The Dwindling Strategic Flame: Reviving Creative Defense Planning

In this essay, I argue that there has been a decline of late to "think about the unthinkable" when it comes to matters of military strategy. One sees this, for instance, in the Israeli failure to ever consider retaking the Gaza Strip and ousting Hamas from power following the disengagement in 2005, and with the current type of discourse surrounding a looming conflict with China. Drawing on my love and study of chess, I argue that what's needed is a renaissance of the type of thinking that characterized much of Cold War strategic thinking, where strategists considered the unthinkable.