Norman Dixon's book on military incompetence to be presented on September 12

The book by British psychologist and WWII veteran Norman Dixon On the Psychology of Military Incompetence provides some clues to the question of why generals so often make tragic mistakes. The book mainly deals with the psychological characteristics of military commanders operating at the strategic level.

Generals, whose training required enormous resources, who were entrusted by the state and carried out the orders of political authorities, suddenly fail. And these failures are not due to a lack of courage or knowledge, but—as it turns out—to the psychological traits of military leaders. In his work, Professor Dixon reveals the psychological features of the highest military commanders through examples from historical events and the management of war.

Colonel (Ret.) Tigran Hovhannisyan, the Head of the Independent Center for Defence Studies, former Military Attaché of Armenia to the Russian Federation (2009–2014), to Georgia (2018–2019), and Military Adviser at Armenia’s Mission to the UN (2019–2020), who has translated Dixon’s book from English into Russian, notes: It was the pre-order of my Russian colleague, Ruslan Pukhov, Director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, that made the print feasible.

The book presentation will take place on September 12.

“We cannot compare ourselves to the British. The tactical and even strategic mistakes made by the British weren’t fatal because their intelligence, diplomatic, and political systems, with their flexibility and centuries of accumulated experience, always provide alternatives. In other words, they may lose, lose again, but in the end they win. We cannot compare ourselves to the British, but when it comes to learning from our own mistakes, we can take them as an example. Norman Dixon’s book is a useful tool on that path,” Tigran Hovhannisyan said in an interview with the Objective program.

Whole interview is available on the video.