Cumulative Dynamics and Strategic Assessment
Subtitle: U.S. Military Decision Making in Iraq, Vietnam, and the American Indian Wars
Contributors: Walt, Stephen M.; Bates, Robert H.; Toft, Monica; Zeckhauser, Richard J.
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Description: This dissertation examines why military decision makers struggle to evaluate their policies and why they often stick to unsuccessful strategies for so long. The core argument is that strategic assessment involves genuine analytic challenges which contemporary scholarship typically does not take into account. Prominent theoretical frameworks predict that the longer decision makers go without achieving their objectives, the more pessimistic they should become about their ability to do so, and the more likely they should be to change course. This dissertation challenges those ideas and explains why we should often expect the very opposite.
Notes: Keywords: American Indian Wars, Bargaining Model of War, Iraq, Military Decisionmaking, National Security, Strategic Assessment.

Thesis Ph.D. Harvard University 2013