This episode unpacks what strategy really is, the seven questions every strategist must ask themselves before initiating a military operation, and why war stays so stubbornly unpredictable.
Host:
James M. Lindsay, Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR
Guest:
Eliot A. Cohen, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics
We Discuss:
- What strategy can actually accomplish, and whether the outcome of war is ultimately a matter of chance.
- Why Eliot Cohen adopts a deliberately narrow definition of strategy—and why he has little use for the fashionable term “grand strategy.”
- The distinction between strategy and planning, and why execution is what separates a strategist from a planner.
- The seven questions every strategist must ask, from “what else is going on?” to “what is your theory of victory?”
- Why understanding the adversary—“Who are those guys?”—is a recurring American blind spot, including in the Iran war.
- How surprise, groupthink, and the limits of human judgment repeatedly derail even the best-led war efforts.
- What Carl von Clausewitz meant by describing war as the continuation of politics by other means.
- Why a classical liberal education may be the best training for judgment in an age of AI.
Mentioned on the Episode:
James M. Lindsay, "The 10 Best and 10 Worst U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions," CFR.org
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton University Press
Eliot A. Cohen, The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics, Princeton University Press
Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam, RAND Corporation
Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton University Press
For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/the-seven-questions-every-military-strategist-must-ask
Opinions expressed on The President’s Inbox are solely those of the host or guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
