A Better Peace: The War Room Podcast

In May 2023, the War College hosted the second annual Strategic Landpower Symposium. Bringing together students, scholars and practitioners, the symposium presented senior leaders with original research and recommendations for the application of landpower to achieve national objectives. Included within the symposium were the findings of the Army War College Strategic Landpower Integrated Research Project, an effort of eleven members of the Class of 2023 in support of Army senior leader priorities. A BETTER PEACE has organized four podcast episodes with those students to discuss their projects, their relationship to the Strategic Landpower Symposium and possible implications for the future of U.S. security policy. In the virtual studio for this first episode are Paul Lashley and Andrew Hercik. They join podcast editor Ron Granieri to discuss the role of long-range fires, the implications of strategic weapons in the theater army, and how they can be better integrated. The third annual Strategic Landpower Symposium is already scheduled for 7-9 May 2024. On-line registration will open 1 August, 2023 on the Army War College website.

Plan, Program, Budget and Execute - repeat. It's the strategic planning process for allocating resources in the Department of Defense that was first initiated in the early 1960s. The brainchild of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, it was originally the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting, or PPBS. Over the years the "System" was dropped and replaced with "Execution" yielding the current iteration, PPBE. A Better Peace is pleased to welcome retired Army Major General John Ferrari, to better understand the workings and inherent tensions of the PPBE process. The former Director of Program Analysis and Evaluation (2014-2019), MG Ferrari shares his extensive insider perspective on the incredibly complex process that was created out of a need to wrangle a growing defense institution and the associated budgets. He joins Bob Bradford and Tom Galvin to present a primer and much more on PPBE. They discuss where it succeeds, where it doesn't and some of the necessary characteristics of relationships and leadership that need to be understood and refined to keep the process moving forward effectively.

Bernard Fall is considered by many to be one of the finest analysts and writers of the Vietnam War. Much of his insight about counterinsurgency warfare in Indochina was informed by the formative experiences earlier in his life. A Better Peace welcomes Nate Moir to discuss his book, "Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare", which analyses Fall's life to understand what drove his thinking and understanding of the situation. He joins host John Nagl to explain how Fall was consistently ahead of the conventional wisdom. Fall's penetrating assessments of the war brought some rebukes and even monitoring by the FBI, but in hindsight were proved to be sadly prescient and are an outstanding example of critical thought.

Sixty-six years ago, the Soviet Union placed Sputnik in orbit around the Earth and it changed everything. Since then, more than 80 nations and 100 commercial entities have also found their way into space. Yet much of the public is not aware of the extent to which hardly any event, transaction, or communication occurs that doesn't rely on some aspect of technology developed for or residing in space. A Better Peace welcomes General James Dickinson, Commander, U.S. Space Command (SPACECOM), to the virtual studio to share his strategic vision for the execution and integration of military spacepower into global joint all-domain operations. General Dickinson joins Ben Ogden to explain how SPACECOM "will ensure there is never a day without space."

It’s time for another episode of On Writing. A Better Peace welcomes William Inboden to the studio to discuss his book, "The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink." Will sits down with host Michael Neiberg for a conversation about capturing the efforts and accomplishments of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and his administration as they confronted the Soviets, reduced the nuclear threat and won the Cold War. The discussion examines how Will moved past his preconceived notions to present an unbiased and accurate account of the actions and interactions of the Reagan national security team in the 1980s.

The final episode of our three-part series on Afghanistan looks at rebuilding trust in the civil-military relationship. Twenty years of warfare presented a number of civil-military interactions, some positive and some detrimental, but the eventual collapse of Kabul after hearing time and again from the military that “this will be the year” we turn the corner, emptied the trust reservoir. Guest host and U.S. Army War College Fellow, LTC Ranjini Danaraj, is joined by LTG (retired) Doug Lute, the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and Deputy National Security Advisor on Iraq, Afghanistan, and South Asia under both Presidents Bush and Obama, and Dr. Carrie Lee, the Co-Director of the Civil-Military Relations Center and Chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. They have a thoughtful discussion on Afghanistan’s impact on civil-military relations. Their conversation reveals the vital aspects of a civil-military relationship, how politics are fundamental to the conversation, how to better integrate other elements of national power and the need to balance expertise with humility.

The first episode of our three-part series on Afghanistan lessons discussed building armies. This episode focuses exclusively on assessing them. In the studio for this second episode are LTG (R) Eric Wesley, who brings experience from both the National Security Council Staff and the International Security Assistance Force, and Dr. Ben Connable, author of a RAND monograph entitled, Embracing the Fog of War: Assessment and Metrics in Counterinsurgency, They join guest host and U.S. Army War College Fellow LTC Ranjini Danaraj for a serious discussion about the assessment of military forces in Afghanistan. The conversation covers assessment shortfalls, optimism in reporting, holding commanders accountable to their assessment, creating competitive perspectives, taking a long view of war, and measuring will to fight. Assessing is no easy task, but this episode provides insights on how to get it right, breaking the military’s assessment failure cycle, and helping military leaders accurately and credibly inform strategy decisions.

Twelve years ago last week, on May 2, 2011, the U.S. military conducted a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that killed Usama bin Laden. Once the mission was accomplished, the SEAL team conducted sensitive site exploitation and gathered up and returned with all of the materials and equipment they discovered in the compound. Nelly Lahoud and her team sorted through some 97,000 files and 6,000 pages of declassified documents, all in Arabic, to discover the truth about bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network. She's in the studio to discuss her book, "The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about Al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family" with host John Nagl. The information gleaned from this incredible undertaking paints a picture of a man and a network that, after the 9/11 attack, were confined, restrained and not very successful.

The United States spent over 20 years in Afghanistan and while a lot has been written about the missteps, there is much to be written about the solutions that would have lent to better outcomes. This is the first of a three-part series on Afghanistan and its lessons. Guest host and U.S. Army War College Fellow LTC Ranjini Danaraj and MG Donn Hill, the Commander of Security Force Assistance Command, have a candid discussion on what the U.S. Army has learned about security force assistance, building balanced and sustainable foreign security forces, and operationalizing the lessons learned from Afghanistan. MG Hill shares insights on how the Army's security force assistance brigades are taking best practices to armies around the world and what is now codified in the forthcoming update to FM 3-22, Army Support to Security Cooperation.

When twins Derek and TJ Baird joined the Army in the '90s, neither of them had any idea what lay ahead. But 26 and 30 years later respectively, one is a colonel and the other a command sergeant major, and it's safe to say the Army has been a great place for them. The Baird brothers join podcast editor Ron Granieri in the virtual studio to tell the story of two very different yet very similar careers serving the nation. Derek and TJ share how they have relied on each other throughout the years for advice and support both as professional soldiers and as brothers. It's a great story of their similar leadership philosophies and styles and decades of service that they plan to continue for decades more.