Midrats

As described on Amazon, "Eight CIA officers are dropped into the mountains of northern Afghanistan on October 17, 2001. They are Team Alpha, an eclectic band of linguists, tribal experts, and elite warriors: the first Americans to operate inside Taliban territory. Their covert mission is to track down Al- Qaeda and stop the terrorists from infiltrating the United States again."Most may be familiar with one member of that team, Mike Spann. This Sunday we will spend the hour talking about that Team, the first few months of the Afghanistan conflict, and what the war and its future looked like early on as described in the recent book, First Casualty: The Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 9/11.The author Toby Harnden will be with us for the full hour to discuss the book and the story it tells.Toby is an author, journalist, and a winner of the Orwell Prize for Books. A former foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times of London and the Daily Telegraph who reported from thirty-three countries, he specializes in terrorism and war. Born in Portsmouth, England, Harnden was imprisoned in Zimbabwe, prosecuted in Britain for protecting confidential sources, and vindicated by a $23 million public inquiry in Ireland. A dual British and US citizen, he spent a decade as a Royal Navy officer before becoming a journalist. He holds a First Class degree in modern history from Oxford and is the author of Bandit Country: The IRA & South Armagh and Dead Men Risen: An Epic Story of War and Heroism in Afghanistan. Previously based in London, Belfast, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Washington, DC, he lives in Virginia.

Decades of peace and relative stability in Europe is suddenly shattered as armies start to mobilize on a scale not seen since WWII.No, not 2022...but 1987. What is there to learn for today from what could have happened at the end of the Cold War?In addition to the above teaser questions, this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern with our guest Michael Cee we will dive in to the research, tools, wargaming, and art of creating alternative historical fiction about what may have happened with the wrong people in the wrong positions of power at the wrong time in the late 1980s.Michael is the creator and author of World War III 1987, a blog that takes a detailed look at a hypothetical Third World War set in 1987, as well as several topics related to the NATO-Warsaw Pact military balance in the later years of the Cold War. He is also the author of a second blog, Today’s Defense and International Relations Topics that’s centered on contemporary geopolitical and defense issues and news. He is a 44-year-old former Air Force officer who has also spent time in government service and as a senior member of a research institute. He has earned an MSFS from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, as well as an MPA and PhD in Politics from Princeton University. Over the summer of 2019, Michael signed a two-book deal with a New York City publishing house. At present he is making final edits on his first novel, which is also based on a hypothetical global conflict set in 1987.

We live in an era where in the blink of an eye we've gone from flip-phones to smart phones with the capabilities of both supercomputers a generation ago and entire movie studios in your back pocket. In that same time frame, what happened to the promised integration and operational utilization of aircraft carrier based drones - or Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or whatever we are calling them this week?This Sunday we are going to dive deep in to the topic and problem with our guests Trevor Phillips-Levine, Noah Spataro, and Andrew Tenbusch.We will use as the starting point for our conversation their recent article in War on the Rocks, "Winged Luddites: Aviators are the Biggest Threat to Carrier Aviation."

Five presidents from both political parties oversaw the two decade debacle in Afghanistan that ended in the national humiliation at the end of August 2021 at the airport in Kabul where we retreated under fire following a negotiated surrender - leaving up to a thousand Americans behind and untold thousands of Afghan nationals who fought with us to their fate as the Taliban returned to the power we took from them in 2001.People in the executive branch, Department of Defense, Department of State, Congress, media, and the well credentialed chatterati said they were "shocked," "surprised," and otherwise unprepared for what unfolded. Should they have been, or was this the inevitable outcome warned of in official government lessons learned and historical interviews dating from the beginning of the conflict?Our guest for the full hour this Sunday will be Craig Whitlock, and we will be using his book “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War” (Simon & Schuster, 2021) as a starting point for our conversation.Craig has been a staff writer for The Washington Post since 1998. He is assigned to the Investigative Desk, where he specializes in national security.At The Post, he's covered the Pentagon beat for the National Desk from 2010 until 2016. Before that, he was a foreign correspondent and served as the Berlin bureau chief for six years. While overseas, his primary assignment was investigative reporting into terrorism networks and counterterrorism policy in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. He has reported from more than 60 countries.

We're going to kick off our Midrats' 13th year with someone who has been with us from the start, best friend to the show Dr. Claude Berube!If you care about American history in general, and US Navy history in particular, you won't want to miss a minute of this Sunday's show.Claude will be with us for the full hour to discuss his latest and 4th non-fiction book, On Wide Seas: The US Navy in the Jacksonian Era, just released by University of Alabama Press.Claude earned his PhD in Military History from the University of Leeds and holds two master's from Northeastern and the Naval War College. In his 30-year career, he has worked as a defense contractor for Naval Sea Systems Command and the Office of Naval Research, as a staffer on Capitol Hill for two U.S. Senators and a member of Congress, and teaching at the U.S. Naval Academy in the Political Science and History Departments. A Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve, he has served at the Office of Naval Intelligence, CNO's Deep Red, at Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay, Joint Analysis Center Molesworth England, and deployed on USS Bunker Hill to the Middle East.In addition to his four non-fiction books, he is the author of more than 60 articles, and this third novel in the Connor Stark series will be published this fall.

Just a cursory glance at any map will tell you the United States of America is a maritime nation whose economic power and national security is intimately linked to the sea.This simple reality is not as well understood as one would expect. Command of the sea and access to the world’s oceans has never been easy or an entitlement for any nation. It is something that each generation must understand, resource, and be a steward of for the next.With domestic distractions and competing priorities combined with the accelerating challenge by the People’s Republic of China, bringing the topic of maritime power above the natsec ambient noise has never been more important.This fall a new voice joined the conversation, the Navy League of the United States’ Center for Maritime Strategy.Our guest for the full hour to discuss the message it will bring to the conversation will be its inaugural Dean, Admiral Jamie Foggo, USN (Ret.).Admiral Foggo is a 1981 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. He is also an Olmsted Scholar and Moreau Scholar, earning a Master of Public Administration at Harvard University and a Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies in defense and strategic studies from the University of Strasbourg, France.

Both history and common practice show that the most fundamental role of a major power’s naval forces is to “show the flag.” The world’s premier naval power has additional responsibilities if it wishes to remain the premier power; command of the seas.From material condition of our ships to failures of basic seamanship, the last few years have signaled that whatever we are doing, it isn’t being done in the best service of the nation or its Navy.As we face an accelerating challenge from the People’s Republic of China at sea, do we need a fundamental re-look at how we run our Navy?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and related topics he raises in the article, “Think Differently about Naval Presence” in the December 2021 Naval Institute Proceedings, will be Robert C. “Barney” Rubel, CAPT, USN, Ret.). Captain Rubel served 30 years on active duty from 1971-1991 as light attack/strike fighter aviator. He commanded VFA-131 1990-91 and ashore served three tours at Naval War College teaching planning and decision making. After retirements, he was brought on as a civilian analyst in wargaming 2001 and was Director of Wargaming 2003-2006, Dean of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies 2006-2014, and Advisor to CNO 2015-2021.He directed the 2006/7 NWC research effort that supported development of CS21 and is the author of over 30 journal articles, book chapters, and more.

If you are even remotely connected to the US Navy you have directly or indirectly been impacted by the "Fat Leonard" scandal. A husbanding agent who used every tool in a very old book - greed, sex, power, influence, and envy - managed to have have naval officers and high ranking law enforcement officers become party to his drive for wealth and influence.One of the best places to find the details of the scandal and to hear from Leonard Glenn Frances himself, is in "The Fat Leonard Podcast."Our guest today will be the podcast's creator, Tom Wright, the coauthor of Billion Dollar Whale and the cofounder of Project Brazen, a journalism-focused production studio. Tom worked for the Wall Street Journal for over twenty years. He’s a Pulitzer finalist and has won numerous journalism awards, including the Gerald Loeb award for international reporting. In 2020, Stanford University honored Tom with its Shorenstein award in recognition of his services to journalism in Asia.

All you need to do is look at a map to tell that we are a maritime nation. A strong Navy is only part of being a maritime power. As everyone is starting to appreciate as they look at empty shelves, rising prices, and fleets of merchant ships waiting for their turn off overburdened ports - the other side of a maritime power can impact everyone's quality of life overnight.If most Americans knew the relative weakness - and in areas complete absence - of America in the maritime trade that keeps up employed, fed, and secure, they would probably have a mild panic attack.Is part of the problem simply that we lack a national focus? Could a solution be to establish a cabinet-level Maritime Department with a mission of integrating applications of national power to ensure maritime security and prosperity?Making a return to visit, our guest for the full hour will be Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Drennan, U.S. Navy, and we'll use his recent article, "Beyond Defense: America's Past and Future Interests at Sea" as a starting point for a broad ranging discussion.Jimmy is a surface warfare officer and the soon to be outgoing president of the Center for International Maritime Security - a topic we may discuss as well.

In what history will show was a failed effort, for almost two decades, the most advanced military and police forces in the West tried to build a security force for the people of Afghanistan, an effort that took off with great urgency towards the end of the first decade of the conflict. A cornerstone of that effort was NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan (NTM-A). Our guests to discuss this effort and what lessons it holds for the future will be Dr. Martin Loicano and Dr. Craig C. “C. C.” Felker. Using extensive research and two combined years in Afghanistan, they've documented the 2009-2010 effort in their book, No Moment of Victory: the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan from 2009-2011.Dr. Loicano served as chief historian, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE). In that capacity, he advised the SHAPE commander and also was part of the SHAPE Strategic Planning Group. Previously, he was an associate professor in the Department of Strategy at the Air War College (AWC). Prior to joining the AWC faculty, Dr. Loicano served with the NATO Training Mission–Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012. He holds a PhD in history from Cornell University, specializing in Cold War conflicts, Southeast Asia, and China.Dr. Felker is a retired Navy captain and author of Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940. He received his PhD from Duke University in 2004 and afterward served as a permanent military professor in the History Department of the United States Naval Academy, chairing the department from 2014 to 2016. He is currently the executive director of the Society for Military History.