The Strategy Bridge

In this episode we talk with Chad Pillai about combatant command campaign planning. Pillai is a U.S. Army strategist and the author of "Developing a Combatant Command Campaign Plan: Lessons Learned at US Central Command" published by the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Since gaining independence in 1947, the relations between India's civilian leaders and the military has changed over time as the country fought wars with China and Pakistan, developed nuclear weapons, and used the military for internal counterinsurgency operations. In this episode we talk with Dr. Ayesha Ray about Indian Civil-Military Relations. Ray is an Associate Professor of Political Science...

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. Claude Berube about his book "On Wide Seas: The U.S. Navy in the Jacksonian Era." Berube is the museum director at the US Naval Academy Museum, an assistant professor of history at the Naval Academy, and a Naval Reserve officer.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Jeremy Black about his book "Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won and Lost." Black is a emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter.

In the years following the First World War, the Italian fascist movement appropriated the symbol of the veteran as a new revolutionary political force. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about the fascist myth of the veteran with Dr. Angel Alcalde. Alcalde is the author of "War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe" and is a lecturer in Twentieth Century European History at t...

By the summer of 1945, 1.8 million American soldiers were serving in the war against Japan in the Pacific and Asia. This included 21 U.S. Army infantry and airborne divisions plus independent regimental combat teams and tank battalions. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Dr. John McManus about the role the Army played in the Pacific during the first two years of the war. M...

In this episode of Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony about how the Apollo program to put men on the moon was created and run as an instrument of foreign policy. Muir-Harmony is the curator of the Project Apollo collection at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and is the author of the book "Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo."

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Elizabeth Shackelford about her book "The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age." In the book Shackelford writes about her time in South Sudan as a Foreign Service Officer and what she experienced when the new country descended into war.  

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about strategic culture, ideology, and military strategy with Jeremy Black. He is an emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and the author of "Military Strategy: A Global History."

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Prof. Beatrice Heuser from the University of Glasgow about whether strategic thinking as we have come to understand it existed in the centuries before the word "strategy" was introduced into the Western European languages. Heuser is the author of the book "Strategy Before Clausewitz: Linking Warfare and Statecraft, 1400-1830."  

In 1942 Bernard Brodie published the first edition of his book "A Layman's Guide to Naval Strategy." It would see a total of 5 editions, the last in 1964 with a slightly changed title of "A Guide to Naval Strategy." In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about Brodie's book with Dr. Nick Prime. Prime is a post-doctoral fellow with the Army Strategic Education program at the Army Wa...

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. John Lewis Gaddis about his book "On Grand Strategy." Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military & Naval History at Yale University and was the founding director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Dr. Jacqueline Whitt and Dr. J.P. Clark about their two essays in the book "On Strategy: A Primer." Whitt is an Associate Professor of Strategy at the Army War College and the author of the essay "The Strategists' Mixing Board: Characteristics of a Strategist." Clark is an active duty Army officer who has served 14 years as an Army Strate...

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with August Cole about how fiction and imaginative thinking can inform how we approach national security affairs. Cole is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. From 2014-2017 he directed the Art of Future Warfare Project which explored creative and narrative works for insi...

During World War II, librarians, archivists, microfilm specialists, and book connoisseurs were recruited by the US government to go overseas and collect enemy books, newspapers, journals, and other publications as part of an open-source intelligence effort. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about their work with Dr. Kathy Peiss. She is a professor of American history at the Un...

In 1971, the New York Times published leaked versions of what became known as the Pentagon Papers. The papers were part of a 7,000 page report commissioned by Defense Sec. Robert McNamara that looked at the history of the American involvement in Vietnam. Later that year, political theorist Hannah Arendt published an essay in the New York Review of Books called "Lying in Politics" that focused on i...

Since its establishment during the Truman administration, the U.S. foreign assistance program has been seen by policymakers as a primary means of influencing the politics and economies of recipient countries. But the effects of foreign assistance has often had unintended consequences. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge podcast we talk with Dr. Jessica Trisko Darden about how US foreign assista...

From the 1870s-1890s the U.S. Navy experienced a strategical awakening. Changes in technology, international politics, and other factors drove officers to develop new concepts of naval professionalism, identity, and organization. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Dr. Scott Mobley about how this awakening unfolded. Mobley teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and...

In 1863, Camp William Penn was established outside of Philadelphia to train African American soldiers for the Union Army. By the end of the war eleven U.S. Colored Troops regiments were trained there and would go on to serve in Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and other states. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Donald Scott about the U.S. Colored Troops and Ca...

While military thinkers have assembled many lists of the principles of war, they have not developed a theory of tactics. Brett Friedman set out to remedy that situation by writing the book he wished he had when he was a junior officer. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast he joins us to talk about his book On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle . Friedman is a military analyst and Mar...

While naval historians and strategists have tended to focus on commerce raiding and ship-on-ship or fleet-on-fleet operations, naval history also includes many examples of wartime raiding and maritime security operations. In this episode of The Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about naval irregular warfare in early America with Dr. Benjamin Armstrong. He is an active duty naval officer and Assistan...

Throughout the 19th century the U.S. Army alternated between a small regular force scattered at isolated forts and large forces built quickly to fight major wars. In his book Preparing for War , Dr. J.P. Clark breaks the officer corps down into four generations between 1815-1917 whose ideas about professionalism and how to prepare for war were shaped by their institutions, experiences and culture....

Over the past several years there has been a renewed interest in using gaming as a method to investigate national security decision making, explore policy and strategy options, and gain experience as practitioners. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Elizabeth Bartels about how wargames are designed, the differences in approaching gaming as an art and a science, and how ga...

In 1967, a short book called Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control was published by a naval officer named J.C. Wylie. Over the years the book developed a devoted following despite being generally neglected and is considered one of the important books on strategy to come out of the 20th century. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we are joined by Dr. Nick Prime to talk ab...

From July 1966 to January 1970, Nigerians fought a civil war which led to the deaths of more than half a million people. Looking back at the American attempts to understand what was happening offers an opportunity to assess how intelligence analysts responded to a foreign policy challenge. In this episode we talk with Judd Devermont about the American intelligence community's biases in its analysi...