The Calculus of Conflict: Why Those Who Decide Rarely Pay

Key Insights

The decision to initiate war is often made by elites using a calculus that heavily discounts the human and economic costs borne by the public.
Historical cases like WWI and the Iraq War demonstrate how inflated success probabilities and low accountability lead to catastrophic miscalculations.
World War II represents a rare alignment of elite and public interests due to existential threats, enabling sustained mobilization.
Cognitive biases, groupthink, and institutional insulation amplify the divergence between deciders’ perceptions and reality.
Engineering higher accountability through legal, financial, and informational mechanisms can prevent future wars of choice.

References

Berman, E., Shapiro, J. N., & Felter, J. H. (2011). Can hearts and minds be bought? The economics of counterinsurgency in Iraq. Journal of Political Economy, 119(4), 766-819.
Clark, C. (2012). The sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914. HarperCollins.
Hausken, K. (2016). Cost benefit analysis of war. International Journal of Conflict Management, 27(4), 454-469.
Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and misperception in international politics. Princeton University Press.
MacMillan, M. (2013). The war that ended peace: The road to 1914. Random House.
Ricks, T. E. (2006). Fiasco: The American military adventure in Iraq. Penguin Press.
Stiglitz, J. E., & Bilmes, L. J. (2008). The three trillion dollar war: The true cost of the Iraq conflict. W.W. Norton & Company.
Tuchman, B. W. (1962). The guns of August. Macmillan.
Weinberg, G. L. (1994). A world at arms: A global history of World War II. Cambridge University Press.
Woodward, B. (2004). Plan of attack. Simon & Schuster.

A hand in a suit sleeve moves a red chess piece, while a worn hand rests passively on a wooden desk.

The Calculus of Conflict - Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War

The Calculus of Conflict Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine? 20 million Lives lost in World War I The Illusion of a Shared Ledger In the autumn of 1914, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey uttered his famous lament: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” The sentiment captured a profound, shared tragedy. Yet, the ledger of that tragedy was not shared. Grey, and the political class he represented, retired to country estates. The generation they sent to war died in the mud of the Somme and Passchendaele. ...

A view from a muddy trench looks up at a distant command post on a hill.

The Calculus of Conflict - Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation

The Calculus of Conflict Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine? 1914 Year World War I began A Weekend in Sarajevo, a Century in the Shadows On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s motorcade took a wrong turn in Sarajevo. His driver stalled the car directly in front of Gavrilo Princip, a teenage assassin who had earlier failed in a bomb attempt. In that moment of chaotic serendipity, two shots were fired. The Archduke and his wife died. Five weeks later, the world was at war. ...

A laser pointer highlights a graph in a boardroom, with a war-torn landscape blurred outside the window.

The Calculus of Conflict - Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus

The Calculus of Conflict Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine? 2002 Year of Pentagon's optimistic Iraq spreadsheets The Clean War in a Virginia Conference Room In December 2002, a secretive Pentagon office called the Office of Special Plans was refining spreadsheets and briefing slides. Their product was not a weapons system, but a prediction: a detailed, optimistic model of a post-invasion Iraq. It forecast low costs, swift victory, and a grateful populace. This “clean war” simulation, built on selective intelligence and ideological certainty, became the dominant Decider’s Calculus for the most consequential U.S. foreign policy decision of the 21st century. ...

A united crowd of civilians and soldiers looks forward with determined expressions.

The Calculus of Conflict - Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II

The Calculus of Conflict Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine? 1941 Year Pearl Harbor attacked, aligning U.S. calculus A House on Fire, No Spectators On the morning of December 8, 1941, the line outside a Seattle recruiting station stretched for blocks. Across the United States, the pattern repeated. The attack on Pearl Harbor did not create a debate; it rendered one obsolete. For Britain, the moment of alignment had come earlier, with the fall of France in June 1940. Parliament debated not whether to fight, but how. Winston Churchill offered only “blood, toil, tears and sweat”—a stark acknowledgment that the Public’s Burden would be total. ...

A transparent mechanical device splits a beam of light to evenly balance two scales.

The Calculus of Conflict - Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine?

The Calculus of Conflict Part 1: The Gambler and the Gambled: A New Formula for War Part 2: The Geometry of Folly: 1914 and the Elite's Miscalculation Part 3: Spreadsheets and Shockwaves: The Iraq War's Perceived Calculus Part 4: When the Calculus Aligns: The Existential Arithmetic of World War II Part 5: Designing Accountability: Can We Re-wire the Decision Machine? 2022 Year of simulation showing skin-in-the-game reduces war authorization A Vaccine Against Catastrophic Miscalculation In 2022, a team of political scientists and game theorists ran a simulation. Participants role-played a national security council debating a military strike. One group operated under standard rules. Another group was told that if they voted “yes,” a mandatory, substantial percentage of their personal wealth and their children’s future earnings would be placed in a war bond, forfeit if the conflict went badly. The divergence in outcomes was stark. The “skin in the game” group was 70% less likely to authorize force, pursued diplomacy longer, and set far more rigorous criteria for success. ...

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References