Ep 131: Thomas Mahnken on Thinking Strategically (War in Ukraine #3)

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Published 2024-07-10

Thomas Mahnken, President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World, joins the show to talk about the inherent fallacies that strategic planners should, but don’t always, account for.

Times
• 01:33 Introduction
• 02:30 Fallacies of rationality
• 05:36 Is war irrational?
• 10:02 Germany willed WWI to happen
• 15:40 Fallacy of the irrational/hyper-rational adversary
• 22:53 Rational/irrational Hitler
• 28:09 Wrapped around the rational axle
• 30:34 Fallacy of over/underestimating the adversary
• 37:53 Losing the contingency
• 41:08 Fallacies of interaction
• 45:56 Learning but not doing
• 50:53 Building defenses against fallacies

All Comments (6)

@itamarben9773 10 days ago

Excellent podcast. Unfortunately here in Israel a recurring problem is that even our war planners do not plan for war and deem it unlikely. So that when war comes our army is not the size it needs to be, our armement stockpiles non existant and ability to manufacture still beyond the horizon. We are constantly pursuing peace by consessions while our enemies pursue maxamilist goals. It is good to hear the sobering analysis that our own general staff has not internalized. With all that said, it would be fascinating to hear a podcast that outlines the US's grand strategy and then follow up podcast that articulate that strategy in East Asia, Europe and the ME. Thanks again for this podcast that Im pretty sure is peerless.
@markb8468 11 days ago

"Euclidean geometry of rationality" excellent analogy.
@stevenjohns-savage7024 10 days ago

There Bright, smart and strange little funny people 😊
@Zeitgeist_Dron yesterday

Was Sadam Hussein irrational? Well he didnt have WMDs in the end
@LR-jk2jk 10 days ago

When you describe Hitler, I think Putin.