The Failure to Understand War--A Call for a Reassessment

latest Foreign Affairs Piece explained: Complex Systems and the US Air Force

Hi Everyone, The midweek update this week is about War—and more precisely how there needs to be a larger discussion of what matters within it. Ive been waiting to write about the subject until this article appeared in Foreign Affairs—it just appeared a few hours ago.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/war-defied-expectations

The article is free for now, so go and take a look. If it starts being paywalled, let me know and I will later publish an early draft of the piece.

The Myth of the Fast, Decisive War

This is not an article that just attacks the pre-war analysis. I’m sure most of you have heard about that in detail from me. That analysis was often terrible (and I would argue some of the worst offenders have continued to make the same mistakes in their well-publicized analysis since Feb 24, 2022) in its assumptions of what the Russian and Ukrainian militaries were as institutions. However, maybe the greatest analytical failure was how war was portrayed, as I indicated at the start. War was shown as quick, and far too many assumed that it would be easy, and in particular that the Russians would be able to undertake some of the most difficult complex operations a military could undertake. Here is a screenshot of the start.