Ep 131: Thomas Mahnken on Strategic Fallacies (War in Ukraine #3)

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 how strategic fallacies have played a role in Ukraine.

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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

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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack