Why Wars Last Longer Than Experts Predict

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Science, Natural Sciences

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For nearly two centuries, international relations have been premised on the idea of the "Great Powers." As the thinking went, these mighty states—the European empires of the nineteenth century, the United States and the USSR during the Cold War—were uniquely able to exert their influence on the world stage because of their overwhelming military capabilities. But this conception of power fails to capture the more complicated truth about how wars are fought and won.

Our focus on the importance of large, well-equipped armies and conclusive battles has obscured the foundational forces that underlie military victories and the actual mechanics of successful warfare.

Phillips O'Brien suggests a new framework of "full-spectrum powers," taking into account all of the diverse factors that make a state strong—from economic and technological might, to political stability, to the complex logistics needed to maintain forces in the field.

Drawing on examples ranging from Napoleon's France to today's ascendant China, he offers a critical new understanding of what makes a power truly great.

Phillips Payson O'Brien is a professor of strategic studies and head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of six books, including his latest War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Being a great power doesn't allow you to win wars. It just doesn't work like that.
0:05.0	It's mostly military power. And I'm a great power. You're not a great power.
0:09.4	But the issue is the great power paradigm as people talk about it, it doesn't work.
0:14.1	And the United States has been a great power, a superpower, but it's lost wars.
0:17.8	It lost the Vietnam War. It lost the war on terror in many ways. And certainly about
0:23.4	war, one of the frustrating things is there's this enduring short war myth that wars will,
0:30.9	you know, wars will be over by Christmas. You know, we'll start this war, we'll win the war by
0:35.1	Christmas. And yet that myth is always shown to be wrong,
0:38.5	and yet it always comes back. There was the American Civil War, the First World War, all of these,
0:43.8	war will be over by Christmas. It never is. And yet here we were in 2022 thinking the war would be
0:49.0	over in a week. By human nature, are we by nature, warlike, peaceable? You know, what, you know, have we always fought
0:55.0	war since our hunter-gatherer days? And it's part of our nature. It'll never go away, or what are
1:00.9	your thoughts? Sadly, there is a part of human nature that you, the state of nature is nasty, poor,
1:07.9	brutish, and short, as was said by, by, by said by Hobbes. And I think there's something to that,
1:13.4	unfortunately, that there's a constant struggle between barbarism and civilization, and barbarism
1:20.3	wins out.
1:25.5	Hey, everybody. It's Michael Schumer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer show. I got a very special guest today and a super hot topic on war and power. He is Phillips Hayson O'Brien, professor of strategic studies and head of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
1:45.5	He's the author of six books previous to the one I'm about to introduce, including
1:49.7	the strategists, Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler,
1:54.2	how war made them and how they made war.
1:57.9	His other books include The Second Most Powerful Man in the World,
2:00.5	The Life of Admiral William D in the World, the Life of
	...

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