A Better Peace: The War Room Podcast

At the outbreak of the war, all of those armies were quite small but they rapidly grew many times their size in 1914 Historical memory of the First World War often focuses on the western front, perhaps because of egocentrism or the wealth of documents and literature that emerged from the front. But while the western front is iconic, this focus obscures the fact that the Great War was indeed a worl...

They're outgoing. They're adventurous. They want to do something for the war effort. They want to do their bit. While contemporary conversations about women and the military focus on the extent to which women are or should be integrated as service members, this is but one perspective. Women have been associated with militaries in various ways and to varying degrees throughout human history. In the...

EDITOR’S NOTE: The current temporary theme we are using only credits a single guest. This podcast featured Roland Murphy and Chris Wyatt The western African nation of Liberia underwent a period of significant unrest and violent beginning with a military coup in 1980 and culminated with a very bloody civil war in 2003, which saw the ouster and exile of an autocratic leader. Under watch of the Unite...

From the WAR ROOM Editorial Staff: What happens when a DBA from the Harvard Business School lands at the U.S. Army War College? There's the inevitable push-back against the formal dress code, but more importantly--there's innovation and new ideas. Although Dr. Andrew A. Hill has announced his departure from the War College and as the Editor-in-Chief of WAR ROOM, his mark and legacy is unmistakable...

How important is enhancing unity of effort ... [so] all the differences in culture, values, caveats, mindsets, etc. are harmonized for a common objective? Service at the strategic level sometimes involves working with international partners and possibly serving within multinational environments, such as NATO in Belgium or UN peacekeeping missions. The experiences of American officers in such setti...

Space is important and we would notice if it went away Indeed, so much of what the global public relies upon for work and life depends on space capabilities. But more than ever, the space domain is becoming contested, and that is driving a new discourse about the capabilities that the U.S. military require to protect it from adversarial attack or exploitation. Recognizing these emerging challenges...

There is nothing we do in the joint force that isn't enabled by space. Nothing. A lot of attention is being paid to the space domain, and so A BETTER PEACE welcomes General John W. "Jay" Raymond, Commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command, to the studio to discuss his perspectives on strategic leadership. General Raymond's responsibilities include organizing, training, equipping and maintaining...

General Frederick C. Weyand served as the 28th Chief of Staff of the Army in the 1970s but, as Dr. Frank Jones of the U.S. Army War College explains, he earned the right to be considered a Great Captain from his efforts during the Vietnam War. Leveraging his intelligence background to survey the environment and the state of the South Vietnamese government and people, Weyand saw that the dominant U...

Military intelligence is important, but it isn't the whole world As quoted from David Oakley's book, Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post-Cold War Relationship How has the relationships among intelligence agencies evolved over the past half century, and why is this important for national security leaders today? In this episode in our on-going series on Strategic Intelligence, David Oakley...

Humanitarian Mine Action is one way for the DoD to really support the other three instruments of national power Explosive Remnants of War, or ERW, is a significant problem in former battlefields. For example, the landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Dayton Accords was littered with antipersonnel mines. Since 1996, more than 3,000 square kilometers of land have been cleared of mines but an...

One weakness of the way we view strategy ... is that we neglect the environment Professional military education (PME) plays a vital role in preparing military leaders to fight and win the nation's wars. PME occurs at all levels of leadership, required for the most junior non-commissioned officers to the most senior flag officers and every rank in between. But what PME should teach, how it should b...

For those that say 'I wish I would have started a little bit earlier but I didn't' -- don't despair. ... Start now! The demands on senior leaders can sometimes overwhelm their abilities to manage their personal affairs and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Thinking about and planning for the long-term may lose out against the short-term demands of leading and managing the defense enterprise. B...

Pigeons were treated with very high regard in the military ... much like working dogs are today Technological innovation has always been central to warfighting, and the advances made over the 20th century were especially important. During the First World War, battlefield communications were limited, and armies employed means--old and new--to communicate. They used old technologies such as semaphor...

Command at the strategic level is challenging. Commanders are leading large organizations that are regionally (even globally) distributed, perform a widely diverse range of missions and tasks, or are overseeing the execution of military campaigns. They must address both short-term mission accomplishment and the long-term needs of their organizations, services, or the joint force. But the typical c...

The ritual of retaliation codified what makes you legitimate [as a combatant] and what makes you not legitimate How did combatants enforce the lawful practice of war prior to the Geneva Conventions and other conceptions of international laws of warfare? During the Civil War period, the answer was the customary practice of retaliation, which provides wronged combatants the opportunity to redress un...

If we want [Artificial intelligence] to thrive, we have to have leaders who understand it Artificial intelligence is seemingly everywhere and everyone is talking about it. But so what? What is the real utility of "AI" and how did it change or transform the organizations that incorporated AI into their practices? A trio of U.S. Army War College students -- Tom Spahr, Chris Chase, and Andre Abadie -...

Today it is commonplace for a female to command a brigade, and it is hugely important The military is a constantly evolving organization. Change in the US military is driven by both the need to serve as an effective fighting force and maintain a connection with society. An example is the recent integration of women in combat roles. Although women have been associated with the US military since the...

I don't write science fiction so I can predict the future, but I want to better understand what's lies ahead This episode is the final in a series of releases on the Emerging Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference. What does the future of war look l...

This is not humanity's first technological rodeo This episode is another in a series of releases on the Emerging Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference. Just how much have the rapid advance of the Internet and modern information technologies changed...

This episode is another in a series of releases on the Emerging Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference. Can the U.S. count on having a persistent competitive advantage in the Indo-Pacific region? Not likely, say today’s guests who were part of a maj...

It's not so much the mil-mil relationship ... the political relationship is something that's a little more volatile than it has been in the past This episode is the next in a series of releases on the emerging environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference....

This is not going to look like US-Soviet competition. ... Countries in Southeast Asia -- they don't want to choose. This episode is the second in a series of releases on the Emerging Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference. One of the central feature...

How fantastic that we live in a world where we have a problem of 'population aging'? This episode marks the first in a series of releases on the Emerging Environment in the Indo-Pacific Region, produced in collaboration with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Department of Social Sciences as part of the 2019 Senior Conference. The Conference provides a forum for distinguished schol...

These two commanders, Scipio Africanus vs. Hannibal ... demonstrated [strategic leadership] to a great degree A BETTER PEACE continues the Great Captains series with the sequel to a previous episode on the renowned Carthaginian general Hannibal. This episode tells the story of Hannibal's opponent in the Battle of Zama, Scipio Africanus. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236-183 BC) was one of th...

The European Union is a cooperative of twenty-eight member states, and everyone has different views A BETTER PEACE welcomes special guest Aili Ribulis of the European Union's delegation to the United States to discuss advances and initiatives that the EU is undertaking to develop its capabilities. This follows up on a podcast conducted in 2018 with Ms. Ribulis' predecessor, Mr. Ludwig Blaurock, wh...