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

School of War

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.

Thomas Mahnken, President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and contributor to <a href="https://a.co/d/2Ot2nsc">War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World</a>, 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 <a href="https://bit.ly/41EloxN">Follow along </a> on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our <a href="http://schoolofwar.substack.com/">School of War Substack</a>

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This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history.&nbsp;Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras.The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.&nbsp;&nbsp; Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps. <a href="https://schoolofwar.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Visit our Substack for episode transcripts</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/school.of.war/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Follow along on Instagram</a>