The #BruteCast

Continuing our focus on #Russia and #Ukraine, #TeamKrulak Distinguished Fellow Dr. Yuval Weber reviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions and statements up to today (Feb. 21), and what path Putin may follow against Ukraine in the coming days and weeks.   Dr. Yuval Weber is one of our Distinguished Fellows at the Krulak Center. He is a Research Assistant Professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC. Prior to Texas A&M, Dr. Weber served as the Kennan Institute Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Daniel Morgan Graduate School, as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University, and as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Dr. Weber has held research positions at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and the Carnegie Moscow Center. He has published on a range of Russian and Eurasian security, political, and economic topics in academic journals and for the popular press in the United States and Russia. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

As part of our special focus on #Russia and #Ukraine, #TeamKrulak brought you our first panel event of 2022 with a unique group of individuals focusing on a unique topic. How does wargaming help when the problem is a rapidly unfolding crisis in a fluid environment, such as the Russian build-up near Ukraine, when an off-the-shelf option, or deliberately designed wargame, isn’t readily available? This is what our panel discussed, examining the challenges of rapidly developing a wargame framework for a dynamic crisis, the specific aspects of the crisis near Ukraine that decision-makers and policy framers would want to simulate, and different approaches for developing useful wargame options in such a scenario. Our panelists were: Dr. Emma Ashford, Dr. James "Pigeon" Fielder, Dr. Andrew Reddie, Damien O’Connell, and Sebastian J. Bae. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

Continuing our focus on #Russia and #Ukraine, we were pleased to welcome back on short notice #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellow Col Sönke Marahrens. In this episode, Col Marahrens discussed how the Western approach to “shaping the battlefield” fails to keep pace with the authoritarian regime's approach to hybrid war, and offers some expanded models for grappling with this problem.  Colonel Marahrens is the Director Community of Interest - Strategy and Defense Hybrid Center of Excellence - The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. He is a trained Air Defense Officer and held various positions including Battalion Command, Defense Planning Office and Ministry of Defence. His past writing has focused on innovation, concept development & experimentation of applied (military) scientific issues in the field of cyber and digitization. In 2018 he graduated from the Canadian National Security Program with a Master in Public Administration. His current work focuses on aspects of leadership, leadership processes and leadership in the 21st century, modern forms of conflict, cyber, artificial intelligence and the military as well as the Prussian war game. Follow the work of the Hybrid Centre of Excellence here: https://www.hybridcoe.fi/ Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode continues our special focus on #Russia and #Ukraine, and we were very happy to welcome back for his third appearance on the BruteCast the very first guest we had on the series: Dr. Christopher C. Harmon. In this discussion, Dr. Harmon looks at the similarities - and differences - between the activities and intentions of Adolf Hitler's Germany in the late 1930s, and Vladimir Putin's Russia today. Dr. Christopher Harmon is lead author or editor of seven books, and has done extensive research into several British archives with a special focus on allied coalition warfare and Winston Churchill. He has long been a part of the Marine Corps University community, having taught at Expeditionary Warfare School, Command and Staff College, and the Marine Corps War College. Dr. Harmon previously held the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at the Krulak Center, and is currently one of #TeamKrulak's esteemed Distinguished Fellows. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

In this special #BruteCast episode, we were joined #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellow Dr. James Holmes as part of our focus on #Russia and #Ukraine. He is a professor of strategy, the inaugural holder of the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy, and a two-time visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. Dr. Holmes is also a prolific author, with hundreds of book chapters and essays under his belt, and his book Red Star Over the Pacific: China's Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy is on the Navy Professional Reading List, and U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Professional Reading Lists. Finally, he’s the first #BruteCast guest to have a three-peat on the show, so we’re very grateful for his generous donation of time to our series. Dr. Holmes recently published a companion piece to this episode at The National Interest: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/will-russian-aggression-revive-monroe-doctrine-199882 Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

In this episode, we welcome back for an encore #TeamKrulak Non-Resident Fellow Col Sönke Marahrens. Colonel Marahrens is the Director Community of Interest - Strategy and Defense Hybrid Center of Excellence - The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. He is a trained Air Defense Officer and held various positions including Battalion Command, Defense Planning Office and Ministry of Defence. His past writing has focused on innovation, concept development & experimentation of applied (military) scientific issues in the field of cyber and digitization. In 2018 he graduated from the Canadian National Security Program with a Master in Public Administration. His current work focuses on aspects of leadership, leadership processes and leadership in the 21st century, modern forms of conflict, cyber, artificial intelligence and the military as well as the Prussian war game. This episode focuses on that last topic, looking at the origins of Prussian kriegsspiel in “To Dice or Not To Dice.” Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

We’re in to a new year, and #TeamKrulak is very excited to kick off the 2022 #BruteCast season with this special episode. It features Col Andy Milburn, USMC (Ret.), who spent a couple of days here at Marine Corps University in support of several academic programs, and was gracious enough to carve some time out of his schedule to visit us at the Center. Col Milburn retired from the Marine Corps in 2019 as the Deputy Commander of Special Operations Command Central, the headquarters responsible for all US special operations in the Middle East. As an infantry and special operations officer, he has had operational command at every rank, to include leading the Marine Raider Regiment and a multinational special operations task force given the mission of defeating the ISIS in Iraq. He’s a prolific author on military affairs, with publications that include his critically acclaimed memoir, When the Tempest Gathers, and articles for a number of publications to include the Atlantic, USA Today, the Hill, War on the Rocks, the Modern War Institute, and Task and Purpose. He is on the Adjunct Faculty of the Joint Special Operations University and teaches classes on leadership, planning, ethics, command and control, mission command, risk, special operations, and irregular warfare at U.S. and British military schools. He is a co-host of the Modern War Institute’s Irregular War Podcast and Irregular War Initiative, and also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute. We discussed several articles written by Col Milburn, which can be found below: "Losing Small Wars: Why U.S. Military Culture Leads to Defeat" "Taking Down the Caliphate: The Story of The Ad Hoc SOF Task Force That Helped Turn the Tide Against the Islamic State" "No ‘surrender’ — What really happened between US and British Marines at a training exercise" Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kc

(NOTE: there were microphone feedback issues on our side that we were not able to completely eliminate in post-production, but Col Wood's audio is loud and clear throughout.) The end of 2021 is almost here, and #TeamKrulak was grateful and excited to have a fantastic guest on its final #BruteCast of the year. We were joined by Col Anthony A. Wood, United States Marine Corps (retired), whose service in uniform extended over three decades. In addition to commanding infantry and reconnaissance units at many levels, his wide-ranging career impacted a number of forward-thinking Marine Corps efforts. On assignment to Marine Corps Headquarters he served as the principal author in developing the US Navy and Marine Corps “Maritime Prepositioning Concept”, and then supervised the implementation of a national strategic response capability based on forward positioning three squadrons of specially configured ships filled with the supplies and equipment to support Marine Brigades. While serving as Chief of Staff for Marine Forces in the Pacific, Col Wood was dispatched to Russia in 1993 where, over a three-week period of negotiations, he successfully concluded a major tension reduction agreement and multi-year exercise program with senior Russian military leaders in the Pacific theater. His last Marine Corps billet was as founder and first Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory from 1995-1998, where under his leadership the laboratory spearheaded the four-year series of Marine Corps Sea Dragon experiments designed to recast military capabilities in a mold appropriate to emerging counter terrorist requirements. But in this episode, he focused on a story from the earlier part of his career. In January 1975, as North Vietnamese forces closed on Saigon, Major General Homer Smith, United States Army, the Defense Attache in Saigon, transferred then-Captain Wood to the Defense Attache Office where has was directed to join the newly formed Special Planning Group with the mission of secretly developing a plan for the evacuation of Saigon. In the course of that operation he worked with a group of over 100 American civilian volunteers who assumed great risk to remain without protection and evacuate over 5000 persons from the collapsing capital to the safety of waiting Marine helicopters. A fascinating story in its own right, the evacuation also holds a number of lessons for contingency planning that remain highly relevant in the present day. Col Wood referenced the Marine Corps History Division publication U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Bitter End, 1973-1975 several times in his presentation; you can find a digital copy of the book here: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/1/Publications/U.S.%20Marines%20in%20Vietnam_The%20Bitter%20End%201973-1975%20%20PCN%201900310900_1.pdf Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode is adapted from a lecture recently given to our Women, Peace, and Security Scholars program, and the feedback from that lecture was so strong that we knew we had to get it into the #BruteCast line-up.   Presenting on today’s topic – “Gender Integration and Citizenship: A Civil-Military Perspective" we pleased to welcome Dr. Bradford Wineman. Dr. Wineman is a professor military history at Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University. He was appointed to the Command and Staff College teaching faculty in July 2008, serving as War Studies Department head from 2012-15. Prior to this position, he has served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Military History, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College since 2006. He received his B.A. in History from the Virginia Military Institute in 1999. He earned his M.A. (2001) and PhD (2006) in History from Texas A&M University, where he research focused on antebellum Southern military education. Dr. Wineman is a member of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. His research specialties include American military education and civil-military relations.   Joining Dr. Wineman to moderate today’s discussion and give an overview of the WPS Scholars, we welcome Dr. Lauren Mackenzie. Dr. Mackenzie is Chair of Military Cross-Cultural Competence at Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University. She also currently serves as the Marine Corps University faculty council president as well as an adjunct Professor of Military/Emergency Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. From 2009-2014, Dr. Mackenzie served as Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Communication at the U. S. Air Force Culture and Language Center where she taught resident electives at the Air Command and Staff College and designed and delivered the "Introduction to Cross-Cultural Communication" on-line course, completed by over 1,000 Airmen annually. Dr. Mackenzie earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Massachusetts and has taught intercultural competence courses throughout the Department of Defense for more than a decade. She conducts research relating to cross-cultural competence, oversees culture-related curriculum development and outcomes assessment, and delivers communication and culture lectures across the Professional Military Education spectrum. Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic

This episode is exciting for a couple of reasons. First, we got a chance to talk to one of the authors whose books was selected for the most recent iteration of the Commandant’s Professional Reading Program. And second, we were joined by a ‘guest host’ from one of the entities inside EDCOM that helps develop that Reading Program. Starting with the author: a third generation naval aviator, Dan Sheehan was a designated AH-1W Cobra gunship pilot, and did two tours in Iraq – first as a pilot, and then from the ground side as a forward air controller attached to Marine Corps SOCOM Det One. Dan’s book "After Action" talks about those experiences, but it also talks about the many burdens brought home by those who see combat, especially those burdens that are not manifested physically. There are mental, moral, and emotional burdens - "After Action" discusses those, what the warfighting can do to seek help in shouldering, and perhaps more importantly, what military institutions need to do to be more active in helping their warfighters deal with that load. Our second guest, and the 'guest host' for this interview, was Ms. Monika Maslowski. She is Head of the Virtual Branch at the Library of the Marine Corps, is a committee member for the Commandant’s Professional Reading Program selection board and manages the Reading Program’s website and social media outreach; and she also served in the Marine Corps Reserves as an 0621 Field Radio Operator. "After Action" is in the "Profession of Arms" category of the Commandant's Professional Reading Program, available here: https://grc-usmcu.libguides.com/usmc-reading-list-2020/profession Learn more about the author here: https://www.dansheehanauthor.com/ Intro/outro music is "Evolution" from BenSound.com (https://www.bensound.com) Follow the Krulak Center: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekrulakcenter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thekrulakcenter/ Twitter: @TheKrulakCenter YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcIYZ84VMuP8bDw0T9K8S3g LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brute-krulak-center-for-innovation-and-future-warfare Krulak Center homepage on The Landing: https://unum.nsin.us/kcic