The Seven Questions Every Military Strategist Must Ask

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 (cfr.org/experts/james-m-lindsay), Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR

Guest:

Eliot A. Cohen (csis.org/people/eliot-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/ten-best-ten-worst-us-foreign-policy-d…)," CFR.org

Carl von Clausewitz, On War (press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691018…), Princeton University Press

Eliot A. Cohen, The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics (press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691269…), Princeton University Press

Robert W. Komer, Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam (rand.org/pubs/reports/R967.html), RAND Corporation

Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691027…), Princeton University Press

For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: cfr.org/podcasts/presidents-inbox/the-seven-qu…

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.