ARLINGTON, Va. — In a forward-leaning briefing held Thursday afternoon at the E-ring entrance to the Pentagon, the Department of Defense announced a strategic pivot to behaving as if it had already won several wars that had not in fact been fought, declared, or, in some cases, particularized.

A senior defense official said the pivot reflected what the department was calling “anticipatory victory posture,” a doctrine designed to accelerate the political benefits of conflict resolution by skipping the conflict and proceeding directly to the news cycle that follows it.

“We have noticed that the best part of any war is the aftermath,” the official said, “and that the worst part is most of the rest of it. We have therefore decided to focus our planning energy on the part of the timeline where ribbon cuttings, ceremonial wreaths and bipartisan luncheons take place.”

The official confirmed that the department had already begun preparing victory communiques for several conflicts that had not been initiated, including a notional naval campaign in the Eastern Atlantic, a counterinsurgency operation in a country whose name had been redacted on the press handout, and a logistics-driven theater contest with what the briefer described only as “a peer competitor in the lower-cost-per-flight-hour bracket.”

Several reporters pointed out that the wars in question had not, in any traditional sense, occurred. The senior official acknowledged the observation but said the department’s review of historical case studies had found that the political payoff of conflict resolution arrived “regardless of whether the underlying conflict had been substantiated.”

“You can have a parade either way,” the official said. “We have decided to allocate planning resources accordingly.”

The pivot will be supported by a new office at the Pentagon, designated the Office of Anticipatory Victory Posture, which will be staffed by twelve civilian employees and an unspecified number of contractors whose primary duty will be drafting commemorative texts and selecting hypothetical campaign ribbons. The office will report directly to the Under Secretary for Strategic Pre-Closure.

A spokesperson for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked whether the pivot represented a departure from traditional defense planning, said the chiefs viewed the development as “an expansion of, not a substitute for, the planning we already do.” Asked whether any actual military operations would still be planned in case real conflicts occurred, the spokesperson said the chiefs “remain alert to the possibility that things do happen sometimes.”

The Office of Anticipatory Victory Posture is expected to publish its first commemorative volume in late July, covering the Reconstruction and Stabilization phase of a campaign that the office’s draft material described as “successfully concluded” and the location of which the volume’s foreword characterizes as “to be determined in consultation with the relevant geographic combatant command.”

A senior congressional staffer, briefed on the pivot Thursday evening, expressed measured surprise. “We have, in the past, criticized the Pentagon for taking too long to communicate progress on conflicts,” the staffer said. “I have to say I was not prepared for them to skip the conflicts altogether. But I admit there is a logic to it.”

The senior defense official said the pivot would also include an expanded set of partnerships. The State Department, the official said, had committed to drafting “after-action communiques” that could be issued upon request, and the Department of the Treasury had agreed to develop a “post-war reconstruction” budget line that could be drawn upon for ceremonies of a moderate scale.

“We are very excited about what this represents for the interagency,” the official said.

The briefing concluded with the senior official handing reporters a small commemorative challenge coin marking the successful resolution of an unspecified hypothetical conflict, the date of which had been left blank on the obverse and which the official said could be filled in by the recipient at their convenience.

The Office of Anticipatory Victory Posture will hold its inaugural wreath-laying ceremony on June 6, at a location to be announced.