Professor Tony King (author of “Command”, “Urban Warfare”, and “The Combat Soldier”) talks through his understanding of how threats will develop over the coming years, not least of which will be another Trump presidency in the USA. Using Great Power Competition as a guide, Tony talks about warfare regimes that will accompany the proliferation of state sponsored proxies, about where national security challenges will emerge, and the inability of tradiotnal (declining?) powers to deal with them...

As the nearly new UK government formulate a Strategic Defence Review (probably for publication after new US President takes office), this mini-series looks at the threats and how the UK might mitigate them. In this episode Professor Paul Cornish talks to Peter about the Styles and Themes of threats that the UK (like many Euopean states) face, and the need for strategic thinking not another strategy. Paul is depressingly clear about how successive British reviews of national security has...

This mini series about NATO has taken some people out of their comfort zone: nonetheless, there has been a lot of positive feedback about the honesty of these conversation about the Alliance. In the final episode of this series, Peter talks again to Professor Julian Lindley French about NATO’s friends and enemies and tackle some questions from listeners. In the end, they address the thorny question of a second Trump presidency and what that could mean for the Alliance.   The series has been...

NATO is rarely covered by mainstream news outlets between annual summits yet the work goes on constantly. In this episode, Peter talks to Professor Julian Lindley-French about the unsung heroes of the Alliance: the PermReps, the MilReps, the International Staff, the International Military Staff, and the Chairman of the Military Committee. Whilst the Sec Gen and SACEUR get all the headlines, it is this team of dedicated professionals who make deterrence and denial actually happen. Kudos to...

NATO is often trumpeted as the most successful military Alliance in human history: a grand claim indeed. The reality is less definitive. NATO did not win the Cold War alone nor has it had military success in every campaign; it was not responsible for the end of piracy off Somalia and the training missions in the Middle East did not deliver what was promised. The Alliance can be disfunctional, self-serving, and procedural inept too. Yet it has also delivered the underpinnings of peace and...

Professors Peter Roberts and Julian Lindley French try and put the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty in perspective: how much of the history of the Alliance remains relevant today? NATO is certainly an impressive organisation on the surface – but it isn’t perfect. What does the future hold? What of Old Europe/New Europe, American isolationism, and what does Chinese imperialism means for NATO? Much covered and debated in an episode that looks at the least-worst Alliance in military...

Intelligence failures, strategic surprise, heavy attrition, mass casualties, reversals, internal rivalries, personality conflicts, communications breakdowns, political posturing and big egos. Plus an enemy that out-gunned, out-numbered, out-fought (at least initially) and out-flanked the IDF in ways that had been discounted for years. The 1973 Yom Kippur War (the Fourth Arab-Israeli War) was an event that shaped the Middle East for decades afterwards but also changed the Western Way of War....

It seems useful to frame some of the discussion about warfare around norms and forms rather than the character and nature terminology: this allows for a better understanding of the continuities and changes of combat and warfare that endure rather than being more limited in time and space. It also enables us to have a more nuanced discussion about context. IAfter the release of our book last month, ‘Wars changed landscape?’, I talked to my co-author Dr Paddy Walker about our findings as well...

Peter is joined by John Hemmings from the US and Malcolm Davies from Australia to talk about AUKUS. Since the security agreement was signed in September 2021, taking many people by surprise, the security situation in the Indo Pacific has deteriorated. But progress on both Pillar One and Pillar Two activities has not been rapid. Indeed, it sometimes feels like wading through treacle – despite the PR hype and political speeches. Peter, Malcolm and John try to identify the hurdles and challenges...

In October 2023, an expert group of national security experts from around the world came together at Wilton Park in Sussex for a discussion and exchange of views on the role of technology in future war, and the strategies that Western states needed to adopt in order to mitigate the impacts, to improve their own credibility, and make adversaries think twice. The conference convener, Professor Julian Lindley-French joins Peter to talk through some of the findings.

Some states face complex calculations in balancing their reactions to wars happening around them. Many (perhaps most?) governments of the day are approaching wars with less of an eye to the region and the future, and more towards domestic agendas and opinions. That is certainly the case in Europe. Importantly, decisions on foreign policy alignment are far more precarious for regional actors. For the conflict in Gazza following the terrorist atrocities conducted by Hamas in Israel in October...

We live in a guarded society. Humanity seems to have adopted fortification on the battlefield and in our homes and cities at an unusual scale. Forming an intrinsic part of positional warfare, urban combat, and modern warfare (from Iraq to Ukraine), the ideas around fortification have been long ignored by research in the national security community. Professor David Betz from King’s College, London talks to Peter about his research and latest publication highlighting the continuities of this...

Most people will not have missed the visit North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, to Russia last month. What went without comment was the significance of the realignment with Moscow and not Beijing. As the first foreign visit after three years of self-imposed pandemic national lockdown, the message was very clear: The Russia-Hermit Kingdom relationship is important. Russia needs ammunition and rockets for its on going war in Ukraine; the North Korean shopping list is more varied. It already has...

Beijing seems to have an insatiable appetite for increasing the scale and pace of military operations around Taiwan: from embargo operations to large scale, set piece amphibious exercises, busting median line airspace agreements and live missile firings. As Ralph Cossa, president emeritus of Pacific Forum, describes it, “Xi Jinping seems to be tactically clever but strategically foolish”. The US, by comparison, continues a doctrine of strategic ambiguity over American policy. If more...

How do companies, businesses, and industry make investment decisions in a war zone? There is no shortage of international funding committed to the rebuilding phase of Ukraine in a post war era yet most companies simply don’t want to wait until hostilities have ended. Indeed, societies and the people can't wait that long either. So how do companies make decisions about investing into war zones? When do they make the decision and how long do they wait? How are boards influenced by politics and...

Bringing conflict to a conclusion usually comes about because of annihilation of one party or the exhaustion of both. It sounds very 'dead Prussian', but relies more on each sides determination and resources than one might imagine. The inimitable Professor Beatrice Heuser tackles peace theory and the reality of ending wars, as well as treaties, truces and congresses. Even if peace is not, in fact, a recent invention and the reverse is true, neither that perspective nor the great history of...

The modern interpretation of manoeuvre theory for warfare holds the deep battle as a central avenue to success. Indeed, Western militaries have become so invested in this thinking that force designs and procurement prioritise capabilities for this over almost anything else. Yet, as Franz-Stefan Gady points out, what if our adversary is just not structured for the type of systems warfare that successful use of manoeuvre warfare necessitates? What if the deep battle doesn’t matter, or – and...

The opportunities to use manoeuvrist theory on contemporary battlefields are scarce, if they exist at all.  Professor Tony King talks to Peter about the three conditions he believes are necessary for it to be successful (movement and scale, defining will and cohesion, and delegated command). Given the geometry, topography and telemetry of today’s battlefields we would perhaps be better off educating leaders about alternatives to manoeuvrism.

There is a disturbing undercurrent in Western PME – demonising anything not termed ‘manoeuvre’ or ‘manoeuvrist’ as stupid, dated and irrelevant. Ukraine’s generals have been lambasted by Western counterparts on occasion for not embracing more manoeuvrism in their strategies. Yet the reality is that manoeuvre has simply become a catch-all for almost anything to do with modern combat. Not even the guidelines provided by Martin Van Creveld really help. Peter is joined by Amos Fox as they start...

Going into the NATO summit at Vilnius, NATO had a three tier membership structure and lacked the political leadership and will to make hard decisions. There are some good examples of things going well at the tactical, military end (the CDCM systems in the Baltic that make that region one with a compelling A2AD challenge for Russia, for example) but behind the veneer of platitudes and handshakes, the Alliance looks less solid. Indeed, as described by Professor Julian Lindley-French, it has...

Surrounded by three potential adversaries, hampered by a history that prevents deep alliances with neighbours, and a below-optimal command integration arrangement with the US, Japan took stock and realised it needed a reset in defence and security. Peter is joined by Japan specialist Dr John Hemmings from Hawaii to talk through some of the detail and intricacies of Japan’s national security strategy, hard power spending, constitutional changes, collective warfighting capabilities in the Pacific.

For decades, politics, security and economics in the Middle East has been inextricably linked to the USA. Today, however, Washington increasingly views the Middle East as a fly-over region – one that is largely absent from US policy. The space where America is now absent has been occupied by both China and Russia: the former having successfully negotiated a new era of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia (not an unsubstantial achievement). Peter talks to Mike Stephens about what...

After 20 Shangri La dialogues, it is not difficult to say that the world has changed – certainly in the Indo Pacific. In 2002, scholars and global leaders were talking about the ‘Peaceful Rise’ more than the ‘China Dream’. They were wrong, but so too might the predictions of economists forecasting an economic uber-power in China that completely overshadowed the rest of the world. Yet the CCP and the PLA are not backing down. If anything, the rhetoric – and the actions – of Chinese politicians...

The price of military equipment and people means that many militaries are having to make decisions about trade-offs between force elements. Taking a ‘capability holiday’ might not be fashionable language anymore, but it does reflect the reality – even with the significant promises in defence budgets. In France, a Euro413Bn spending promise over 5 years can’t deliver much when the price of equipment, people and a nuclear programme recapitalisation are already on the cards. It means, as...