About the book
Dominic Johnson argues that states, like people, are prone to positive illusions: inflated views of their own virtue, of their control over events and of the future. That bias, he suggests, helps explain the war puzzle of why rational states, which should agree on their relative power, fight anyway. Drawing on evolutionary biology, psychology and international politics, he examines four 20th-century turning points: World War I and Vietnam, where overconfidence fed war, and the Munich and Cuban missile crises, where waning illusions may have let leaders seek peaceful solutions. Johnson also proposes that natural selection may have favored overconfidence for its advantages in combat and bluffing, a legacy that can prove deadly in the modern world.
BCG Henderson Institute director Martin Reeves recommended it for its lessons on overconfidence, which he says matter not only for global conflict but also for everyday decisions in business and personal life.
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Martin Reeves (Director/ BCG Henderson Institute)
Johnson uses studies from military affairs to explore the various psychological and political sources of overconfidence. These lessons are important, of course, not just for world-changing cases of global conflict, but also for day-to-day decision making in business and personal affairs. Our tendency to overestimate our capabilities and to believe that we can control the future — what the author thinks of as “an integral part of the human psyche” — can be our downfall. In geopolitics, self-deception can lead to war; in business, it can lead to strategic blunders or worse. It’s important to test what we know, uncover what we don’t know, understand where we are prone to bias, and calibrate our goals and risk-taking.
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