Western Way of War

WWoW groupie Emilie Cleret from France’s École de Guerre challenges podcast host Peter Roberts over his methodology, principles and the basic idea that a Western Way of War really exists. There is a final (really final – the very last) bonus episode for RUSI members on the RUSI website.

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.

There is a lot going on with nuclear weapons at the moment - from UK and German announcements, changes in the way China is thinking about nuclear doctrine, and US recapitalisation (including some spoilers about what to expect from the US Nuclear Posture review due out in January 2022). Who better to discuss all this with than RUSI's own doyen of WMD, Dr Matthew Harries? He and Peter try to avoid theological questions and stick to the reality. Find out if they succeeded.

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.

Peter talks to the latest RUSI recruit and People’s Liberation Army researcher Sam Cranny Evans about the professionalisation and modernisation of the Chinese ground forces since 1980, their doctrine of strategic attrition and defeat-in-detail, the new Combined Armed Brigade structures, and whether Chinese electronic warfare is as good as that of the Russians.

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.

Peter Roberts talks to Professor Alessio Patalano, doyen of the development of naval warfare and strategy at King’s College London. They discuss combat experience at sea, the value of corporate memory, the formation of alliances, naval diplomacy, economics and the fragility of life at sea.

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.

Veterans, families, casualties, death and the repatriation of casualties’ remains feature as key themes in a discussion between conflict archaeologist Dr Sarah Ashbridge and Peter Roberts. The key question: is the reverse of the current implicit contract between service personnel and the nation – namely society’s obligation to people in uniform, both living and dead – something we should be proud of or slightly ashamed of?

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.

In facing down China, Australia is having to make some audacious decisions. Australian defence expert Malcolm Davis from ASPI talks to Peter Roberts about how Australia has been dealing with economic and political coercion from China’s Communist Party, and what this has meant for military capabilities, alliances and postures as Australia has become a hemispheric actor of significance.

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.

Russian theories of war and warfare have never been one-dimensional. In conversation with Peter Roberts, Norwegian researcher Prof Katarzyna Zysk talks about Russian industrial innovation, military modernisation, power projection and political control. Unscrambling some of the nonsense spouted about Russia, Katarzyna deciphers the subtleties of the Sino-Russian military relationship, tensions in the Arctic and Russian activities abroad.

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.

Peter Roberts talks to the doyen of urban warfare research, Prof John Spencer, about why strategies of 'avoid and bypass' for urban conflicts just don't work, and why fighting in urban areas is so much more than close-quarters battles and house-clearing drills. It seems Western militaries are going to have to break out of their single-minded focus on manoeuvre warfare if they are going to contest vital spaces 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.

More than 110 states have now signed the Safe Schools Declaration about protecting educational establishments, students and teachers in war zones. Orlaith Minogue from Save the Children and Professor Steven Haines from Greenwich University talk to Peter Roberts about what this means for operators, commanders and political leaders.

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 analysing the myths of a Western way of war, historian of colonial warfare and iconoclast Professor Tarak Barkawi from the London School of Economics talks to Peter Roberts about commonalities in the vocation of war between militaries. Using examples as diverse as the battles of Isandlwana and Kunu-ri in Korea, Tarak explains how others might view the Western way of war – specifically, through the prism of defeats rather than victories.

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).