War on the Rocks

One thing is clear about President-elect Donald Trump: He is skeptical of the U.S. intelligence community. With the aid of a bottle of bourbon, War on the Rocks assembled a top-notch group of experts to talk about what Trump means for the intelligence community. Our guests in this episode included Carmen Medina - a 32-year veteran of the CIA; David Priess - author of The President's Book of Secret...

In this episode of the War on the Rocks podcast, editor-in-chief Ryan Evans sat down with Michael S. Neiberg, author of the new book, The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America. Neiberg, an accomplished historian who holds the Chair of War Studies at the U.S. Army War College, covered a range of topics, starting with America and World War I,  the Treaty of Versailles, World Wa...

Revelations over emails are going to be roiling this election season to the very end. This is, in no small part, due to a series of targeted hacks and leaks that cyber-security experts and the U.S. intelligence community have attributed to Russia. In this episode, we address this unprecedented Russian-directed information operations campaign targeting the U.S. presidential election and, indeed, th...

In an "around the world" edition of our podcast series, Ryan Evans convened a top-notch group to discuss everything from Cuba to the Middle East to Russia to deterrence to China to personnel issues along with a whole range of big issues for the first 100 days of the next administration. Tune in to listen to Elbridge Colby (CNAS), Radha Iyengar (RAND), Will McCants (Brookings), and Bill Rosenau (CN...

In the latest episode of our podcast, editor-in-chief Ryan Evans sat down with Gen. Jim Mattis and Kori Schake of the Hoover Institution to talk about civil-military relations, the subject of their new book Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military. This is the first major study of civil-military relations in years. The conversation also turned to strategy, with Mattis observing that W...

The Ataturk Cultural Center in Istanbul was closed down during the Gezi Park protests in 2013. This former symbol of Turkey's revered founding father is today adorned with large photos of its current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who successfully defeated an attempted military coup d'etat on Friday evening and Saturday morning. Some of you might have chimed into yesterday's live Google Hangout ...

What big think books on strategy in history should you add to you shelf this summer? Our editor-in-chief, Ryan Evans, sat down with two authors of two of his favorite books this year. First, he spoke to Hal Brands, author of the new book Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Cornell). Hal has just taken up a professorship at the Kissinger Center a...

Is Barack Obama's foreign policy "failing at nearly every turn," as Speaker Paul Ryan and many other Republicans contend? Or has the president actually crafted a wiser, more effective approach to America's place in the world that sets this country up for success? Derek Chollet, a six-year veteran of the Obama administration, takes the latter view in his new book, The Long Game: How Obama Defied Wa...

We're going to try something a little different with this episode of the podcast, and I think you're going to like it. If you listened to our last episode, you know our focus was on the Munich Security Conference – a major annual event that hosts heads of state, ministers of foreign affairs and defense, thought leaders, and, this year, whisky-swilling editors like me. In this episode, the focus is...

The Munich Security Conference brings together leaders from all around the world to discuss defense, foreign policy, and strategy - the bread and butter of War on the Rocks. It has been called the Davos of international security. Our editor-in-chief, Ryan Evans, was privileged to join the U.S congressional delegation to this year's conference. While he was there, he interviewed a number of key lea...

We have a two-parter for you in this episode. First, WOTR's Ryan Evans spoke with Steve Blank of Silicon Valley fame about his new course, "Hacking Defense." The class just launched at Stanford, but Steve has plans to proliferate it around the country. Will this course help change the way we approach national defense? Next, Ryan sat down with Basam Ridha Al Hussaini. Basam works for Iraqi Prime Mi...

The relationship between journalists and the U.S. military is simultaneously intimate and distant.  In the last several decades and the last two in particular, many things have changed in the way that journalists cover the military, but perhaps not as many as you think. Three defense and national security journalists of different generations joined Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks to talk about how...

WOTR's Ryan Evans sat down with Colin Kahl, the National Security Advisor to Vice Present Joe Biden, to talk about the mess of the Middle East and what the Obama administration is doing about it. From Iran to the Gulf states to Syria to Iraq to Turkey and beyond, Kahl explains how the White House views the problems and opportunities there. He also discusses what it's like to be in a presidential a...

We are trying something a little new with our podcast series. Segments! And music! In the first segment of our new podcast, Ryan Evans sits down with Claude Berube to talk about his new novel, Syren's Song. Ryan then joins Gen. Bob Scales to talk about his recent trip to Europe where he looked at the ability of U.S. and European forces to fight Russia in the event of a war. Gen. Scales expands on...

How will the U.S. military stay competitive? This is about far more than platforms, bombs, and guns. It is fundamentally about people. And with archaic personnel systems plaguing the armed forces and the Department of Defense, our talented young men and women are being drawn away into the private sector in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter sat down with WOTR's Ryan...

In histories of the Second World War, the Vatican has not fared well. Pope Pius XII has been condemned as "Hitler's Pope" and the Church castigated for not doing enough to avert war and save the victims of the Third Reich. Enter Mark Riebling's new book, Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler. After years of painstaking research in the Vatican's archives, Riebling has a different an...

What's going on around the world? For our latest podcast, WOTR editor-in-chief Ryan Evans was joined by a great group to talk about Russia and its intervention in Syria, the Middle East more broadly, America's approach to foreign policy, the refugee crisis in Europe, the international economy, and Congress.  Our guests were Justin Johnson of the Heritage Foundation, Denise Natali of the National D...

Will McCants of the Brookings Institution and David Ignatius of The Washington Post sat down with Ryan Evans to chat about the topic of Will's new book, ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. In this wide-ranging conversation, our guests reached back into the origins of the Islamic State and came all the way up to the storm of violence that covers so much...

Dmitry Gorenburg, an occasional WOTR contributor and expert on Russian military affairs at the CNA Corporation, sat down with Ryan Evans to chat about the state of Russia's armed forces, its campaigns in Ukraine and Syria, Putin as a strategist, and how one becomes an expert on Russian military affairs. Have a listen!

Ah, the 2016 presidential election.  Trump still leads the GOP field, Hillary has been challenged in the polls by Bernie Sanders and the shadow of Joe Biden looms large over the Democratic hopefuls.  And whether it's the Islamic State, Russia, cybersecurity, or the politics of the Iran deal, national security issues are going to play a central role.  So to kick off our newest channel, #NatSec2016,...

Is the American defense industry ready for what is coming next? Can it adapt, survive, and thrive in an era of paradigm-changing new technologies? Can the industry maintain America's military superiority in the face of the U.S. government's stifling contracting regulations? What can the U.S. government and the defense industry learn from Silicon Valley? We brought together three experts - Stephen...

In the latest installment of our podcast, we gathered some top Asia wonks - WOTR Senior Editor Van Jackson of CNAS, Evan Montgomery of CSBA, Mira-Rapp Hooper of CSIS, and Samm Sacks of the Eurasia Group. The topic? The state of U.S.-China relations and the major issues likely to occupy President Barack Obama when Chinese President Xi Jinping comes to town. Have a listen!   Image Credit: thierry eh...

One organization has been behind America's most daring raids, from the deserts of Iraq and Syria to the hills of Pakistan to the jungles of South America. That organization is Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Ryan Evans, editor-in-chief of War on the Rocks, sat down with Sean Naylor of Foreign Policy and author of the new book, Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operati...

TM Gibbons-Neff of The Washington Post (and formerly of the U.S. Marine Corps) and ​Dr. Bruce Gudmundsson of Marine Corps University joined WOTR's Ryan Evans to talk about TM's recent reporting from the front in Eastern Ukraine through the lens of the history of infantry combat. Image Credit: TM Gibbons-Neff

In this week's podcast, navalists B.J. Armstrong and Scott Cheney-Peters joined Alex Hecht, the editor of the Molotov Cocktail channel, and Ryan Evans for a carousing (but responsible) imbibing of naval history through four naval drinks: grog, the rum flip, the daiquiri, and the gimlet. Have a listen and drink along with us! The recipes are below. Grog: 4 ounces lime juice 1/4 pound brown sugar 4...