Mick Ryan, retired major general in the Australian Army and author of
The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire, joins the show to discuss the evolving battlefield and cycles of change and innovation going on in Ukraine.
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• 01:35 Introduction
• 02:17 Touring the front
• 05:11 No place safe
• 07:01 Change
• 11:24 Wire guided drones
• 15:31 Task organization
• 20:38 Drone defense
• 22:49 Is artillery dead?
• 26:39 Rethinking procurement
• 30:34 2014
• 33:07 Putin’s objectives
• 36:05 Formula for ceasefire
• 38:02 A just solution
• 39:41 Surprise is alive and well
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
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41:55
Ep 196: Thomas Bruscino and Mitchell G. Klingenberg on Mapping Warfare
Thomas Bruscino, professor at the U.S. Army War College, and Mitchell G. Klingenberg, assistant professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, join the show to discuss their article "Making War Upon the Map" The U.S. Army’s Forgotten Map Problem, Meade’s Gettysburg Campaign, and Depicting Operational Art.
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• 02:05 Introduction
• 03:12 What’s missing?
• 06:17 A modern problem
• 09:27 Meade takes command
• 11:29 Seeing both sides
• 15:41 South Mountain
• 22:54 Lee’s mistakes
• 30:11 Meade’s good choices
• 36:32 Mapping in 2025
• 41:51 Visualization
• 47:37 Developing doctrine
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
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50:46
Ep 195: John Hillen on Strategic Thinking
John Hillen, James C. Wheat Professor in Leadership at Hampden-Sydney College and author of The Strategy Dialogues: A Primer on Business Strategy and Strategic Management, joins the show to talk about how to think strategically in war, business, and life.
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• 01:55 Introduction
• 02:31 An Army start
• 05:17 Cold War ends
• 10:14 The Gulf
• 13:15 Changing styles
• 18:00 73 Easting
• 22:59 Policy and business
• 26:09 Strategos
• 29:04 In the doing
• 32:17 Inside out & outside in
• 36:41 Seeking horizons
• 42:22 Goals are not strategy
• 43:42 Call of Duty
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
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46:32
Ep 194: Mark Moyar on the Vietnam War
Mark Moyar, William P. Harris Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College and author of Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968, joins the show to explain the major inflection points of the Vietnam War.
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• 01:58 Introduction
• 02:47 The “orthodox view”
• 05:51 Dominos
• 08:41 A Maoist vision
• 12:42 1963
• 15:30 Henry Cabot Lodge
• 21:10 Slow erosion
• 24:57 Ground troops
• 30:10 Morale
• 33:39 Nixon in office
• 37:30 Triangular diplomacy
• 39:31 Vietnamization fails
• 43:09 American mistakes
• 47:31 Wanting out
• 50:10 Aftermath
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
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54:27
Ep 193: Douglas Murray on Israel’s War and its Global Consequences
Douglas Murray, journalist and author of On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization, joins the show for a wide ranging conversation that covers Death Cults, anti-Semitism, and recent shifts in the Right.
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Times
• 01:42 Introduction
• 03:00 9/11 origins
• 09:50 It’s not 1939
• 13:45 Death cults
• 19:16 “I’m not a fascist, I’m an idealist.”
• 23:51 Vasily Grossman
• 37:05 What’s going on with the Right?
• 49:07 Nostalgia for the absolute
• 54:10 Regaining balance
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and former China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras. The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps.
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Brasil