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.

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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