaining the enemy’s capitulation or annihilation, is the most easily understood way to succeed... Sometimes, decisive victory is the best path to a favorable and durable outcome…But successful warfighting, even to the point of defeating an opposing army, is normally not sufficient for a durable political outcome. War, in political scientist Thomas Schelling’s formulation, is violent bargaining. Even wars that have involved the surrender of the adversary’s armed forces usually involve some form of negotiation…Winning, Schelling points out, should not have a competitive meaning. Adversaries tend to have a combination of conflicting and compatible interests. Winning in war means gaining relative to one’s aims, not in relation to the adversary. Success may be realized through bargaining and mutual accommodation and by the avoidance of mutually damaging behavior. There are, he argues, a range of variable-sum outcomes available. Viewing success in zero-sum terms closes off a range of possibilities for winning. Some wars, for example, end in a negotiated outcome. In this case, neither party surrenders. The combatants negotiate an agreement that ends the conflict… a war that ends in a negotiated settlement can have multiple winners even if no one capitulates.A third option, available to an intervening power, is to end its direct combat role before the war ends. This concept is called transition. In theory, once the intervening power deems a host nation’s capability to be sufficient— or determines that further efforts are no longer needed—it can withdraw its troops. To achieve this outcome, the intervening power aims to build the capacity of the host nation until it overmatches the capability of its adversary.Believing that success may only be attained in zero-sum fashion heightens the probability of quagmires. Likewise, it is important to note that the various outcomes may entail different levels of durability. A decisive victory that is perceived to impose unnecessarily harsh terms may sow the seeds of revanchism. A negotiated settlement approved by one governing administration could be overturned by the next administration and risk a resumption of conflict. Negotiated settlements or transitions that place the protection of a country’s interests into the hands of a host nation government could find those interests marginalized or abandoned by that actor. These war termination considerations seem to be important enough to be considered at the start of the policy and strategy process rather than after the default (decisive victory) has been exhausted. Do not take the first step, cautions Carl von Clausewitz, before considering the last.Question 14Which of the following best summarizes the core concept of America's approach to “irregular wars”?Relying on military dominance and the physical destruction of the enemy as the primary strategy for success.Focusing exclusively on the total annihilation of the adversarys forces without engaging in any form of negotiation.Ignoring the political dimensions of conflict and focusing entirely on achieving quick, decisive victories to minimize American involvement.Viewing success as achieving durable political outcomes through a combination of military action, negotiation, and accommodation.