Recent events in Guatemala, Portugal, Argentina, Greece, Malaya, Venezuela and Spain illustrate a discouraging attribute of the protracted conflict. Nowhere does it seem possible to inflict a lasting defeat on the Communists. They can be defeated, and have been in each of those countries. But the defeat doesn’t stick.
In the past there have been other protracted conflicts, with first one side and then the other on top, but during these it was possible to win a conclusive victory within a local theater—a nation or geographically distinct district—which finished the contest there: it became hors de combat. Wellington finally defeated the French in Spain, and that was that, though the general conflict went on; when the Christians beat the Moors in Aragon, they stayed beaten though they held elsewhere in Spain for another four centuries; when the Athenian naval expedition was defeated by Syracuse, Sicily had no further trouble from Athens.
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