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