military Archives - Page 14 of 14

Military realities

In the final days of WWII, Adolf Hitler meets with his generals to discuss the crumbling state of the Third Reich. The generals try to convince Hitler to surrender, while Hitler insists on continuing the fight. Hitler employs a rigid, authoritarian approach, refusing to accept contradictory opinions. He demands strict adherence to his orders, despite the dire situation.

The generals present logical arguments based on military realities and data, appealing to logic and reason, but Hitler dismisses their pragmatism. The scene highlights the tension between strict hierarchical adherence and pragmatic logic, illustrating how rigid adherence to orders can obstruct logical, outcome-driven negotiation.

Leaked German military documents

The Guardian. 2017. A leaked defence document has revealed the country’s worries about the breakup of the global order – a scenario with serious consequences for post-Brexit Britain.

The German defence ministry set out its worst-case scenario for the year 2040 in a secret document that was leaked to Der Spiegel last week: “EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, and more states have left the community … the increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone, world has dramatically changed the security environment.”

The 120-page-long paper, entitled Strategic Perspective 2040, is a federal government policy document – and the scenarios it imagines are grimly realistic: an east-west conflict in which some EU states join the Russian side or a “multipolar” Europe, where some states adopt the Russian economic and political model in defiance of the Lisbon treaty.

How Short-Term Thinking is Threatening our National Security

September 2022. Many of the problems we face today, from recent global recessions to climate change, can be traced back to short term thinking. This week, host Elisa is joined by Ari Wallach, futurist and author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors our Future Needs.

Ari acutely notes that we are at a significant turning point in history, one when bold change is needed to lay the groundwork for future generations. Yet, many Americans remain distracted by division and focused on the here and now.

How do we compare to other nations that might be taking a longer term view of themselves? And how can we rethink our political, corporate, and education systems to better adapt to, and take leadership in, establishing the innovations to come?

How Short-Term Thinking Makes the U.S. Worse at Fighting Wars

The Atlantic. 2012. In 2010, the U.S. adopted a new tactic in southern Afghanistan: it began to bulldoze entire villages to clear them of IEDs. The policy — reminiscent of Vietnam, of destroying villages to save them — spoke to a deeper issue with how the war was being fought.

Short-term objectives were emphasized over long term planning or consequence management. Destroying villages carries enormous long-term costs for a region, and the U.S. military just wasn’t paying attention to what those would be.