How to prepare a defeat

French monument for the victory in the First Battle of the Marne (5-12 September 1914) in the First World War. This victory stopped the German invasion and no longer allowed a quick German victory in the war against France.

When Germany invaded Belgium and France in August 1914, it thought that its soldiers would celebrate next Christmas at home, for the war would not last longer. However, the soldiers celebrated Christmas in the trenches, sometimes together with enemy soldiers. This war – the First World War – would last more than four years, and it ruined the German Empire. Also in later wars, it often happened that, before they started fighting, the initiators underestimated the length as well as the possible impact on themselves and their own country, with negative consequences if not outright defeat as the result. Think of the Vietnam War and the wars in Afghanistan. It seems that these mistakes are again made in the wars presently going on in the world. Who would dare to say that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a success, although on paper Russia should have been able to defeat Ukraine easily? Apparently more is needed to beat a seemingly weak enemy than a stronger army. Again and again we see that, as Monica Duffy Toft says: “Wars are rarely lost first on the battlefield. They are lost in leaders’ minds –when leaders misread what they and their adversaries can do, when their confidence substitutes for comprehension, and when the last war is mistaken for the next one.” But which false decisions if not mistakes can leaders make when they go to war? To gain insight into this, I googled the sentence “how to lose a war”. Below you find a compilation of what I found plus a few factors of my own based on the most recent political developments.

Key factors why a war is lost include:
- Failure of a strategy and lack of clear objectives. Initiating a war without a clear, realistic and achievable goal.
- Strategic miscalculation and overconfidence. Underestimating the opponent and its capability to defend itself and to counterattack. Relying on faulty intelligence or ignoring intelligence. Overestimating one’s own strengths and capabilities. Ignoring the advice of military and political experts and relying too much on the advice of those who are basically on your side. Ignoring dissident opinions. Ignoring warnings of experts of the unintended consequences of your actions, for example for the international markets and economy.
- Prolonged conflict and overreach. Engaging in long, drawn-out struggles that drain military and economic resources and the morale of your own population. Ignoring or underestimating the opposition against the war in your own country.
- Ignoring your allies. Not informing them about your plans, even if you don’t suppose them to participate. Asking them afterwards to correct your mistakes (which they may refuse because “it is not their war”). Not trying to get support from international institutions that might legitimize your actions, or otherwise not informing them about your intentions.
- Attempting to implement “democracy promotion” without local support. Trying to bring a regime change while the local population is mainly on your side but doesn’t have the means or organization to implement such a change and/or doesn’t know what to do for that.
- Alienating the local population and others on your side in or from the enemy country, even if they initially supported you. For example by destroying the infrastructure of the country and its economic capabilities, especially if this destruction will have negative long-term consequences.
- Misunderstanding local dynamics. Failing to appreciate the cultural, historical, and political landscape of the combat zone.
- Too hesitant, too limited use of means to achieve the war objectives. Inconstancy, changeability and capriciousness in the employment of your military and political and economic means.
- Underestimating the enemy’s will to resist.

In short, an initiated war is often lost by underestimating the complexity of the intervention and the enemy’s response. Especially, great powers hold the believe that their abilities will outweigh local complexities. The American senator J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) called it “the arrogance of war”. But even if a war has been well prepared, there still is what Carl von Clausewitz called the “fog of war”: The extreme uncertainty in situational awareness, intelligence, and communication experienced during military operations; the confusion regarding enemy capabilities and intentions. In the fog of war much goes wrong. It often makes a war unpredictable. And even if you have won on the battlefield, it may have made your country so much weaker that we call it a Cadmean victory.

Sources
- When I googled the sentence “how to lose a war”, first I got an AI made compilation of the most important factors that answered my question. However, such an AI survey is dynamic: The next time you google your question, you’ll get a somewhat or completely different reply. In my text I used what I found on 21 March 2026, about 11:00 p.m. This dynamic also made that I cannot refer to the sources this AI survey is based on.
- Amin Saikal, How to Lose a War. The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan.
- Monica Duffy Toft, “How to lose a war”. 

Random quote
Imagination and fantasy are often highly praised, but nothing can compare to the visible and tangible reality.

Pieter Hoexum (1968-)

Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026): A personal homage

Source of the photo (edited)

On 14 March 2026, Jürgen Habermas, one of the greatest German thinkers, died, 96 years old. Habermas was a philosopher and sociologist who had a big influence on philosophical and political discussions in Germany and outside Germany. Only this fact is a sufficient reason to devote a blog to him. But there is also another reason: Habermas was one of those philosophers whose writings have much influenced my philosophical thinking, particularly during the first years of my intellectual development. Habermas has written about 50 books and I have some 20 in my library, especially those written in his earlier years. For it’s true, over the years I lost contact with Habermas’s philosophy. However, without his work, my philosophical development would have been different. In this blog it’s impossible to do justice to Habermas, so I’ll restrict myself to some notes on his influence on my personal road in sociology and philosophy.
Currently Habermas is chiefly known as a political philosopher who stands for the freedom of speech and opinion, for democracy and open discussions and who is an advocate of the European Union, and some in memoriams are mainly devoted to Habermas’s contributions in this field. However, when I went to study sociology at the end of the 1960s, there was a fierce discussion going on in the social sciences about the right method for studying human actions, the so-called “Positivismusstreit” (positivism dispute). The essence of this discussion was whether sociology should use the same method as the natural sciences, the method of explanation, or whether there was a special method typical for the social sciences: the method of Verstehen (understanding). As such this discussion was already rather old. The problem was first formulated by Wilhelm Dithey (1833-1911), who elaborated the philosophical characteristics of the method of Verstehen, while later Max Weber (1964-1920) elaborated Verstehen for the social sciences. Then this discussion faded away but in the 1960s it revived, especially thanks to the writings of Hans Albert and Jürgen Habermas. While Albert defended the view that the method of explanation applies to all sciences, including the social sciences, according to Habermas – and here I must simplify his ideas very much – the natural sciences and the social sciences are led by different “knowledge interests”, and as a consequence they require different methodological approaches: Explanation for the natural sciences and Verstehen for the social sciences. Habermas discussed his ideas about method especially in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences and the ideas about knowledge interests in his Knowledge and Human Interests. I read both books in the original German, and although they have been written in a difficult and often not very clear German (and although my German was yet quite basic then) I read them with interest and they convinced me. It is here that you find the basis of my ideas about the method of Verstehen that I later developed in my PhD thesis. These writings by Habermas didn’t only have a big impact on my intellectual development, but they led me also to Karl-Otto Apel, who soon would have a yet bigger influence on my thinking than Habermas (see this blog). Although I kept reading Habermas’s books, gradually my attention switched to works by Apel, Georg Henrik von Wright, and others.
Habermas’s epistemological thinking didn’t stop. On the contrary, it just had started and in his Theory of Communicative Action (1981) he further elaborated the view – already discussed in On the Logic of the Social Sciences – that no theoretical thinking – so including the theories of the natural sciences – can be objective, independent of what humans value. Moreover, all theoretical thinking is based on the mutual human understanding of what such theories are about. Actually, so Habermas, there are two levels of thinking: theoretical thinking, so scientific understanding, and commonsense thinking, so human understanding in daily life. Habermas called the former level of thinking and understanding level 1, and the commonsense level – the way we understand in daily life – level 0. This distinction plays an essential part in my PhD thesis, and it brought me the idea that there are two levels of meaning related to these levels. I called them respectively meaning 1 and meaning 0. With the former I refer to the meaning a scientist gives to an object, either physical or social in character. It is the scientist’s theoretical interpretation of reality. With meaning 0 I refer to the meaning the people who make up social reality give to the social reality or to parts of it themselves. It is their interpretation of their own lived reality. For me, this distinction between meaning 1 and meaning 0 plus Habermas’s and Apel’s idea of knowledge interests is the basis and with it the reason of the idea that we need a special method in the social sciences to investigate actions: the method of Verstehen.
After the publication of his Theory of Communicative Action, questions in the field of philosophy of science faded into the background in Habermas’s work, and gradually I stopped following him. While Habermas involved himself increasingly in political discussions and defended the ideas of the Enlightenment like freedom of speech and opinion, democracy and open discussions and became also an advocate of the European Union, I went more and more in the direction of the analytical philosophy of mind and action, and I wrote my PhD thesis and articles on themes in that field (see my website). After some time, I stopped reading Habermas’s books, too. It’s only later, especially under the influence of the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the ideas of philosophers from the 16th and 17th centuries like Montaigne and Spinoza that again I began to give more attention to my political ideas in my writings, ideas that had always, already since my study in sociology and before, guided my political and philosophical choices, sometimes openly, sometimes in the background).
My thesis led me definitively away from Habermas. However, this didn’t happen because I came to disagree with his ideas. Far from that, but my thesis made me take new paths in philosophy and discover new philosophical fields. However, no doubt, without Habermas I would have failed to see the right signposts. Without Habermas my road would have been different. With his death, a philosopher and sociologist has gone who clearly stood for the ideas of the Enlightenment, in the sciences, in the humanities, in politics and in daily life; ideas that have been under attack already since Spinoza formulated them. Today, we must still defend them, but now without Jürgen Habermas.

Random quote
Freedom is realized only in the mutual recognition of free and equal citizens.

Jürgen Habermas (1929-2026)

Three ways to perform an office

The mayor's residence of Bordeaux in the time of Montaigne

Most people, I think, love themselves in some way. For some this means that they want to show, if not showcase, themselves fully in the world. Others want to keep their inner selves private. I think that Montaigne had a bit of both of them. Didn’t he write his Essays as a kind of presentation of himself? A book that he published and republished several times and that he was editing continuously? Pascal (62) called it a “foolish project of describing himself”. On the other hand, as a public servant Montaigne kept his public and his private lives strictly separated, as became clear when he was appointed mayor of Bordeaux in 1581. In his essay “Of managing one’s will” he wrote: “A man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself.” So, when Montaigne heard that he had been appointed mayor of his town, he refused. His father had also been mayor of Bordeaux and Montaigne tells us how he “remembered … to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged in long and painful journeys on their behalf.” It’s not what Montaigne wanted. But he had to accept the function of mayor when the King ordered him to do so. Montaigne performed his office so well that he was reappointed after two years, but he always kept private and public strictly separated, and took care not to get emotionally involved in the city affairs.
I have the impression that such persons who “split up” themselves when in office are exceptional. Many do like Montaigne’s father, who, so Montaigne, thought “that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the general.” They give themselves to the fullest. That is, so Montaigne, what is expected of us when we perform a public function, and it is what many people do. However, not so Montaigne. It’s not that one never should immerse oneself wholeheartedly in a public task, but it must be an exception, or as Montaigne says: “It is only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.” This is quite possible, as Montaigne has shown himself, but reality is often different, “for how many people hazard themselves every day in war without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night’s sleep? And such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier who therein stakes his blood and his life.”

However, there is yet another type of person performing public functions. It is a type not mentioned by Montaigne, although he must have been acquainted with it. Such an official – for in the end such a person is only an official, i.e. someone appointed or elected in a public function to serve the people – sees an office as a personal fief, as in medieval times, with all its consequences for the people he or she must lead or govern and for the tasks to be managed. Such a person performs an office as if it is a personal possession and the people involved in, ruled by or hit by his or her measures are treated that way. It is the way especially authoritarian leaders exert their duties and govern those who have become their subjects. Or rather, these “subordinates” are no longer considered subjects but have become objects in the minds of such functionaries; they have become vassals and people-at-large, and their only right is to obey. Such a person performs his or her function not only to the fullest but also often in a Machiavellian way, and if not, their style is not far from it.
Look around and judge for yourself.

Random quote
You can’t eat images, but people will fight to the death for an idea.

Michel Serres (1930-2019)

Moving on

Humans are made for moving. It’s what I always have thought, or, let’s say, since I myself started to move. With the latter, I don’t mean the moment I was thrown on this earth, so my birth, but when I began doing sport. Actually, “began” is not the right word. I didn’t suddenly or within a rather short time begin to practice sport. It was a gradual development. First going to an ice rink, now and then; during the next summer making a few bike tours; next winter more skating; then I became a member of a sports club; etc. My ideas about the body (and its relation with the mind) developed gradually with my sportive activities, until I had the feeling and then also the idea that humans are made to move.
Nowadays, this is a widespread idea. This hasn’t always been so. For a long time it was so that you left physical work to others, if you could. Actually, such work was considered to be beneath you. It was done by people who hadn’t the capabilities to do something else (so it was thought). Better work was office work; or work in leading positions; anyway work for which you didn’t need to use your body. Those people made a stroll at most; or a horse ride; maybe even often. But this was seen as leisure; as relaxing and not so much as physical effort. So, Kant – I don’t know what he thought about physical effort – every day made a walk (and always at exactly the same time).
That moving your body is good for you actually should be no surprise, although for a long time the idea was ignored if not denied. But humans originated in the darkness of the prehistory as bipedal beings. There were no domesticated animals and no carts; nobody would bear you, unless you were a little child. Therefore the only way to go from here to there was by using your own legs. No wonder that your whole body became adapted to this necessity. Your body functions better when you use it, like your blood pressure, organs, energy system and muscles. It degenerates when you don’t use it enough, like an old car that rusts away when it is not used any longer. Your muscles lose power and endurance when they don’t work hard enough. Etc.
Millions of years long humans would move their own bodies without even thinking about it, for there was no alternative. This changed when, with the development of agriculture and with the development of cities and permanent residences, human life became sedentary, and there was less need to move. The social structure became more complicated, and since physical effort came to be seen as an effort you should avoid – this was a rather narrow view, as we now know – physical work was looked down upon. So it remained almost till today. However, many people still needed to move a lot, since fast and efficient means of transport, as we have them today, and machines to relieve physical work did not yet exist (and are not more than two centuries old). When people wanted to move from one place to another, most of the time they used their bodies. Carts and horses were only useful for longer distances and even then you had to use your own body more than in a modern train or car. Moreover, many people couldn’t afford them.
Although the idea that moving your body is good has become widespread, the practice is often different. Although this is changing, cities have often not been built for walkers and cyclists, so that you are forced to take your car or to use public transport. People were not used to walking any longer, while actually by bike they would arrive as fast at their destinations. For how much time isn’t lost in waiting for the bus or train or looking for a parking place? Moreover, society is organized that way that often you have hardly any opportunity to move your body. If you want to, you must do it intentionally in your free time like going to a fitness centre, making a bike ride for pleasure, or in your sports club. Moving has become something extra. The result is that many people don’t do it enough. According to the Irish neuroscientist Shane O’Mara going by foot is better than cycling. I think that he is right, for when walking (or running), you move the rest of your body (besides your legs) more than when you are cycling (which is a little bit one-sided, as you use mainly your legs and less so the rest of your body). Nevertheless, I doubt whether “better” is the right word here, for by cycling you can do by far longer distances, so that you can go to places by bike, where you wouldn’t go by foot (and then you would go by car, bus or train instead). Moreover, when you become older, cycling is a much more pleasant way to move for many people than walking (anyway, it’s my experience).
One of the most remarkable results of scientific research is that moving your body is not only good for your body in a narrow sense but also for your brain, if not for your mind. It helps you postpone if not prevent mental diseases like Alzheimer's disease; it’s good for your memory and learning ability; it works against stress and depressions, makes you more creative and keeps your brain younger. So moving your body is better for the whole person you are; not only for your physical person but also for your mental person. Isn’t it another argument for the idea that body and mind are one; an idea I defended in my last two blogs (and in other blogs as well)?

Random quote
Boastful men are the scorn of wise men, the admiration of fools, the idols of parasites, and the slaves of their own boasts.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Group fallacy

“A fallacy is an error in reasoning whereby someone attempts to put forward an argument whereby a conclusion supposedly has been appropriately inferred from a premise (or premises) when, in fact, the conclusion does not and should not be inferred from the premise(s)” as the book Bad Arguments tells me (p. 19), a book I have used already often in these blogs. Fallacies can be divided into formal and informal fallacies, so it explains. In the former type of fallacies the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise(s) because of errors in the structure or form of the argument, rather than in the content. In an informal fallacy, the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premise(s) just because of errors in the content of the argument, rather than in its structure or form. Since the content is expressed in language, often we find the false reasoning in the language used, like the misuse of words or grammar, false understanding, vague use of conceptions, and so on. (pp. 18-22) It is not only because fallacies are based on false reasoning (which often happens in good faith), that I treat them sometimes in these blogs, but they are also often used intentionally to manipulate other people. In both cases, fallacies can lead to wrong decisions, prejudice, wrong behaviour etc. Many fallacies leading to prejudices, discrimination and other unwanted social consequences are based on a confusion between group level and individual level, so on the view that what is true for a group should also be true for members of this group, or the other way around.
One fallacy where this confusion occurs is the ecological fallacy, also called population fallacy. It is a deduction error committed when “we try to draw conclusions about individuals based on data collected at the group level.” (Source 1, or (1) for short) Or, alternatively, it is an error “in the interpretation of statistical data … when inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inferences about the group to which those individuals belong.” (Source 2, or (2) for short) Since the basis of this fallacy is an error in formal deduction, the ecological fallacy is a formal fallacy. This fallacy often leads to stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination, as this example illustrates: If a specific neighbourhood has a high crime rate, one might assume that any resident living in that area is more likely to commit a crime. However, it needs not to be so that if you take an arbitrary resident of this neighbourhood that he or she ever has committed a crime. Nevertheless, stereotypical thinking often assumes that groups are homogeneous and that every resident of such a neighbourhood has an air of criminality around him or her and that he or she has directly or indirectly something to do with criminality. If for someone this clearly appears not to be the case, that person is seen as atypical.
The ecological fallacy is often seen as a case of misinterpretation of statistical data and so seen as a fallacy typically committed by researchers or others who directly work with statistical data, but actually it is a fallacy that is committed more generally (cf. the example).
The ecological fallacy is a kind of “group fallacy”: Group level and individual level are confused; or otherwise; the group as a whole is incorrectly substituted as a principle of explanation of what individuals in the group do or are. The individual is completely identified with the group, ignoring individual differences. A related fallacy that confuses group and individual is the fallacy of division. It “occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts.” (3) The feature of a group is incorrectly also ascribed to the individuals comprising the group (6). It is an informal fallacy based on the content of the reasoning. Here is an example: A) The laws passed by the parliament were radical; B) Jones is a member of the parliament. Therefore from A and B: C) Jones is radical. (4). I think it is clear that this needs anything but true, albeit only because it might be that Jones was the only person who voted against the laws.
The opposite reasoning is also possible, so instead of reasoning from group to individual arguing from individual to group. The fallacy of composition is a case in point. This informal fallacy is the incorrect inference that if something is true for a part, it is also true for the whole (4), or “that the characteristics, attributes, or features of individuals comprising some group will also be found in the group as a whole” (5). For example, the members of parliament Peterson, Smith and Mark are all radicals, therefore the whole parliament is radical. This needs not be true, of course, since maybe the other MPs are all moderates. This fallacy is related to the fallacy of hasty generalization, which I have discussed elsewhere in these blogs.
The way to avoid these mistakes differs a bit from fallacy to fallacy but the general approach is never to suppose that what is true for a higher level is also true for the lower level, and the other way around. Maybe it is, but then this conclusion must always be based on independent data. Otherwise the road is open to stereotyping, prejudices and discrimination.

Sources
1) “What Is Ecological Fallacy? | Definition & Example”
2) Wikipedia: “Ecological fallacy”
3) Wikipedia: “Fallacy of division”
4) Wikipedia: “Fallacy of composition”
5) Jason Waller, “Composition”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 250-251
6) Jason Waller, “Division”, in Bad Arguments, pp. 259-260