Sentence:  `` You see , first of all and in a sense as the source of all other ills , the unshakeable American commitment to the principle of unconditional surrender : The tendency to view any war in which we might be involved not as a means of <WSD>achieving</WSD> limited objectives in the way of changes in a given status quo , but as a struggle to the death between total virtue and total evil , with the result that the war had absolutely to be fought to the complete destruction of the enemy 's power , no matter what disadvantages or complications this might involve for the more distant future '' . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  to gain with effort