A Better Peace: The War Room Podcast

As the situation on the Ukrainian/Russian border seems to worsen and families and nonessential staff prepare to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, pundits are throwing around the concepts of U.S. credibility and reputation. Interestingly our Editor-in-Chief, Jacqueline Whitt, sat down in the virtual studio last week to discuss this very topic with podcast editor, Ron Granieri. Intuition might s...

In 2019 we published our first holiday message. It was a reprint of the words of Prime Minister Winston Churchill on Christmas Eve in 1941 as he stood beside President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the South Portico of the White House. Last year we published President Franklin D. Roosevelt's words from his 1942 Christmas Eve message. At the risk of returning to the well one too many times, this year it...

Usually Michael Neiberg is the interviewer in our ON WRITING series. In this episode he sits down with podcast editor Ron Granieri as the interviewee. They're talking about his new book When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance. The two examine the conflict between Free and Vichy France and the interaction with the Allies in the early days and throughout World...

The WAR ROOM Staff learned of the recent loss of one of the great thinkers in the world of strategic thought. Colonel (retired) Arthur F. Lykke was a faculty instructor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in the late 80's and nearly 35 years ago he introduced the national security world to three little words - END, WAYS and MEANS. Art left us in the fin...

The WAR ROOM Staff learned of the recent loss of one of the great thinkers in the world of strategic thought. Colonel (retired) Arthur F. Lykke was a faculty instructor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College in the late 80's and nearly 35 years ago he introduced the national security world to three little words - END, WAYS and MEANS. Art left us in the fin...

Since its birth, the United States has benefited from the protection of two vast oceans to the east and west. The events of 9/11, of course, brought new attention to the defense of the homeland and recent cyber attacks redefined thoughts of secure borders. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Matt Cavanaugh, Franky Matisek and Bert Tussing to the virtual studio to discuss their part in the Homeland Defense Ins...

What is readiness? The state of being fully prepared for something? But what is that something? And what does fully prepared mean or more importantly cost? The military has used readiness as a metric of success for years driving budgets and training and acquisition efforts across the force. A BETTER PEACE welcomes our own Tom Galvin to discuss the War College's latest look at readiness. He joins p...

A little over two years ago we sat down with the students and advisors of Integrated Research Project (IRP) #6. Their task was to examine leadership development requirements in the multi-domain operations environment in the year 2040. Due to a hardware malfunction we thought we had lost the recordings of these conversations, but just recently we were able to recover the files. Though the conversat...

In the last episode we introduced you to Integrated Research Project (IRP) #6. A little over two years ago we sat down with the students and advisors of the study to examine leadership development requirements in the multi-domain operations environment in the year 2040. Due to a hardware malfunction we thought we had lost the recordings of these conversations, but just recently we were able to rec...

A little over two years ago we sat down with the students and advisors of Integrated Research Project (IRP) #6. Their task was to examine leadership development requirements in the multi-domain operations environment in the year 2040. Due to a hardware malfunction we thought we had lost the recordings of these conversations, but just recently we were able to recover the files. Though the conversat...

Every year the U.S. Army seeks out 125,000 to 140,000 new recruits to maintain the desired end strength and capability of the force. In order to do that the Army Enterprise Marketing Office has to craft a message that appeals to a broad audience across the shrinking qualified U.S. population. All the while the Army has to compete with the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and now the Space Force al...

Grand strategy is an elusive beast. Everybody wants some. We all agree it's important but nobody can agree exactly what it is. And everybody wants to teach about the topic. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Christopher McKnight Nichols and Andrew Preston to the virtual studio, who along with Doctor Elizabeth Borgwardt, have edited a fascinating new essay collection Rethinking American Grand Strategy from Ox...

Anyone paying attention to the last two decades of conflict has to acknowledge that understanding culture is important. Even if you think that culture is just that "squishy sh*t", you've got to be honest that it's difficult to understand enemy intent, analyze how best to train an allied force or comprehend the will of the people if can't even grasp the basics of the cultural foundations of those p...

A hero of the Imperial German Army (by his own account), an architect of the rise of two dictatorships, a co-creator of a mystical neo-pagan religion, and an author, General Erich Ludendorff was a force to be reckoned with. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Jay Lockenour to the virtual studio to discuss his most recent look at the persona of Ludendorff as one of the most prominent Germans of the 21st centur...

Michael Neiberg is back with our On Writing series and this time he's talking with Philip Caputo in the virtual studio. Phil, a Marine infantry lieutenant, is a combat veteran who served in Vietnam before becoming a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. His first book, A Rumor of War, has sold over 2 million copies and was eventually adapted as a two-part TV movie in 1980. He has written m...

Name a topic or an interest and you can probably find a podcast about it. With over 2 million podcasts and more than 48 million episodes somebody is talking about something you want or need to hear. Today we're talking about our little corner of the podosphere. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Mary Foster, Abram Trosky, and Jacqueline Whitt to the virtual studio to talk about how they incorporate podcasts...

"Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it." - Lao Tzu As this episode is released much of the United States is recovering from the wrath of Hurricane Ida. At the center of most of the destruction is water. It overflowed from banks, surged towards shores, destroyed property, knocked out power and swept loved ones away. In its wake, in the midst of a staggering overab...

Regardless of whether conflict occurs between state or non-state actors, is conventional or irregular there is one constant: there is always a population of citizens that suffers in one way or another. Warfare often focuses on the enemy’s ability to fight, mobilize, resupply or defend. Sarah Petrin is in the virtual studio today and she wants to focus the discussion on Human Security. She joins ou...

You can't turn on your computer or phone at the moment without hearing a podcast or seeing an article with someone's opinion about what went wrong in Afghanistan. The editorial team at WAR ROOM decided that if we were to enter the fray we needed to interview someone that truly had the bona fides to speak intelligently about the long term strategic view of Afghanistan. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Larry...

As the situation in Afghanistan has unfolded in the last several weeks, many have questioned how the collapse of the country could have happened so quickly. Daily press releases reported the steady march of the Taliban across the country capturing major population areas, often with little resistance from the Afghan military. As expected, pundits have looked to place blame for the U.S. administrati...

Storytelling is as old as humankind. Long before there was the written word, humans told their stories through spoken word, songs and drawings. It was how we passed on our history, our culture and our shared experiences. We've progressed technologically from the original cave drawings and humanity finds new ways everyday to use technology to tell our stories. A BETTER PEACE welcomes Sasha Maggio t...

To many people the U.S. Department of State (DOS) is as foreign as the countries in which our embassies are placed. Fortunately, we here at A BETTER PEACE know some people, and on this episode we welcome Andrea Gastaldo to share her experiences as the Director of the Department of State’s Political-Military Bureau Office of State-Defense Integration (PM/SDI). That particular office may not be fami...

In April 2020 we published an article that argued for the removal of the official photo from the Army's promotion and selection process. The goal was to eliminate a source of bias from the process and the Army took notice and removed the photo requirement. Bonnie "Buffie" Clemente joins podcast editor Ron Granieri in the virtual studio to discuss how the officer evaluation system still has sources...

Land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, that is the multi-domain environment that the Army sees operations occurring in from now forward. What does this shift in viewing the environment mean for all the aspects of raising and sustaining an army and all of its interactions and interdependencies in the joint force? Doctrine is being written and re-written across the force to adapt to this new schema,...

It's highly unlikely you'll ever hear a military leader say "I've got all the money and time I need to execute the mission." And when a global pandemic, aging infrastructure, and the end of a multi-decade war all drive federal spending towards domestic priorities, defense budgets get even tighter. Enter the practice of divestiture. Sustainment is the most expensive portion of a weapon system's lif...