Alessandra Nisch
Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of ...

President Putin made three foundational assumptions in launching his war against Ukraine that should have been correct but were not. First, Putin assumed the invasion of Ukraine would be a quick and easy fight. Second, he assumed the world would denounce the invasion but tacitly allow it. Third, Putin assumed the war would deter NATO expansion.

Putin’s Wars: Testing Boyd’s Strategy of Applied Friction

Psychology

#Reviewing The Psychology of Strategy & Strategy, Evolution, and War

#Reviewing The Psychology of Strategy & Strategy, Evolution, and War

A new science of human behavior has emerged over the past two decades. This new science has linked together the research of neuroscientists, cognitive and evolutionary anthropologists, decision theorists, social and cross cultural psychologists, cognitive scientists, ethnologists, linguists, endocrinologists, and behavioral economists into a cohesive body of research on why humans do what they do. Research in this field rests on two propositions about the human mind. The first, that the mind is embodied; the second, that it is evolved.

Healing the Wounds of War: Moral Luck, Moral Uncertainty, and Moral Injury

Healing the Wounds of War: Moral Luck, Moral Uncertainty, and Moral Injury

Even a casual viewer of the recent Burns and Novack film, The Vietnam War, comes away an understanding of the central theme of moral injury and the difficulty of the moral impacts of war on the individuals who fought and the society that sent them. While Jonathan Shay coined the term ‘moral injury’ in his seminal 1994 book Achilles in Vietnam, this issue has more recently become a prominent part of the public discourse. Concerns about PTSD, moral injury, and the return of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan from the ‘Forever War,’ as well as an increasing awareness of the so-called military/civilian culture gap. Tim O’Brien’s reading from The Things They Carried at the end of the film is especially evocative because of the public moment we find ourselves inhabiting.

In the Mind of the Enemy: Psychology, #Wargames, and the Duel

In the Mind of the Enemy: Psychology, #Wargames, and the Duel

Over the last eighteen months, the Australian podcast the Dead Prussian has asked each of its guests a simple yet deeply contested question: “What is war?”  Answers have ranged from Professor Hal Brand’s insightful “war is a tragic but inescapable aspect of international politics” to my own citation of John Keegan’s “war is collective killing for some collective purpose.”Nobody so far has said that war is a “game”.  Thankfully this isn’t surprising; anyone who has fought in war, or just studied it, will be aware that this would trivialise the destruction that can lie within.  But it is also of note that nobody so far has labeled war as a duel.

#Reviewing On the Psychology of Military Incompetence

#Reviewing On the Psychology of Military Incompetence

Dixon’s psychology may be dated and his references may be foreign, yet he has much to offer anyone who selects leaders. Dixon himself admits that “it is most difficult to find a suitable prescription for military commanders,” but despite the difficulty, someone must attempt to find one. Fortunately for them, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence is a great place to start.