Western Way of War

UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace talks to Peter Roberts about spending trends, allies, terrorism, campaigning, budgets and reforming the military (and the strategic headquarters of defence). Do we know him any better after this chat? You be the judge.

From Sun Tzu to Admiral Hyman Rickover, great military leaders really understood logistics and supply. Yet by outsourcing so much to industrial partners, have Western militaries introduced disproportionate risk to their operations? By rethinking these variables, Joann Robertson talks to Peter Roberts about how logistics could become the elusive advantage that Western militaries have been seeking.

When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Moscow annexed 20% of Georgia's sovereign land space using traditional military force. Over the subsequent 13 years, however, Georgia has been subject to constant political, economic and societal coercion as Moscow tries to steer Tbilisi into the Russian sphere of influence. The tradecraft used by Moscow might simply be an evolution of what we previously knew as 'active measures', but – as Georgian analyst Natia Seskuria tells Peter Roberts – it certainly feels new.

The experience of children in war is getting worse, from mental abuse to physical torture, kidnap, rape and being forcibly inducted into militaries. Peter Roberts talks to Kafia Omar from the charity War Child about what can be done so that states can live up to their legal and moral obligations to stamp out such practices.

Peter Roberts talks to RUSI Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology Justin Bronk about the realities of aircraft availability for contemporary operations, and the risk that Western air forces may 'design themselves into irrelevance' because of a flawed set of assumptions about force generation for peacetime duties that just don't work in combat.

US Naval War College Professor of Strategy James C Holmes contends that navies are going to have to fight for command of the sea over the coming decades because of China's adoption of a Mahanian strategy and approach to contests. Peter Roberts challenges Jim over whether Western navies have the intellectual capacity to 'reset' in time, inviting the retort that it might just be the mavericks in the US Marine Corps that will save the US Navy.

As Western militaries transition their forces towards a posture of great power contests, there will be a temptation to gloss over the last 20 years of combat experience as irrelevant to future fighting. Peter Roberts talks to Indian scholar Anant Mishra about why this would be dangerous. Not only will the combat experience from Afghanistan and Iraq remain highly relevant, but in learning from campaign-level failure, we might identify advantages that we can leverage in order to prevail in the coming decades.

Dr Heather Venable, associate professor at the US Air Command and Staff College, offers advice to students in professional military education courses and discusses the challenges of turning great tactical operators into people with useful skills in operational design and grand strategy. The conversation with Peter Roberts also covers the mythology of the Taliban as experts in manoeuvre warfare, whether 'helpful fiction' is even vaguely useful, and why air power theory is stuck in a ditch.

Politician, scholar, diplomat and sometime soldier Rory Stewart joins Peter Roberts for a post-mortem of the West's failed campaign in Afghanistan. Rory laments the approach of Western leaders (political and military) in perpetuating untruths about the art of the possible, as well as the US-led withdrawal under the Biden administration. An extremely sobering analysis.

In co-operation with the Irregular Warfare Initiative of the Modern War Institute, Peter Roberts sat down for a conversation with Chief of Staff of the US Army General James C McConville, Laura Jones and Kyle Atwell on where and how the US Army is adapting to new challenges, why land forces are poorly funded between wars, and whether armies of more limited size can walk and chew gum (that is, fight the sub-threshold and prepare for high-intensity combat operations).

Dr Jenni Cole, biological anthropologist and public health policy guru, talks to Peter Roberts about pandemics, climate change and civil defence. The discussion covers the psychological barriers of the 'Dragons of Inaction', as well as why the military must learn to include better CivPop participation in their exercises. A must for those starting staff college soon.

WWOW host Peter Roberts covers the five big themes of Season 2: The American Way of War – what went wrong and course corrections; continuity of concepts rather than radical change; systemic challenges in constructing concepts of fighting; how adversaries are preparing to fight wars; and the problems in ending conflicts. There is more optimism than you might expect and, with some of the most popular bits from the last six months, this smash-up of 'everything warfare' might go down a little bit like marmite.