Decisive Point Podcast

U.S. Army War College Public Affairs

Decisive Point, the Parameters podcast companion series, furthers the education and professional development of senior military officers and members of the government and academia who are concerned with national security affairs. Questions or feedback? E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil

  1. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 7-1 – Gareth Prendergast and John A. Nagl – Turning Tactical Victories into Strategic Success: Counterinsurgency in the Irish Civil War, 1922–23

    6d ago

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 7-1 – Gareth Prendergast and John A. Nagl – Turning Tactical Victories into Strategic Success: Counterinsurgency in the Irish Civil War, 1922–23

    The fundamentals the Irish National Army used in the Irish Civil War (1922–23) are a model for the successful application of a classic counterinsurgency which, if understood earlier, could have made a difference in the United States’ most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. John A. Nagl and Gareth Prendergast explain.  Keywords: counterinsurgency, Ireland, Irish Civil War, military strategy, treaty Stephanie Crider (Host)        Welcome to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I am speaking with Gareth Prendergast and John A. Nagl today. Prendergast is a serving colonel in the Irish Army and the author of Clear-Hold-Build: How the Free State Won the Irish Civil War Nagl is the General John J. Pershing Professor of Warfighting Studies in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the US Army War College. They coauthored “Turning Tactical Victories into Strategic Success: Counterinsurgency in the Irish Civil War, 1922–23,” which you can find in the Summer 2026 issue of Parameters. This podcast has been a long time in the making. Thank you both for showing up today. John A. Nagl Delighted to be here, Stephanie. Gareth Prendergast Hello, Stephanie. Host Let’s just start at the beginning. How did you two meet? Prendergast   I met John at a conference in, Ireland, well, 15 years ago. And, I’d heard all about him. I’d read his book. I bought him a pint of Guinness, and we were chatting at the bar for the evening in the officer’s mess. I felt we obviously made a connection. So, a few years later, when I asked him if he’d like to write the foreword to my book, he was very generous, and he said he would—but I had to invite him to Ireland and buy him a pint of Guinness. So, I did that. Nagl That seemed reasonable to me. It seemed like a reasonable ask on my part. Prendergast Yeah. So, I met him in Ireland, and he says, “Oh, you’re not the guy I remember. You’re a different person.” So… But he still came all the way over to Ireland, and he still wrote the foreword to my book. And, I hope we’ve become good friends ever since. And, I would like to thank him. Nagl    Yeah, Gareth and I have spent time together, both, on his island and, here in the United States. And, I was really honored to write the foreword to his book, which is another example of the basic principles of counterinsurgency being applied to a case that many people on this side of the Atlantic don’t know very well. And, it illustrates, to me, the enduring value of the counterinsurgency doctrine that General David Petraeus, General Jim Mattis, [Dr.] Conrad [C.] Crane of our own Army War College, [and] a number of people wrote, now 20 years ago. And, that continues to, I think, influence how—not just the American military, but a number of militaries around the world—think about this very challenging kind of war. Host    Why did you decide to write this article? Prendergast   It’s primarily from my book. And, I just wanted to highlight to people in America (and to a newer audience) the dangers, first of all, of a civil war and how you can blindly follow an ideology, or your leadership, as it happened in the Irish Civil War, into a vicious encounter—even though you don’t fully understand what you’re fighting for. And, I also wanted to demonstrate how the clear-hold-build philosophy that was developed by the Americans during the Iraq conflict actually worked during the Irish Civil War. And, I thought the Irish Civil War, as John said earlier, would be a very good case study to study clear, hold, build. And, when John offered to write an article with me, I [said], “Yeah, this would be fantastic to do it in such a prestigious magazine as Parameters.” And it’s just a pleasure to be able to write an article with John Nagl. Host    Well, we’re delighted to have both of you in Parameters. Nagl    We are happy to be in Parameters. Gareth is being modest, I think, which is a bit of the Irish one. First, his brother is a student here at the Army War College this year—his taller and better-looking brother. I think he’s the smart one, and his brother, John, is the good-looking one. His book has done remarkably well in Ireland, and I think deserves more attention here on this side of the pond. Prendergast Thanks very much, John, for [those] kind words. Nagl    And, just a reminder that Ireland and America have both suffered from horrible civil wars. And, I think we have a great deal to learn from each other—from each other’s experiences and, the effort [required] to make sure that those sorts of horrors never happen again here, or in other countries, to the extent that we can. Host    A few minutes ago, Gareth, you alluded to the similarities between the Irish Civil War and conflicts in the twenty-first century. What makes this conflict, in your view, so relevant to the challenges faced by armies in the twenty-first century, particularly in places, as you mentioned, like Iraq and Afghanistan? Prendergast   I think one of the key elements of it is why the antitreaty IRA (Irish Republican Army) started the civil war over an ideology. John and I are both graduates of the US Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, [Kansas], (and actually, John is a Marshall Award-winning graduate). But, one of the first things we learn over there is the Clausewitzian quote that no one starts a war, or rather, no one in his sense, ought to do so without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it. We see the protagonists, the antitreaty IRA side, try to win it militarily with no real political or strategic end state. They [believed] that just by killing more of the opposite sides, they would they would win the war. As the war progressed, they weren’t offering an alternative [to the] the people, a strategic end state, a political matter. It just shows to me that you can’t win a war militarily. COA (course of action) counts for insurgency is only 20 percent military. It’s 80 percent everything else. And, the Free State, or the pro-treaty side, realize that, and they competed for the popular will of the population by restoring essential services, the economy, governance, and providing an ulterior end state of a free state that’s not yet a republic, but it’s a stepping stone to a republic. And eventually, they won the popular narrative with the population, alienating and isolating the antitreaty IRA side.     Host    A key pillar of the Irish Free State success was the use of locally recruited soldiers and police who lived among the population, which contrasts with modern approaches that rely largely on isolated forward operating bases. What are the key advantages of this embedded local-first approach, and why do you think it is so difficult for modern military forces to replicate? Prendergast   I agree with that 100 percent because when I was a young officer in Lebanon, back in the early 1990s, we lived in the towns and villages. We had our platoon bases inherent and embedded with the local population. We would have our meetings with the mayors and the mukhtars on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Now, that was dangerous, but it still afforded us a common bond with the people we were there to protect, and you can’t just commute to work, as they say in counterinsurgency. But, as it got more dangerous, the Irish and other UN nations retreated into bigger bases, and I think the same happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, during the conflict. John can correct me if I’m wrong. It was only during the surge that they later came back out and started to push into the population areas. And, I’m saying that the Free State, the national army during the Irish Civil War, realized this, and they realized that they had to spread out into the Irish countryside. And in total, they set up nearly 380 bases throughout Ireland with an army that rose to the size of 60,000 soldiers. And, even in the county of Cork, where I concentrate my studies, they set up 64 different platoon-size bases, so as to provide the security, to get the general information, and to basically win the confidence of the population. And, the British Army could never achieve that in the previous war of independence against the IRA. They say the young British soldier in the bases had as much strategic awareness as a soldier in Nepal as he has of Cork. So, I think the lessons from the Irish Civil War are very prevalent today [regarding] what happened in Iraq, what happened in Afghanistan, and what might happen in the future. So, there’s a lot of learnings from that. Nagl    I think that’s exactly right. And, I think there’s a question of risk. In order to succeed in these kind of wars, you have to be willing to accept risk for your soldiers in order to keep the population safer, and it is only if your soldiers are taking that risk in support of the population that the population will trust you with the information you need to reduce the insurgents and win the war. So, there’s a trust basis that has to be formed between the population and the people conducting the counterinsurgency, and it took a long time to develop that. And, some hard lessons had to be relearned, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, from previous conflicts, including the one that Gareth and I write about. Host    Part...

    23 min
  2. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-10 – Henry Sokolski – “A Case for Military Proportionality: Disabling Nuclear Plants”

    Jun 12

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-10 – Henry Sokolski – “A Case for Military Proportionality: Disabling Nuclear Plants”

    In this episode, Henry Sokolski discusses how proportionality can serve as a concrete tool for winning wars and maintaining alliances and defines the roles the Lieber Code, the Geneva Conventions, precision weapons, and public narratives play in warfare. Keywords: proportionality, civilian infrastructure, nuclear targeting, military strategy, international law Stephanie Crider (Host) Welcome to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests, and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. Henry Sokolski is joining me remotely today. Sokolski is the author of “A Case for Military Proportionality: Disabling Nuclear Plants,” which was published in the Autumn 2025 issue of Parameters.            He is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and has worked in the Pentagon as the deputy for nonproliferation policy, as a consultant to the National Intelligence Council, as a member of the CIA's Senior Advisory Group, and as a senate military and legislative aide. He is also the author and editor of numerous volumes on strategic weapons proliferation issues.       Welcome back, Henry. Henry Sokolski          [It is] good to be back. Thank you for having me. Host In your article, you argue that proportionality should not just be viewed as an abstract legal or moral constraint but as a concrete tool for winning wars. How does a commander distinguish between a strike that is legally permissible under the Lieber Code—which focuses on military necessity and protecting civilians, among other things—but is strategically self-defeating in the long run? Sokolski          Well, first of all, who is Mr. [Francis] Lieber? Well, he advised President [Abraham] Lincoln, and he wanted to have a code that was more civilized than the European military codes—particularly on the question of, you guessed it, slavery. But along the way, he wanted to make sure that other things were attended to, like the unnecessary harassment and abuse of civilians and the things critical to civilian life. The Lieber Code basically became international law later. So, this guy is very important to understanding the law of war. Now, in there, he made this effort to protect civilians and civilian objects. However, he knew that commanders would do what they would do, and he gave them a get out of jail card, if you will, a free pass. Well, if they think it’s militarily essential to hit something that might cause a lot of harm to civilians or the objects they need to survive, it’s okay. It becomes extremely subjective. So, I don’t think there’s any problem for someone to do something legal under the Lieber Code. They’re given wide swath, as long as they can claim (or insist) that they had to do it. However, the distinction would be not so much between the Lieber Code and what makes sense but, rather, simply trying to understand what victory requires in the way of military operation. In this case, I think most military experienced hands can tell the difference between achieving the objective by avoiding aggravating the locals, if you will—by killing innocents unnecessarily and destroying civil objects that are not critical to winning the military objective—or achieving it and not. And, those military hands can actually see someone misbehaving and discipline them and say, “Stop doing that.” I think that it’s much more along those lines than some kind of legal determination. So, for example, if you destroy a dam or you spew radioactivity on the field that you have to march over, you’re marching slower, it gets in the way of what you need to do. And of course, it harms the civilians that are, you know, underneath the water or exposed to radiation. If you want to repatriate quickly and restore services, destroying something would make far less sense than temporarily disabling it. If you want lines of communication to be wide open, you don’t want to annoy and anger the locals so much that they become active enemies. All of these points were understood by generals as far across the spectrum from [German Field Marshal Erwin] Rommel, who [served the Nazis], to [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower. And so, it’s not as though this isn’t available historically to any sound commander who’s doing his studies properly. How shall I put it? This may be art, but you can tell what art is and [it] isn’t as subjective as the Lieber Code, which says, “Well, whatever it is, if you claim it was necessary, you’ve got legal cover.” This is not a legal concept. This is a military operational concept. And, I think leadership is found in generals who command those beneath them to pay attention to being efficient and achieving their military goals, and that requires a due respect and due regard to sensible proportionality. Host You also mentioned that modern precision weapons allow for disabling nuclear plants without releasing radiation. Does the existence of this technology make civilian infrastructure more likely to be targeted? And if it does, does that create a more dangerous, permissive environment for military planners? Sokolski You’re going to be firing at more things when you have precision, precisely because you can disable without physically obliterating the target. Now, when you get sloppy (or you get impatient and you run out of your precision munitions and just start lobbing things to flatten the entire facility), that’s no longer precise. It can’t be said that, “Well, the precision led to non-precision and, therefore, you shouldn’t try to be precise.” I mean it’s a little bit too much, but there is a problem, and that is—in “new generation warfare,” coined by our Russian friends that we are backing into understanding we’re going to have to wage—you’re going to be firing more munitions at more objects, civilian objects, in the future. And, it’s all the more reason to pay closer attention to the dividing line between precision strikes that disable temporarily—or, you know, maybe disable permanently—and things that physically obliterate and release hazardous forces.   You want to draw that line, and you want to discipline anybody who goes over it because once you get into the habit of being reckless and indiscriminate, you lose the good order and discipline of the troops. And when you lose that, you lose. No matter what your weapons are or how good your plans are, you will not prevail.            Host    Your article highlights a friction point where 174 nations have ratified Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, but the United States has not. What does Protocol I say, and how does this legal discrepancy jeopardize military cohesion and joint operations during an active conflict with a peer adversary like Russia? Sokolski We had a game in which Russia starts taking potshots at NATO reactors, not just Ukrainian ones. And at some point, there’s a mild release of radiation because they cause a loss-of-coolant accident and some radiation is vented. And, there’s quite a lot of confusion in the game as to how much radiation [is leaked] and what the effects are. And, let’s just say the fog of war doesn’t get any better when you hit one of these things, and it starts releasing some radiation. Panic ensues, [among] the locals. Whereas the United States says, “Well, you know, we signed this thing, but we didn’t ratify it. You folks in NATO ratified it. And, of course, you’re closer to the radiation. So, your interpretation of what we ought to do about this, whether it’s a clear violation of international law, and whether we should respond by firing in kind or doing something, quote unquote proportionate against the Russians, we have a different view than you.” Well, how does that work? Well, you spend a lot of time debating about what to do, and the operations get paused or hung up, [while you] figure out what to do next. You want the momentum of campaign, if you will, not be interrupted by legal debates or moral debates or debates about how you feel or how comfortable you are with the radiation levels that are confusing. So, it would be better if we were reading from a similar sheet. That would be the point. And, I think that Protocol I doesn’t prohibit hitting reactors, but it has a presumption against doing so. I think that presumption against doing so is not quite as clear in the [US Law of War Manual], which says, “[We’d], like to [follow this presumption] but, of course, you’re free if you have to, to go ahead and possibly hit one of these things and release dangerous forces—if it’s necessary.” Going back to the Lieber Code, that’s a little too sophisticated for clarity. You know, in military affairs, much as in politics, a certain amount of, I wouldn’t say simplicity, but clarity, is required for success. [America’s legal position on proportionality] is lawyer sophisticated, if you will, and I think it’s not helped. Host One of your primary recommendations is for the Pentagon to share more public narratives regarding infrastructure protection. How do you answer critics who argue that making these tear sheets public would provide a roadmap for adversaries to more effectively sabotage US utilities? Sokolski          Well, first, let’s understand what a tear sheet is. A tear sheet isn’t to get everything that’s classified out in the public. It’s where you tear the sheet between truly sensitive information and information that you can share with the public, and you ought to. We have used secrecy to try to solve the problem—and it’s an increasing one—of the vulnerability of critical civilian objects an...

    18 min
  3. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-9 – Tim Devine and Jonathan Gerson – on “Restoring the Primacy of Army Mobilization Planning: Lessons from the Interwar Period (1919–41)”

    May 27

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-9 – Tim Devine and Jonathan Gerson – on “Restoring the Primacy of Army Mobilization Planning: Lessons from the Interwar Period (1919–41)”

    In this episode, Tim Devine and Jon Gerson argue that the US Army must restore the primacy of mobilization planning to prepare for the growing likelihood of a protracted large-scale war involving the United States. While the Army’s transformation initiatives have emphasized important tactical matters, Devine and Gerson call attention to critical strategic vulnerabilities associated with mobilization—one of the Army’s enduring core functions. They offer insights, identify challenges, and offer recommendations for contemporary leaders and practitioners by analyzing the body of thought on mobilization planning during the interwar period (1919–41) and drawing connections to the present day. Keywords: mobilization, strategic planning, large-scale war, readiness, Interwar Period Stephanie Crider (Host) Welcome to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. Today we’re discussing national mobilization. While the United States military pivoted to an era of great-power competition years ago, the strategic environment continues to evolve. Joining us remotely today is Lieutenant Colonel Tim Devine, an active-duty Army strategist, author of “Restoring the Primacy of Army Mobilization Planning: Lessons from the Interwar Years, 1919–41,” which was published in the Summer 2025 issue of Parameters. He has strategic planning experience on the Army Staff and in the Indo-Pacific and is currently an instructor at the Army’s Command and General Staff College. Tim, welcome. Tim Devine Thanks, Stephanie. It’s a pleasure to be here. Host We’re also joined by Colonel John Gerson, a Title 10 National Guard officer and senior planner at the National Guard Bureau. He brings experience from several key assignments in the Joint Staff, the Army War Plans Division, the office of the Secretary of Defense (now Secretary of War), and the Guard Bureau. John, thanks for joining us. Jonathan Gerson Thanks, Stephanie. Thanks for inviting me on. It’s always great to share the mic with Tim. Host Tim, your article is the foundation for our conversation today. In it, you argue the Army must restore the primacy of mobilization planning. To start, could you summarize why you believe looking back 100 years to the interwar period is so crucial for the challenges the Army faces right now? Devine Absolutely. And first, I’ll emphasize that I’m a practitioner. I’m not a professional historian, but I was struck just by how much of this history is relevant for our contemporary time. Right after World War I, it was really the last time that the Army had to build a mass mobilization model almost from scratch. And World War I mobilization was chaotic and, although it was ultimately successful, there was a long list of shortcomings that illuminated the need for systematic reform. And, this experience had a profound effect on those who took part, particularly those in the Army who later held prominent roles throughout the interwar years—so, Chiefs of Staff like [General] John [J.] Pershing, General [Douglas] MacArthur, [General Malin] Craig and, of course, General George [C.] Marshall. And, each of them advanced proficiency in strategic planning in their own way. Now, fast forward to today, and there’s a lot that we can apply from this period. And, even during my time in uniform, which is approaching the 20-year mark, I’ve lived through the Army’s shift from the two decades of counterinsurgency to renew the focus on large-scale combat—or LSCO, as we call it. And given this shift institutionally, it’s clear that the Army is wrestling with how to prepare its forces for the growing likelihood of these potentialities. This impacts everything—how the Army organizes itself, how we train our forces, how we equip them, how we measure readiness, and how we view and anticipate the character of war changing. There’s a lot of credible sources out there that have expressed the fact that there is a growing chance for large-scale conflict involving the United States. And, I know that’s a sobering aspect of the conversation today, but that reality emplaces an important demand signal on the Army. And, that demand signal is not only to fight the nation’s wars—fight and win the nation’s wars, rather—but to generate the force needed to do so. And, of course, these two things go hand in hand, but today’s discussion will focus on the latter. And, I want to stress, too, that the force I’m talking about—the war-winning force—in all likelihood, far exceeds what we have today. And I’m not just talking about the active component. This includes the reserve component, which consists of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. So, in other words, there must be a plan for generating the right mix beyond the force in being, and that could be difficult to imagine. So, the interwar period offers us a blueprint, not for perfect solutions, but of the intellectual journey needed to prepare. Host You mentioned the Army developed a planning ecosystem to tackle this challenge. What did that look like? Devine Overall, it was a network of institutions and processes that was really meant to build intellectual capital. And, through this ecosystem, the Army learned to speak the language of national mobilization. And, to me, that’s really the biggest takeaway that I gained from studying this period. And, during my research, a colleague of mine recommended I read Henry [G.] Gole’s book titled The Road to Rainbow. And, I’m sure that title is familiar to many of your listeners, but for those that are not familiar with this, Rainbow, of course, refers to the famous Rainbow Series plans. These replace the so-called Color Plans that were, as one Army historian put it, “little more than abstract academic exercises.” But, to get us to an integrated set of plans, Gole explores this ecosystem—the planning ecosystem—created by the Army, which consisted of four pillars. First was professional military education. The second was practicums—think like war games and exercises and so forth. The third was studies, and the fourth was continuous planning. There’s really a lot I could go into about Gole’s work, but just given that we’re constrained on time here, I’ll focus my comments about the cumulative effect of it all—so, the formal education, follow-on assignments to the War Plans Division, [of] which Colonel Gerson and I are proud alumni, constantly writing and rewriting these plans. All of that proved invaluable. And, while the plans themselves were riddled with flaws, especially the early plans during the 1920s, it was the process, really, that revealed not only the problems’ immense complexities but also the extraordinary scope. So consequently, over time, the plans got better and, eventually, they linked force-generation requirements to operations envisioned by the regional war plans. They drew connections between the two chief commodities, which I like that term. It’s one I borrowed from the readings that I found during my study—the two chief commodities, the mobilization, manpower, and materiel. And, the assumptions became more realistic. The calculations got better. So, when war finally came, this intellectual capital gain from these integrated planning frameworks was arguably the most valuable strategic asset that the Army had. Host Your article highlights significant disconnects during that period between manpower and materiel plans and between defensive assumptions and offensive war plans. Do you see similar gaps today? Devine I do, and I touched on this briefly, so I’m glad you’re giving me a chance to unpack the idea further. For me, during my study of the interwar years, it illuminated how important those connections are. And, I’m talking about the connections between the interrelated parts of an immensely complex system that we call national mobilization. So obviously, many of these parts, like supply chains, for instance, transcend the Army, but they’re all related. [The] first point I’d like to make is [that we should] consider these two basic commodities that I mentioned earlier, manpower and materiel. And, the World War I mobilization experience was really a failure to synchronize the two. I mentioned it was a success in the long run, but this is one of the big points that came out of it. And I really like the quote from Arthur Herman, who’s the author of Freedom’s Forge, to illustrate this point. And that’s another title many of your readers are probably familiar with. So, Herman writes “[Of] the 10,000 75mm artillery pieces the War Department ordered, only 143 ever reached the front—and not one American-made tank.” So, interestingly, the disconnect between manpower and materiel planning remained prevalent throughout the 1920s and into the 1930s. And, it’s easy to see the flaw here, but I assure you that planning stovepipes are still alive and well. The second point [is] throughout most of the interwar period, there was a huge disconnect between the concepts guiding the mobilization plans and those for the regional war plans. So, the mobilization plans were based on defensive concepts like hemispheric defense, whereas the regional war plans like War Plan Orange were offensive. So, in other words, if the Army had to fight War Plan Orange, there was not a corresponding mobilization plan to generate the force needed to do so. And those that know their history here, the Army of the interwar years was a Spartan-sized, poorly equipped force that really couldn’t handle any contingency scenario, let alone any...

    30 min
  4. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-8 – Antulio J. Echevarria II and Brennan Deveraux – Standing Up the Strategic Competition Center

    Apr 22

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-8 – Antulio J. Echevarria II and Brennan Deveraux – Standing Up the Strategic Competition Center

    In this episode, Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II and Major Brennan Deveraux discuss the Strategic Competition Center, its mission and anticipated activities, and Echevarria's inaugural Strategic Competition Corner article. Keywords: intrastate strategic competition, interstate strategic competition, doctrine, National Security Strategy, Joint Concept for Competing   Stephanie Crider (Host) You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the United States Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m in the studio with Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II and Major Brennan Deveraux today. Echevarria is currently a professor of strategy at the US Army War College. He has held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies and is the author of six books on military strategy. Deveraux is a US Army strategist serving as a national security researcher at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). He has three defense-related master’s degrees and focuses his research on military innovation, emerging technology management, and the characteristics of future warfare. Brennan, over to you. Brennan Deveraux Thanks, Stephanie. So, today I’m going to have the opportunity to sit down and talk to Dr. Echeverria about a new center that we’re standing up at the Strategic Studies Institute—the Strategic Competition Center. We’re gonna talk about why that’s important, what it is, and what it means for our listeners.  So, real quick, before we really dive into the center, Dr. Echevarria, if you could just tell me a little bit about why you’re pushing for this change. You’ve been with the (US Army War College) Press now for over a decade. Why the switch? What’s your motivation? Antulio J. Echevarria II Yeah, well, after 12 years as editor of Parameters and then editor in chief of the Press, I decided it was time to get back to what really got me into this business in the first place, which is researching and writing, trying to tackle tough security questions, and offering the best solutions I could. I missed all of that and so, I’m really looking forward to getting back into it. So, that was really the genesis. Deveraux Okay. And, I heard you joke the other day, maybe [this change involves] a shift to focusing on your work versus putting all that time into everyone else’s. Echevarria Yeah. Yeah. Instead of trying to fix everybody else’s [work], I can finally focus on trying to fix my own, and we’ll see where that goes. Deveraux Yeah. Yeah. Well, as [an] aspiring young author, I’ve enjoyed your feedback when you were fixing my own. Hopefully, we can replace you. So, let’s talk [about] the Strategic Competition Center. What is it and, kind of, why? The defense community has been talking about great-power competition for years. Do we need a new center? And then, why here at the Army War College? Echevarria I think it was General [James N.] Mattis who helped reorient the defense community away from counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations and to great-power war, great-power competition, which then became strategic competition, back in his National Defense Strategy some years ago. It was not a knock on our efforts to do counterinsurgency and counterterrorism better, as the years went on. It was really to widen our aperture and to provide more strategic context for these kinds of missions and their potential outcomes and effects moving forward. So, it really is to broaden the aperture here at the Army War College, provide a service that connects practitioners, strategists and scholars, students, faculty members all together, and play on a little bit of that synergy, working [with] everyone together. So, that’s why here and why now. Deveraux Okay. So, you can do that as an author. You can do that through just your engagements with the students. What exactly is the center bringing to the table? What kind of tangible things should I be on the lookout for—apart from, you know, Dr. Echeverria’s, you know, got the pen again and he’s back at it? Echevarria Yeah. No, that’s a dangerous thing to have the pen in my hand and to be back at it. Like I said, I’m looking forward to that, though. The center will offer a Strategic Competition Corner in Parameters each issue. And I’m open to any feedback. Then, we’ll have a section in the annual Strategic Estimate (Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment) that the Army War College produces. We’ll also bring in guest speakers who’ll do noontime lectures for us. Our first one will be Sir Hew Strachan, coming from (the University of) St. Andrews. And, we’ll have practitioners and scholars talking about strategic competition and bringing to bear their expertise. Again, this is a service to reach students [and] faculty members, and to, kind of, play on the resultant synergy from all of that, I hope. We’ll have a podcast series. It’ll be monthly at first. This is our inaugural one for that, and then I hope to go to one every two weeks, and I will bring in other speakers, so you don’t always have to hear my voice. There’ll be other people, as well, participating in this. So, that’ll be a good thing. We’ll probably have integrated research projects. We already have had one on great-power war, deterring China, and the other major adversaries the United States faces at the moment. So, that was published last summer. Then we’ll have some specific dedicated research projects. We will always serve our clients who are interested in that—and with a Joint perspective, and even an Army focus, where necessary. So, we have a lot that is already on the plate. There are other things that we had not yet anticipated that I’m sure will come down the pike, and then we’ll flex to do those, as well. Right now, though, I’m an army of one. So, the center is small right now, but I’m hoping to grow that over the coming months and years. Deveraux Two things real quick before we dive into any of those. First, thanks for the shoutout to the Strategic Estimate (Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment). [It is] worth checking out. We push that every year. I think it’s a great product. I also might be biased because I’m heavily involved in said product. And second, for our listeners, [regarding] the integrated research project that was mentioned—so, one was published already, [and] one is underway—it’s a unique project that is DoD-sponsored, faculty-led, student-driven. So, this last one that came out—Understanding and Deterring Great-Power War (Understanding, Deterring, and Preparing for a Great-Power War in the Twenty-First Century), [was] sponsored by the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. And then, the chapters were written by nine separate students who collaborated [on] it through the year. Myself, Dr. Echevarria, and Dr. Larry Goodson were the lead[s]. Host I’d like to circle back to your Strategic Competition Corner. Can you give us a recap of what’s in the article? Echevarria Yeah, so in that [inaugural] Corner, I look at the nature of strategic competition. I start with the concept as it’s outlined in the Joint Concept for Competing (JCC). I use that as a start point, and I build off that. My main difference with the way it was laid out in the JCC is that it stresses strategic competition was what goes on between wars, while I would argue that strategic competition also uses wars. Think Rome and Carthage and using wars to progressively weaken your adversary or your rival. And then, you get to a point where that rival can no longer really effectively resist you or prevent you from pursuing your most important interests, as it were. And also, the JCC stresses that strategic competition is about winning without fighting but, tying into what I just said, I think fighting goes a long way to understanding [strategic competition]. It is a key component in strategic competition. We could argue that there’s a spectrum of strategic competition. Far on the left side might be competition with fair rules and everyone behaves according to the rules, and you bargain your way into beneficial scenarios or situations and all of that. That’s fine, and I wouldn’t necessarily reject that. But what really concerns, I think, the Joint Force is the nature of strategic competition as you begin to move away from that left side of the spectrum, across the center of the spectrum, into [the area] where you are not just struggling or competing or vying for particular interests, you are also increasing the hostility toward your adversary or your rival, and it starts to become clear that there can only be one winner in this kind of game. And so, that’s what I think I want to focus on because that’s the hardest one, I think, to really deal with. And, as far as the Joint Force doctrine and concept development and all those things [are concerned], I would like to see us focus more on that side of the strategic-natured continuum, if you will. Deveraux The conflict you’re talking about, in my head, I couldn’t help but go to competition with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. [And] when you talked about going to actual escalation, [I was] thinking about the Vietnam War or the Korean War, or even now [the conflict] with Russia and Ukraine. Does that also kind of fit in your model that maybe [includes] fighting a proxy or fighting indirectly through, you know, the foreign military sales or training? Echevarria Oh, yes. The use of proxies is a big part of it. So, we had a cont...

    18 min
  5. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-7 – Mahdi Al-Husseini, Samuel J. Diehl, and Samuel L. Fricks – On “Bridging Sky and Sea: Joint Strategies for Medical Evacuation in the Indo-Pacific”

    Apr 1

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-7 – Mahdi Al-Husseini, Samuel J. Diehl, and Samuel L. Fricks – On “Bridging Sky and Sea: Joint Strategies for Medical Evacuation in the Indo-Pacific”

    This podcast contends that the US Army should coordinate agile and expeditious Joint medical evacuation operations in the Indo-Pacific and develop novel capabilities to do so effectively. Keywords: medical evacuation, maritime operations, novel capability, World War II, Joint health service   Host (Stephanie Crider) You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m talking with Mahdi Al-Husseini, Samuel J. Diehl, and Samuel L. Fricks today, authors of “Bridging Sky and Sea: Joint Strategies for Medical Evacuation in the Indo-Pacific,” which was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Parameters. Al-Husseini was previously the director of the Medical Evacuation Doctrine Course for the Department of Aviation Medicine. He’s now a PhD student at Stanford University in aeronautics and astronautics, with a follow-on as an experimental test pilot. Diehl was the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, and following the US Army War College, where he’s currently a student, he will be assigned as Medical Command G5. Fricks serves as the chief of the Medical Evacuation Concepts and Capabilities Division and is responsible for air and ground evacuation modernization. Welcome to Decisive Point, gentlemen. Samuel L. Fricks Thank you. Samuel J. Diehl Thanks. It’s great to be here. Host Why did you write this article, and why is now the time? Fricks The character of war is changing rapidly. Observations from the battlefield in Ukraine have shown that traditional ways of doing things don’t work, necessarily, when you’re under constant observation. Why we wrote the article was, we have to change the way that we do medical evacuation, specifically—or especially—in the Indo-Pacific, in order to really have a chance. Mahdi Al-Husseini One of the ways we open up the article is by saying what is old is new again, and what is new changes everything, and I think that’s especially true in the context of medical evacuation in the Indo-Pacific. When we look back at World War II, which I would argue is one of the best case studies that we have, in terms of this particular problem set and this particular theater, a lot of what was true and relevant then continues to be true and relevant now. And, we see that on the tactical level. We see that on the strategic level. We see that across echelons and across mission sets. And yet, despite that, I think so many things as, no doubt, Colonel Diehl and Colonel Fricks will allude to in a little bit, so many ways that our enemy operates has changed, right? And, those things need to be considered as well. And so, what we’re dealing with here is, I think, a very gnarly problem, and one that affects the lives of servicemembers. You know, I do think we’re at something of a junction point, and we need to be able to ensure we have the resources, the doctrine, the training necessary to ensure that when that next conflict comes, we are prepared for it. And, that’s another reason we really wanted to bring this article out to a larger community. Samuel J. Diehl And, I’ll give credit to Mahdi where it’s due that when I took command in May of 2023, he was already working towards a degree of experimentation and integration—both with joint partners, as well as with the Army Theater Sustainment Command—about how we tackle this problem, sort of at the micro/tactical level, more effectively from an integration standpoint, but then also how do we integrate and test new technologies? As a career MEDEVAC [medical evacuation] pilot, I thought what he was doing was really exceptional, but I also understood institutionally, you know, where Colonel Fricks is coming from [in saying] that we have, you know, something of an obligation to get this information out there. There’s a host of articles out now bemoaning the expectation that there is no more golden hour, that casualties will likely increase in a different conflict in the future, but we haven’t really taken many steps concretely to address that problem. It’s known but then, also, there are elements, where I’ve discussed with Mahdi, where we evolved in World War II, but our organizations—our authorities, in some cases—haven’t necessarily evolved to catch up to some of the capabilities that we currently have. So, capturing how do you exercise C2 [command and control] of these assets across joint and combined organizations is incredibly important. I think it’s important, probably, to just start with why is medical evacuation important? We probably lose some degree of understanding—because we’ve taken it for granted in the last 25 years—that there are strategic implications for how we preserve our combat strength. And, we’ve done it historically very well, but it has implications for how we fight, right—how commanders can exercise audacity, how they can prevent culmination, and then how our individual soldiers see themselves on the battlefield. The risk that they’re willing to take reflects, right, their understanding and appreciation for how their medical system is going to take care of them. Host Tell me a little bit more about what you all are advocating for, not only in your article, but if there’s anything beyond that that you want to touch on, I’d love to hear it. Al-Husseini One of the luxuries I have here is having folks like Colonel Fricks and Colonel Diehl, who are, legitimately, I would argue, titans of the MEDEVAC enterprise. So, I think all of us will have something of a different perspective. You know, I’ll kind of broach this from the tactical level—as somebody who was formerly, and very recently, a platoon leader and an operations officer in a MEDEVAC company—one of the challenges that we ask ourselves, we talk a lot about LSCO [large-scale combat operations], right, is to what extent do I have control, you know, in my foxhole and in my organization with the kind of impact that we want to have, given the challenges that we discuss in the article. When we talk about, you know, how do we enable medical evacuation to be effective over long distances, where the patient numbers are far beyond anything we’ve seen potentially, again, since World War II, where we have an enemy threat that is dynamic, that is evolving, whose weapon systems while, maybe known to us, we haven’t necessarily faced directly? And those are tough, right? Especially, I’ll tell you, as a captain, as a platoon leader, as a section leader in a MEDEVAC company, I don’t have control over the acquisitions pipeline, right? So, I don’t have control over materiel, but what I do have an impact on is training. And, one thing we try to advocate for in the article that is true for MEDEVAC, but also extends to other missions, is, you know, we can think critically about capability. And [that is] one of the things that the JCIDS [Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System] does very well. There’s a formal definition in there that kind of talks about capability in terms of integrating ways and means and means and ways. That’s something we also talk about in the article. And, one of the things we advocate for is—even on the tactical level—to kind of think about, given, you know, the materiel that we do have, right, given the equipment that we have, given the force structure that we currently have, how can we think creatively about challenging problems and find ways to make a difference and to demonstrate potentially new capabilities given the things we already have? So, to be a little bit more specific, you know, one of the things we talk about in the article, for example, is an exercise that we ran at the 25th Infantry Division, which we call MEDEVAC Projects Week. In that effort, what we effectively did was we demonstrated this concept of a maritime exchange point where we were able to use an Army watercraft to bridge the transport of a pace ship between two aircraft—hypothetically coming from different islands. We had an existing setup in terms of what our force structure looks like. We know, you know, our aircraft have certain capabilities. We know we have a relationship with our watercraft teams—in this case down in Honolulu. How do we bring them together? How do we network, you know, all these various pieces of the puzzle effectively and in ways that can make a difference? And so, one thing that we certainly want to bring to bear is this idea that even on the tactical level, there are ways to experiment and to consider how we use the things that sometimes we take for granted, but how do we use our existing units or our existing equipment to do new things in a way, in this case, in the case of MEDEVAC, impacts real-world patients in real-world conflicts? Fricks Yeah, just to build off what Mahdi indicated there, we also have to embrace, kind of, the new technologies, right, especially when it comes to autonomous systems. We’ve all seen the directives that are coming out, you know, unleashing drone dominance and such, and medical needs to be a part of that. The problem, though, is that we really lack the policy that addresses moving casualties on an autonomous system. You know, there’s an ethical piece to it and there’s a policy piece. But, I think we would agree that we’d like to use it just like you would have used, you know, the helicopter in Korea. Remember, if you’ve ever seen MASH, they put the casualties on the outside of the aircraft, right, with no en route carrier. If we did that today, it would be considered w...

    25 min
  6. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-6 – Bruce Busler and Ryan Samuelson – Deploying and Supplying the Joint Force from a Contested Homeland

    Mar 18

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-6 – Bruce Busler and Ryan Samuelson – Deploying and Supplying the Joint Force from a Contested Homeland

    In this podcast, Bruce Busler and Ryan Samuelson argue that the United States must prepare for “the fight to get to the fight,” focusing on deploying and maintaining military forces from a contested homeland amid near-peer threats. Keywords: USTRANSCOM, Transportation Command, contested homeland, conflict, Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise Stephanie Crider (Host) You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College or any other agency of the US government. I’m talking remotely with Mr. Bruce Busler and Mr. Ryan Samuelson today. Busler is the former director of the Joint Distribution Process Analysis Center, or JDPAC, and the US Army’s Transportation Engineering Agency, or TEA. He’s the author of “Deploying and Supplying the Joint Force from a Contested Homeland,” which was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Parameters. Samuelson is the current director of JDPAC and TEA, USTRANSCOM (US Transportation Command), at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois. Let’s start at the beginning. What do JDPAC and TEA do? Ryan Samuelson Sure. Well, Stephanie and Mr. Busler, thank you very much. You know, JDPAC is . . . it’s the analysis center for the combatant command. It’s the analysis center that allows us to fulfill our Unified Command Plan responsibilities. And so, we bring engineering and analytical work together both with JDPAC and the Transportation Engineering Agency, which TEA is focused on improving the employability and sustainment of the Joint Force by providing the Department [of War] expert engineering analysis, policy guidance, and additional analysis. And so, when you take an engineering center from the combatant command and the analysis center and combine that with the Transportation Engineering Agency, what you have is a fusion of the ability to look at engineering solutions and then also to look at how we are moving from predictive to prescriptive analytics to ensure that the Joint Force can deploy and sustain itself. Host Mr. Busler, I’m really interested in how you came to write this article, but also why it matters for the Parameters [and] Decisive Point audience. Bruce Busler About two years ago, I had the chance to speak at a conference that was hosted by the [US] Army War College that involved many of the service and Joint players that were addressing homeland defense topics and the ability to project power from the homeland. And, as an outgrowth of that conference, I was asked to write a journal article, which I was happy to do, because I really wanted to help people understand what is it that TRANSCOM and JDPAC and TEA were doing on behalf of the Joint Force to be able to operate from a contested homeland. And, that was really becoming a point of awareness of the fact that we’re [no longer] going to operate with impunity. It’s just an administrative activity to get the Joint Force to the airfields and seaports and get them into the fight. And so, what I wanted to do was kind of capture my thoughts and then help people see the great work that was being done at TRANSCOM on behalf of the broader community to ensure we could prosecute this mission. In the article, I kind of distill my thoughts into three key areas. First of all, how we understand and minimize the impact of high-consequence events, versus all the potential points of disruption, so that we can continue to operate when we are going to be disrupted—and it’s not if, but when, we’re going to be disrupted—and then, also, how that works with all of the providers we have. So, the first point was minimizing the impact of high-probability / high-consequence events. The second one was maximize how this thing called the Joint Deployment Distribution Enterprise can continue to operate with all of our providers. And, we have to maintain not only the primary capabilities but have resilient approaches for how we can use alternate ways of conducting our mission in finding other paths [that] allow us to continue to move the force forward. And lastly, I wanted to talk about optimizing those relationships we have to have with our commercial providers and with our federal, state, and local partners to be able to do this mission. We’re heavily reliant upon commercial providers and our interagency partners to do this kind of mission. So, how do we optimize and build relationships today that will sustain us when it really counts? And so, those were the key themes I wanted to build in the article and help draw people’s attention to what we’re doing today and then point out some thoughts that maybe [help people understand that], you know, it’s not a panacea. What are we doing to maybe address some areas that are continuing to be a risk to us? So, that’s kind of what I wanted to do to help people quickly see the essence of what that look[s] like. And so, one of the things I mentioned before, which maybe Ryan can help expound upon, is [introduce] this idea of what is a Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise? And, Ryan, maybe I’m going to give it back to you, but can you talk a little bit about how, you know, our commercial partners and our federal, state, and local, interagency partners are so critical for TRANSCOM to conduct this mission with their component commands to do this hard work we just described? Samuelson Sure. Thank you, Mr. Busler.  You know, Stephanie, one of the things I wanted to cover about the article, too, before I get into what really the Joint Deployment and Distribution [Enterprise] is, [that] it had key critical themes. And so, why am I here today? I’ll tell you why I’m here today. It’s because this article still is immensely relevant today, and it is driving an awful lot of what US Transportation Command is doing. It was a paradigm shift, right? It’s [the transition] from uncontested to contested nature of our deployment and distribution activities. It’s about engineering. The article was about engineered resiliency—how we’re doing strategic analysis and the programs we do that [with] to engineer resiliency into our ability. It’s about commercial partnerships. It’s about network redundancy and resiliency, which is in itself protection of the ability to project the forces. It’s about Reserve components and their criticality to it. And ultimately, [it’s] about mission assurance through distributed ops. And so, we find it very relevant today. And in fact, the entire JDDE (Joint Deployment Distribution Enterprise) has likely read the article because it drives an awful lot of what we talk about. So, what is the JDDE? You know, really, it’s a global network of interdependent systems of systems. It’s a blend of military, commercial, and government partnerships. If you think on the military side, it involves combatant commands, Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Health Agency, [and] the Joint Forces. On the commercial side, our transportation providers are hugely critical. They are a key backbone of this ability to deploy globally. And then [it includes] our government partners from state and local partnerships with the Department of Transportation through the Maritime Administration, [and] our Highway and Rail departments, as well. The JDDE also can include multinational partners if we are partnered with them on moving something for the Joint Force. It includes our allies and partners. And so, the way I look at it, the JDDE really is—it’s the equipment, it’s the people, the procedures, the information, the organizations, the training, [and] the facilities. All of that is required for the mobility enterprise to generate and sustain the mass at velocity across tactical and strategic distances. And that’s the key [to] this partnership. Busler And so, one of the things, you know, that I was going to kind of follow up on is [that] once you understand those entities that have to work together . . . one of the very first things I did in the article was talk about what are the potential ways they’re going to be disrupted? You know, one of the things that TRANSCOM focused on—you know, probably 15 years ago, and has grown over time—is the ability to look at the impact of cyber operations that will impact our ability to operate. And that’s a relatively new area for us, but that isn’t the only way that we could potentially be disrupted. You know, I mentioned, you know, early on, that back even in World War II, we had attacks on the homeland. They just weren’t of high impact. You know, the Japanese floated balloons over the Northwest. They actually shelled—with a submarine. The Germans actually had espionage and other activities on the East Coast. But the thing was, they were relatively minor in their impact and really had no deep consequence to how we could operate. That’s not the same today. We’re seeing that, especially in the cyber domain, which is probably the area that will be the most likely and have the, probably, most pervasive impact [on our] ability to operate. But I think you’re seeing, out of the examples that we’re looking at in Ukraine, for example, the ability to look at drones [and] other things will happen. And so, then it becomes how do you think about operating when those conditions now are going to be imposed upon us? So, that became, you know, kind of a concern. And one of the other areas that I think people are aware of, is that, you know, within the cyber domain, it’s not just the technical means of disrupting us, there will be information operations that will try to disrupt our commercial providers from supporting us, from having, you know, the American people...

    30 min
  7. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-5 – Frank G. Hoffman and Antulio J. Echevarria II– The 2026 National Defense Strategy

    Mar 17

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-5 – Frank G. Hoffman and Antulio J. Echevarria II– The 2026 National Defense Strategy

    Military strategists Dr. Frank G. Hoffman (retired) and Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II analyze the 2026 National Defense Strategy.  Host (Stephanie Crider) You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m talking with Dr. Frank G. Hoffman and Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II today. Hoffman is the author of “The Next National Defense Strategy: Mission-Based Force Planning,” which was published in the Summer 2025 issue of Parameters. He recently retired from the federal government after more than 46 years of service as a Marine, civil servant, and senior Pentagon official. His last post was at the Institute for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. Echevarria is currently a professor of strategy at the US Army War College. He’s held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies and is the author of six books on military strategy. So, Dr. Hoffman, a lot has happened since we published your article. I’m really looking forward to this conversation today. My first question, in fact, did you get what you were hoping for from the new National Defense Strategy [NDS]? Dr. Frank G. Hoffman Yes, [I am] satisfied. I have a certain sympathy for folks who write strategy documents, and so, I know how difficult it is, and I know that these documents have to talk to many audiences. And, you know, you could chop up the 10, 12 pages of actual texts of the summary that’s out there and see that it’s talking to the White House, that it’s talking to allies, it’s talking to adversaries, it’s talking to commercial vendors. I mean, it has a lot of audiences, and I’ve seen a lot of criticisms, and I’m sympathetic because I’ve been in the shoes of [those] trying to edit or craft a couple of these in my prior life. But, I was pleased with the framework. It has some clarity to it. I think like Dr. E. [Echevarria], I took out all the op [operations] art terminology from the 2018 Strategy, things like lines of effort and things that aren’t as strategic, and I tried to, you know, visualize a theory of success for our strategy. And, I don’t get that necessarily out of these four elements, but the way they are clearly stated and prioritized, I agree with that, and it’s largely in sync with my article—with some improvements. Host I feel very fortunate to have two such esteemed strategists in the studio with me today, and I'm curious how each of you see theory informing the recently published NDS. And also, where do theory and force planning realities collide most sharply? Hoffman On the theoretical part, dealing with strategy per se, you know, one of the things I’ve written about, I think Dr. E’s written about [it], too, is the importance of a theory of success, which I think deals with the ways of a strategy. Of course, it’s also important to have coherence between the ends, ways, and the means. One of the reasons I was writing my article over a year ago was the insolvency problem, which really deals with the means gap. So, I don’t see an overarching integrated theory of success for the four elements, but I do see—particularly for the China component of the strategy—a clear theory of success expressed. The foundation for that was in the 2018 Strategy. It’s [from] some of Mr. [Elbridge A.] Colby’s writings in his book in the past. So, I see that imprinted in there, and that’s the part of theory that I see practically employed in the Strategy. But I do think that the NDS Summary, as I understand it—I understand it’s just a shell and the budget hasn’t been submitted, but I don’t see the Strategy as written for closing the insolvency gap very much. It’s not a compelling or persuasive story for Congress to fund the gaps that I’ve seen in the past, which are mentioned in the Strategy. The president has talked about a very large increase in the means, but I haven’t seen that submitted to the Hill. And this Strategy won’t lift up the attention of Congress on what to do with that money. It’s sort of written as a strategy that makes trade-offs that are pretty clear about Europe for Asia and the Middle East and things. It’s a strategy that’s largely trying to make [the most of] the harsh, constrained resources, which is applaudable, but it’s not a compelling story for a change if that’s what the president really wants. Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II From my standpoint, the theory and strategy mix has to do with our basic assumptions and how those are informed by a theory as a foundation. Even if we aren’t consciously thinking about a particular kind of theory as we’re trying to write a strategy, I think we are informed by the assumptions that are built into a theoretical approach and so on. But I think Frank is right that one of the things that I did not see in this NDS was closing the gap. The $36 trillion, I think, is what you cited in your article last year, and the last number I saw was $38 trillion in debt. Hoffman It goes up $7 million an hour. Echevarria Yeah, so some serious effort is needed there, but maybe that will be forthcoming, and a plan to get there will be forthcoming in the upcoming months or something. I don’t know. We’ll see, I suppose. Host I’d love to hear about your thoughts on the two-war framework. Is it obsolete? Is it misapplied? And if it is, what should replace it? Hoffman I spent a lot of time [on this topic]. In fact, that was largely the motivation for writing that particular article. I’d have to go back to an article that Dr. Echevarria edited, I think in the 2016 time period, where I wrote my first two MTW [two major theater wars] article, and I’m in favor of giving a president options. Presidents don’t want to be constrained if they can afford it. And so, you know, most of my time in the Pentagon, we’ve dealt with a two MRC [major regional conflict] or some version where we’re trying to give the presidents, you know, optionality. And so, my offer, because I was trying to close the gap in defense spending, was to say we’re gonna do one MRC, or war, unilaterally, and we’re going to do one with allies. And [I] published that article and actually got called to see the Secretary of Defense to talk about that article in 2017, and he totally disagreed with me because, historically, we’ve always gone to war with allies. So, saying we’re going to do something unilaterally doesn’t do much strategically or historically. And in fact, it lets allies off, which for the last 10 years we’ve been trying to get allies to do more for themselves—and ourselves—for our collective aim. So, that was my motivation for writing that. I’ve dealt with the debate inside the Pentagon about all the things we’re trying to pay for and trying to prioritize. And so, I was trying to come up with constructs. I’m very conscious, as Yogi Berra said, you know, “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.” And, the same thing is [true] with the two-war theory. Strategically, it makes sense. I have very, very great friends who have written on behalf of this in various think tanks and people with great government experience. They’re very smart. They’re for that, but they’re also for a grand strategy that is different than what this administration is pursuing. We’re not pursuing global dominance, hegemony. We’re not underwriting an international rule-based order anymore. So, that’s where I [sense] that it’s obsolete. But in theory, it’s useful. But what I was worried about was the advocacy of this particular construct, externally with Congress, is about trying to get a military that’s the military we want to have—large, robust, forward-deployed, deterring. It’s about the bureaucratic interest of the machine to want to have this robustness and risk reduction. But in the practice of it, what I find is we end up with a very conventional legacy-focused capability, and we buy what we have today, and the production lines are open on the Hill that the Congress wants to keep producing. And so, we’ll end up with tanks and rifles and airplanes and helicopters. We don’t invest in some of the things that either represent broader threats, new threats, [or] new domains that we need to be investing in. And so, I think it expands the gap and increases the risk involved in both the first and the second conflict. I’ve called this the lose-lose strategy because I don’t think that Congress is going to give us 100 percent of the force structure for two wars, 100 percent of the recruiting money, the readiness money, and the equipment modernization money that you need. So, you end up with something like 80 percent of what you need for either of the two wars and, if you go to war, you could end up losing both of them. And so, you know, that’s the difference between the theory and the practice. You know, we don’t get that kind of money, and we end up accepting readiness shortfalls. We ended up not investing in our people and MILCON [military construction]. We end up not investing in munitions inventories [and] all the things that are the places the service chiefs have to go to, to scrape up the resources to pay for a very large force structure. And we end up accepting—unconsciously—a lot of risk in areas that I thought were disadvantageous for the future. Strategic deterrence and nuclear modernization’s a shortfall. Missile defense has been a shortfall, both national and theater. Capacity for protracted conflict with munitions we’ve seen since the Ukraine [invasion] w...

    25 min
  8. Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-4 – Ilmari Käihkö, Jan Willem Honig, and Antulio J. Echevarria II – Ukraine’s Not-So-Whole-of-Society at War: Force Generation in Modern Developed Societies

    Mar 11

    Decisive Point Podcast – Ep 6-4 – Ilmari Käihkö, Jan Willem Honig, and Antulio J. Echevarria II – Ukraine’s Not-So-Whole-of-Society at War: Force Generation in Modern Developed Societies

    This podcast argues that Ukraine offers a cautionary tale regarding the two main modern models of force generation. Neither the professional high-tech war model, favored by Western militaries, nor the whole-of-society war approach, said to have saved Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, proved successful formulas for Ukraine. Considering that Ukraine is fighting for survival, with Russian forces inside the country, the failure of both models in action has serious implications for NATO member states as they deliberate their choices regarding future force generation. Stephanie Crider (Host) You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m in the studio with Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria today. Joining us remotely are Dr. Ilmari Käihkö and Jan Willem Honig. Käihkö and Honig are the authors of “Ukraine's Not-So-Whole-of-Society at War: Force Generation in Modern Developed Societies,” which was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Parameters. Käihkö is an associate professor of war studies, guest researcher at the Swedish Defense University, and a guest researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He’s also a veteran of the Finnish Defence Forces. Honig is professor of international security studies, emeritus, at the Netherlands Defence Academy and a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Echevarria is currently a professor of strategy at the US Army War College. He has held the General Douglas MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies and is the author of six books on military strategy. Welcome to Decisive Point. Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II For the benefit of our listeners, would you two please summarize your article for us? It’s been a while, just to refocus everyone. Jan Willem Honig What we tried to explain was that, where as we all expected and thought that initially Ukraine, as a society, mobilized and resisted the Russian attack in 2022, it very quickly turned out that it was a very partial mobilization of Ukrainian society [and] that very limited parts of the population, largely volunteers with a regular element, managed to stop and resist and turn back some of the invasion. And that was something that seemed to be very important because not only was it the case that Ukraine struggled to mobilize all of society in a case of a war that should be the most clear-cut that you could imagine [as] it is a war of aggression. You would expect the population to rise up against this invading force. [It] didn’t quite happen, but it provides us with warnings and potentially lessons [about] whether we can mobilize as a population when we need to. But also, it reflects on Russia, where people don’t tend to realize maybe [the] extent to which the Russians also struggle to mobilize their population [and] that the numbers of forces on the Russian side that fight on the frontline is also very limited. And the result of that is a very particular type of war, not the high-technology professional type of war that we tended to project on what the Russians would do but also how we have prepared—and are still preparing—to fight warfare. It turned out that in the case of Ukraine, neither side could fight this high-intensity, militarily decisive, high-technology, professional type of war. That holds a second major sort of warning lesson for the West, in our view, that not only can’t we rely, in all likelihood, on all of society to mobilize and fight, but we probably can’t also rely on our professional high-technology forces to successfully fight war. Echevarria Ilmari, did you want to add to that? Ilmari Käihkö Yeah, I think this was a very good summary of the article. And also, theoretically, what we did was go back to a column on Clausewitz and one of his trinities of the army, the government, and the people and to look at the relationships between these three. And more generally, one can, of course, say that there are always tensions and suspicion between these three elements. They are more general than only [the] Ukrainian phenomenon, and this is one reason why we should be mindful about Ukrainian examples and lessons from this war. I don’t think we have looked at the sociological aspects of this war closely enough. There are many things that we don’t yet understand. And when it comes to the Ukrainian society’s role in the war, in 2014, when the war in Donbas started, when Russia invaded Crimea and then got involved in Eastern Ukraine, there was this limited societal participation in the war in the form of so-called volunteer battalions. The assumption of even the volunteers, who re-mobilized in 2022, was that now, when this war is existential, then surely everyone will get involved in it, all the Ukrainian people. But nevertheless, it has been a limited war in this sense. And, there is something here that I think we should pay more attention to. Echevarria I wonder if I could draw either or both of you out a little bit more and talk about some of the factors that caused the whole-of-society concept to fail or to be only partially implemented. Some factors, like [the] political implementation of it, came very late in the game, according to some of the interviews that we were able to do earlier. Zelensky did not want to put that policy completely into effect because he was afraid it might antagonize the Russians and maybe provoke an attack. So, that was one thing. And the other thing might be the fact that Russian and Ukrainian populations along the border, leaving aside the Donbas, for instance, have shared commerce, shared interactions, and shared relationships [and have] relatives on either side of the border. The line between the two states might be clear on a map, but socially and culturally, [things are] much more intermixed. And so, it is difficult sometimes, perhaps, to get the whole society involved when you’re living next door to someone and [they don’t] really appear to be a threat to you. The third thing I was going to ask about [is] the issues of corruption throughout Ukrainian government, all the way down and in the military and so on. [I am] not saying Russia, has not also had that problem. It certainly does. But getting any kind of policy implemented when you face a bureaucracy, leaders, and so on who are supposed to implement these policies but are taking money from the other side or somewhere else other than from their own government and so forth [is difficult]. Honig I would say three things. [The] first one is something optimistic about this conflict that you can conclude, I think. We’ve always wondered how big the proclivity for war of populations of people was. What I think the war in Ukraine illustrates is that certainly, in developed societies, the populations on the whole—and massively, more massively than ever before, it seems—don’t like war [and] don’t want to get involved. That is true for Ukraine, even in an existential conflict. It’s true in Russia as well, despite the fact that it isn’t a democracy but an autocratic regime. And it’s also likely to be true, or it is true, because Western armed forces can’t really recruit very well. It’s also true in the rest of Europe. So, in a way, this is a very positive thing that people don’t like war [and] don’t want to get involved. Now, [the] problem with that is that it opens the door to people who do manage to mobilize significant forces and do dastardly things, but still, it’s a positive thing. I would want to emphasize that. And the other two points are that what you, Tony, bring out is the gulf between government and population, where on the one hand, it ties into Ilmari’s earlier point about the trinity of Clausewitz with government, people, [and] armed forces, is that government—or the government in Ukraine—did not really trust its population to be loyal and to get mobilized. And, that is a fairly, as we tried to explain very briefly in the article, a historically common phenomenon. Regimes tend to be, on the whole, always unsure. Look, before the First World War. Regimes, whether they’re democratic, totalitarian, [or] autocratic, don’t know to what extent they can trust their peoples to come to their aid in a war. But on the other hand, what you also see in Ukraine is that the population as a whole not only didn’t like to go to war, didn’t want to really to fight, it also very much distrusted the regime. It distrusted the state. And that reinforced [the low] degree of mobilization and made it very difficult for the state to create massive armed forces. If you then look at Western Europe, the regimes, their trust of populations, it’s a bit of an open question. Do people overwhelmingly trust their states? I hope it is higher than Ukraine. We’ve got less corruption. But again, I think that certainly the absurdly incertitude of the governments as to their reliability to the population is just as strong in the West as it is in Ukraine. Echevarria Ilmari, anything to add? Käihkö Yeah, there’s an interesting puzzle here because the 2014, the Donbas war, we got this notion that it was the society that saved Ukraine through these volunteer battalions. But we don’t see the society being harnessed militarily before 2022. If now the society was so successful in 2014, why wasn’t this done during the eight years after, before the large-scale invasion? And there are, of course, several reaso...

    29 min
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Decisive Point, the Parameters podcast companion series, furthers the education and professional development of senior military officers and members of the government and academia who are concerned with national security affairs. Questions or feedback? E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil

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