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. ▪️ 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 Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack