A nation must think before it acts.
Why Leaders Fight
National chief executives play a large role in forging the destinies of the countries they lead. Why Leaders Fight is about those world leaders and how their beliefs, worldviews, and tolerance for risk and military conflict are shaped by their life experiences before they enter office — military, family, occupation, and more. Using in-depth research on important leaders and the largest set of data on leader backgrounds ever gathered, the authors of Why Leaders Fight shed light on the critical role of presidents and prime ministers in leading their nations into war.
To discuss the research findings, we are pleased to feature one of the authors, our colleague Michael Horowitz. He worked for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy as an International Affairs Fellow, funded by the Council on Foreign Relations, in 2013, and is author of the award-winning book The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics. Horowitz is an investigator on the Good Judgment Project, which seeks to harness the wisdom of the crowd for forecasting world events. He has held fellowships at the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard, and is affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as the Center for a New American Security. He received his PhD in Government from Harvard University.