Because social experiments of war are limited, the study is relegated to observation and analysis. This in turn points to the importance of context. Coupled with victory's evolution for adversaries, any reliable approach on the subject?
Hybrid wars are now launched as the future of conflicts resolution, because of that the trends on reaching a world peace status is begining to be lost due the fact of not knowing how, where and when the enemy is going to attack, and the other way around as well - the strike back. I suppose that each theoretical approach on this issue has the capability of missing the point which, in my opinion, is (without considering that there are fair wars): is it possible to define the end of a war when there are no visible battles? Is it easy to find a winner or a loser?
About the theory of victory... well, I believe that the words of J. Boone Barttholomees say it all:
The United States is developing a reputation much like Germany had in the twentieth century of being tactically and operationally superb but strategically inept. Often stated as a tendency to win the war but lose the peace (...)
Or as Einstein once stated:
In our time the military mentality is still more dangerous than formerly because the offensive weapons have become much more powerful than the defensive ones. Therefore, it leads, by necessity, to preventive war. The general insecurity that goes hand in hand with this results in the sacrifice of the citizen's civil rights to the supposed welfare of the state. Political witch-hunting, controls of all sorts (e.g., control of teaching and research, of the press, and so forth) appear inevitable, and for this reason do not encounter that popular resistance, which, were it not for the military mentality, would provide protection. A reappraisal of all values gradually takes place insofar as everything that does not clearly serve the utopian ends is regarded and treated as inferior.
Einstein also wrote this peculir sentence:
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
The analysis done to this words made me realize that we are in a constant war and that there will always be enough interests to promote war.
Could you please explain your question a little further? What do you mean by 'theory of victory'?
Hybrid war by itself could be seen as only one approach within the wider debate about the future of war. Other approaches are the 'new wars' school, the fourth generation warfare school, etc. Many would still argue that nothing substantial has changed. The latter could be found for example in Infinity Journal.
I too am a bit confused by the theory of victory. Hybrid warfare is one method of conducting warfare, but it does not mean necessarily lead to victory. I wrote a paper for this for a meeting in Bucharest last year. The paper is supposed to be published, exactly when is to be determined but I have attached it. I recommend looking at the material in the footnotes on page 2