We Win Because You Did Not

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"If I'm not dead, I win." —Vince McMahon, ESPN E:60, "Lord of the Ring"

The trope of We Win Because You Did Not, or the "Antietam Defense" or the "Thermopylae Strategy", occurs in a situation where the objective is not to win outright, but rather to deny victory to the opposing party.

A rebel faction and an imperial faction face off over a particular resource. It does not matter who is attacking or defending, but the end result is that the rebel faction destroys the resource, denying it to the imperials/others. Thus, even though the rebels do not have it either, they can claim victory because the imperials did not obtain the resource, regardless of losses suffered by the rebels.

Another version of this trope would be where one side holds the field despite superior losses, and can then gain something by this act, or where another side loses the field, but causes superior losses and gains, say, time by this act. This does not apply if one team leaves with fewer losses, but gains nothing by the battle.

When claiming victory in this manner, a faction must be looking at long-term objectives. Since in the short term the conflict was a stalemate, the participants instead must look ahead and figure out what they can or can't do as a result of the lack of progress.

In the end, this trope is primarily a mentality, because both sides of a conflict can view this as true for their side. For instance, the imperials in the above example can also use this trope because they forced the rebels to deny themselves the resource, all losses ignored, which drastically harms rebel efforts from the imperial perspective.

Compare Pyrrhic Victory, and Pyrrhic Villainy. When applied to video games, this is known as Spiteful AI.

Examples of We Win Because You Did Not include:

Anime and Manga

• The point of Negi and Rakan's fight in Mahou Sensei Negima wasn't really to actually win, since Rakan isn't a bad guy. The point was to go be able to go all out and truly measure himself. The battle itself is a tie and only that because Rakan held back a little in the beginning to give him time to start testing his new moves. But the point was made that he's a match for Fate or even better now plus his enslaved students were freed.
  • Also pertinent to the trope is that Rakan was impressed enough with Negi's performance that he claimed a loss after the fact and gave him the other half of the prize money.
• There's an inverted example in Bleach where both Kenpachi and Ichigo believe themselves to have lost the fight after what is essentially a double knockout. However, you can consider Ichigo the winner because the end result allowed Ichigo to continue pursuing the goal of saving Rukia and Kenpachi is sort of on his side from this point since he wants Ichigo to live so he can be fought again later.

Comic Books

• Brian in Knights of the Dinner Table once won a bet this way.

Film

• Demonstrated on a small scale in Thank You for Smoking when the protagonist demonstrates this as a debate strategy to his son, using a comparison of icecream flavours as an example.

Joey: But you didn't prove that vanilla was the best. Nick: I didn't have to. I proved that you're wrong, and if you're wrong, I'm right. Joey: But you still didn't convince me. Nick: I'm not after you. I'm after them. [points at passers by]

• Applies to any character who has survived a fight with Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and other slasher movie mass murderers. Since the killers in such movies are typically unstoppable monsters and permanently destroying them is nearly impossible, the real victory for the Final Girl is the mere fact that she's still alive at the end despite all of the villain's efforts to strangle, crush, stab, impale, club, axe, drown, defenestrate, and/or decapitate her. Ultimately averted in cases where the Final Girl later falls victim to Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome.

Literature

• In the Ender's Game series, the apex of the book is the final battle for the alien home world between the children who fight for the human side and the alien home world's defense fleets. The humans are wildly outmatched, and instead of using tactics to fight fleet-against-fleet, they end up firing a missile at the home world itself, atomically deconstructing the planet into a dust cloud. It helped that the enemies had a Hive Mind and the center of that Hive Mind was on that planet... This mirrors an earlier victory Ender achieved during his time in Battle School. Unable to defeat the numerically superior force against him, he ordered his army to go through the opponent's forces and take the gate, and thus claim victory. Even though his army was shot to pieces to the extent that he could barely muster the necessary 5 soldiers to do so. He technically won by taking the gate before his opponents could take his gate.
• This was a repeated strategy of Zandramas in The Malloreon. The theory was: before the Choice could be made, certain conditions had to be fulfilled by both sides. If Zandramas killed someone on the good side who hadn't fulfilled their condition, she'd probably win by default. The same was true for the other side; Poledra points out that if the Child of Light gets to the Place That Is No More and found no Child of Dark waiting for him, he'd probably win by default.
• This is mentioned by Luck, er, The Lady, during her game against Fate in the Discworld series.
• This is how the diamond in Charles Benoit's Relative Danger is finally disposed of, with a slight twist--none of the people trying to get it actually have the right to it, and the main character knows he's outclassed, so he publicly reveals its existence and location, letting the antagonist take credit for discovering it, but denying him the ability to legally claim it. (It winds up in a museum.)

Live-Action TV

• The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Peak Performance" introduces Kolrami, a grand master of the game of Strategema. In the match after it's established that he's able to beat Data, Data plays for a draw, causing Kolrami to leave in a huff because he's being mocked. Data is very adamant that, in the strictest sense, he didn't win.
  • Though after being goaded by the elated crew, he concedes (possibly for their benefit) that he "busted him up".
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine also had a few instances of this, especially during the Dominion War arc. The first major example was when Starfleet mined the entrance to the wormhole so no new enemy ships could come through, then left the station undefended when the Dominion/Cardasian alliance came to take it over (in order to facilitate taking down said minefield). The reason? Starfleet sent a massive strike force to take advantage of a weakness this created in the Dominion's lines to destroy several ship yards, preventing them from making any new ships.
  • And the Dominion themselves are big fans of this philosophy. They once tried to negotiate a new border that would leave them with several less systems, but give them one they didn't have. That system would have allowed them to make more Ketracel White (the substance that the Jem ha'Dar soldiers need to survive). When this was discovered, Starfleet rejected the plan outright.
• Red Dwarf has an example in an early season episode: Rimmer is playing checkers against a skutter (a small service robot), and has been backed into a position in which he has only one possible move, and then the skutter takes his last piece and wins. Rimmer, however, confidently expects victory, because the skutter is due to leave for its shift fairly soon, thus forfeiting the game, provided Rimmer stretches out his turn long enough.

Professional Wrestling

• The "disqualification rule", which specifies that a champion can only lose his title by pinfall or submission, often turns into a form of this trope. A champion will "defend" his title by walking away from the ring (taking a countout loss) or by intentionally forcing a disqualification loss—but keeping the title, as he wasn't pinned or forced to submit. One loss is, of course, considered less important than the storyline glory of being a champion. However, a booker who has a champion do this too often risks having the public turn on the champion—costing everyone money in the long run. (Sometimes a champion headed in this direction is forced into a match where this rule is suspended.)

Tabletop Games

• One of a number of ways you can earn a punch in the face when playing Warhammer 40k is to rig your army so that you can deny your opponent every objective on the board in one (i.e. the last) turn. It's a bit of a crapshoot, considering that objectives only constitute victory in 2/3 of games, and the game has an equal chance of ending on turns 5, 6, or 7, but when the dice are going your way (or your opponent's way) this can be a very cheap way to secure a draw. In a tournament setting, this can knock you straight out of any kind of running, as tournaments tend to reward not only victory, but utter annihilation of your opponent. Getting even one draw will likely cost you the whole thing.
  • Some of the older armies, such as the Eldar, practically live off stunts like this, and would not survive the codex creep were it not for their ability to pull it off on command.
  • Because of how objectives work in 5th edition, many objective-based games can end in draws. The "Capture and Control" mission of 5th edition is especially egregious for this because there are a total of two objectives on the table which must be placed one in each player's deployment zone, but without any other restrictions (so long as both objectives are 18" away from each other). It took power gamers all of about two seconds to realize they could park their objective on their board edge. Five to seven turns later, barring utter annihilation of one player, these games just about always end in draws.
  • This is all far less of a problem for Warhammer Fantasy because Fantasy uses a Victory Points system for everything, whereas 40k almost never does.

Video Games

• One where is isn't a Spiteful AI is the AGD remake of King's Quest III. Quite by accident, Alexander obtains a relic of Daventry's first king, something the Big Bad has been seeking for ages. In the ending Cutscene, Graham takes it and smashes it. The curse is still on the family, and the Black Cloak still active, but at least the Big Bad has been deprived of further leverage.
• In Halo: Reach, the primary objective of the initial Covenant strike force apparently was to secure a forerunner artifact before it falls into human hands. At which they fail and the UNSC learns about the location of the first Halo. However, the main invasion fleet arrives a few days later and successfully wipes out the largest center of human population outside of Earth, single handedly scoring the most important victory of the entire war.
• In a certain puzzle in Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (spoilered since the very fact that this trope applies spoils its solution, but it's also quite plot-relevant) Dimitri Allen challenges Layton to a 'puzzle battle'. They each have five armies of varying strengths, and Layton has to arrange his so he avoids defeat. But at first glance this seems impossible, the armies you're given are vastly weaker than his. (His go up to strength 5 and the best you have is a 4)But if you do things right, you can arrange it so both sides win 2 battles, lose 2 and draw 1, thereby tying. The rules never stated Layton had to win, he just needed to "avoid defeat."

Western Animation

• The Robot Chicken Second Star Wars Special hangs a lampshade on this trope for the Star Wars series. In the final sketch, one of the Imperial Officers argues that the destruction of the second Death Star doesn't change the fact that the Empire still controls a massive fleet, even pointing out that the Empire survived the destruction of the first Death Star. The other officer says that this time it counts because they also killed the Emperor.
  • The Expanded Universe figured that one out a long time ago and ran with it. In the EU timeline, the war doesn't end for another twenty years or so, and when it does it's with a peace treaty rather than a surrender.
• In Dinobot's final episode in Beast Wars, he destroys Megatron's golden disk, thus denying its secrets to the Maximals but also preventing the Predacons from exploiting it.
• Used in Xiaolin Showdown where Master Fung teaches the warriors that they can't get the jade elephant from him if it's no longer an elephant, but a pile of jade dust instead. Omi puts this lesson to use by sending a teleporting Shen-Gong-Wu to the earth's core rather than let any of the villains have it.
• Justice League Invokes this trope when Vandal Savage travels back in time and become Fuhrer of Germany. Upon discovering the Enigma machine has been stolen (which is a historical fact, and procuring one was the difference between decoding the German coded messages being impossible and being trivially easy), he orders them to "Get it back, or destroy it."

Real Life

• The 300 at Thermopylae: By forcing the Persians to take Thermopylae and killing a significantly larger portion of the Persian army than the Greek losses (though sources vary on the exact number of Persians killed, estimates go from 7,500 to 75,000), the Greeks bought Athens enough time to prepare for a final decisive counterstrike.
  • Interestingly, it wasn't seen like that at the time. A more common reaction was horror and despair that so many of the best soldiers in Greece had died at once (Greek warfare of the time didn't produce heavy losses).
  • The 300 refers to the number of Spartans. About another 1,000 Greeks also defended the pass.
    • Technically speaking, the idea of Thermopylae was to delay the Persian army's advance into Greece for as long as possible, until the city states could raise their own levies. Because the battle only lasted 3 days, it was a strategic defeat for the Greeks who had intended to hold out for longer. However, an unintended consequence of the early loss was that the Greek fleet retreated from the simultaneous sea battle of Artemisium instead of fighting to the death (because their strategy depended on holding both points). This led to the Persian fleet growing overconfident, overextending themselves, and suffering a devastating defeat against the surviving Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis weeks later. This ultimately cost the Persians the war by forcing their fleet to withdraw to Persia and destroying their army's supply lines, effectively showing just how well long-term planning and war go together (i.e. not at all).
• In chess, if one side only has a king, there are quite a few combinations of pieces that can force checkmate. However, if they don't have enough pieces, or if they just make a mistake, the losing side can sometimes manoeuvre into a stalemate, which is technically a draw.
  • Not only is a draw always better than a loss, but drawing against a much stronger opponent is considered a great accomplishment.
• The Alamo: A small group of Texans hold out in an old mission, stalling the Mexicans long enough for the rest of the Texans to gather and strike.
• The War of 1812: Even though America failed to accomplish most of its primary objectives, the US maintains that it "won" because it didn't technically lose ("We got respect from Britain"). While Canada takes the same opinion for themselves ("We threw back multiple American invasions from our lands").
  • A few last minute victories, like the incredibly lopsided Battle of New Orleans, certainly helped Americans believe they "won" the war, despite the fact the war was technically already over at that point.
  • The attack on Baltimore would also count. It's considered an American victory due to the British Fleet's inability to take Fort McHenry and advance into Baltimore harbor.
  • Most of the objectives of the War of 1812 simply became obsolete with the end of the Napoleonic wars.
• Antietam: The Union held the field at the end of this bloody battle, but suffered greater losses than the Confederacy. Despite this, by claiming the battle as a victory, Lincoln was able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which changed the whole character of the war in the Union's favor.
  • On the immediate strategic level, Antietam was a victory because it stopped the Southern invasion of the North, forcing the invaders to retreat and preventing them from taking Washington. In that respect it is very much comparable to the Peninsular Campaign and Seven Days Battles before Richmond earlier in 1862 and to the Gettysburg campaign of 1863. In both cases the defending forces forced a retreat on the attackers while sustaining greater losses themselves. Had the Army of Northern Virginia succeeded in taking Washington in the Antietam campaign, that would have made it much more likely that France and Britain would have recognized the Confederacy as an independent nation.
    • Gettysburg also can be seen as a good example of this trope, even though the South's chance of victory were smaller in 1863 than in 1862. The Southern invasion of Pennsylvania was beaten back, but the Army of the Potomac sustained the heavier losses and Meade did not dare to attack the Army of Northern Virginia as it retreated south. However, at the same time Vicksburg fell and the Confederacy was cut in two as the Union forces brought the entire length of the Mississipi under its control. During the entire war there was a certain pattern that while the CSA was quite successful in Northeastern Virginia - even making a few attempts to take Washington, D. C. - this was more than offset by Union victories in the other war theaters. A big problem both with the way Jefferson Davis and Lee planned the war and with many accounts of the war after it was over was that too much importance was attached to the war in Virginia and not enough to the Western fronts.
  • This trope was the win condition of the South - whilst the North had to actively defeat them, the South only had to hold out long enough for the North to sue for peace due to war weariness, or to be recognised as an independent nation by Britain and France (the superpowers of the age). Both of these came close to happening at different times during the war.
    • Also essentially the win condition for the North - While the Army of Northern Virginia had repeatedly defeated the Union Army of the Potomac by inflicting greater losses and stalling their advances, once Grant took command he simply accepted the losses and advanced anyhow, eventually bringing Lee's army to bay.
    • The latter condition is why the Emancipation Proclamation did so much damage - suddenly, if Britain or France recognized the Confederacy, they'd be supporting slavery, something neither nation was ever going to do. Now the South had to force the North to give up without any hope of outside assistance, a much chancier proposition.
    • The American Revolution was fought with much the same in mind, only it worked that time. Almost certainly where the rebs got the idea.
• This is the way French citizens see the Second World War and the Resistance: there was the defeat in the battle of France, and Hitler going to Paris, and the Vichy Regime, but there were French who never surrendered between '40 and '45, who hurt the Nazi war machine, saved the lives of three-fourths of the French Jews, and fought alongside the Allies until the victory.
  • Didn't hurt the Nazi war machine much, though. Vichy France was a huge provider of war materiel for the Axis cause, and their government collaborated more enthusiastically than the Germans had even asked for in a failed effort to gain German respect. And while many French Jews were merely persecuted rather than executed, German Jews who'd fled to France for sanctuary were put into internment camps by the old Republican government, and cheerfully sent to the death camps by the succeeding Vichy government. The Free French forces do get some credit here, but they had nothing to do with the plight of the Jews of France.
• The Korean War: The Chinese and North Koreans didn't succeed in uniting Korea. The United Nations (mostly Americans, with about twelve percent being Europeans or Turks) and South Korea only "won" because they stopped the advance of communism and inflicted incredibly high casualties against the enemy, but in reality at the end of the war everything was pretty much status quo.
  • Except for the 2.8 million people killed due to North Korean aggression.
  • Technically the war is still on going as no peace treaty was ever signed between North and South Korea, and China and The United Nations never declared war on each other.
  • It should be noted though that conquering North Korea was only a secondary goal for America and her allies- the primary goal was to save South Korea, which they succeeded at. China's goal also wasn't conquest of South Korea, but rather keeping North Korea as a buffer zone, which they also succeeded at, albeit at a huge cost to human life. The real losers here were the North Koreans.
• The Battle of Jutland in World War I. The British lost more ships, but "won" because the German High Seas Fleet never left its territorial waters again.
  • The British fleet was the last line, the Germans would have decisively won the entire war shortly after if they hadn't been stopped there.
    • A decisive German victory was never really in the cards considering the numerical superiority of the Royal Navy, and that is without taking into account the navies of the other Allied nations and the United States, which would join the Alliance in 1917. However, the High Seas Fleet did leave German territorial waters on a few occasions after Jutland (which the Germans consider(ed) a victory) and was e. g. able to mount amphibious operations on the Baltic coast against Russia, contributing to Russia losing its Baltic provinces and Finland.
  • Similar example (again from the American Civil War): The Battle of the Wilderness. The Confederates were able to inflict horrendous casualties and stall the Union advance; General Grant responded by simply going around Lee's army, reasoning that he could take the losses and Lee couldn't.
• In the Battle of Waterloo, the Prussian forces arrived on Napoleon's right flank, after he'd already been fighting for hours against Wellington and the other allies. He'd actually already defeated them at Ligny, but failed to destroy enough of them to take them out of the equation.
• Operation Barbarossa in WW 2. The Russians “won” by burning everything in the German's path, just like they did against Napoleon.
  • They scored a somewhat more conventional victory in the aftermaths of both by hounding the now run-down invaders on their way out of Russia, inflicting horrendous losses.
• Vietnam War. The North Vietnam failed to outright defeat the American forces. They never won any single battle in the field and suffered far more casualties than their American counterpart but the war slowly deteriorated in terms of public support back in the States and the US withdrew all their forces from Vietnam. However, this trope is averted when North Vietnam went against South Vietnam where the South was steamrolled by the North.
  • At a conference after the war, an American officer insisted that the NVA and VC had never won on the battlefield. His Vietnamese counterpart replied, "That is true. It is also irrelevant."
• Every war where both sides claim victory. There is quite a few, actually.

Sports

• This is common in soccer where a weaker team going against a much stronger team will usually play more defensively and will aim for a draw instead of trying to win.
• On a smaller scale; this is a very common strategy in roller derby. If a lead jammer finds herself being outperformed, or is more concerned with preserving a lead than with taking more points, she will often simply call the jam before her opponent hits the pack. She doesn't score any points, but more importantly, neither does her opponent.
• Whenever a team loses (specially in either final matches and/or humiliating defeats) the rival team's fandom will celebrate copiously.