Talking Strategy

Professor Steve Tsang joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss the founding father of the Chinese People’s Republic, Mao Zedong. Mao was both a Leninist strategic theorist and the leader of the Chinese Communists in their fight to overthrow the Chinese nationalists – while not exerting themselves too much in the battle against Japanese occupation. There is a considerable gulf between Mao’s theoretical writings on strategies for insurgency and civil war, and the practices he followed, Professor Tsang explains. Nevertheless, his three-stage concept for a successful guerrilla movement has inspired other Communist revolutionary movements the world over. Another disciple of Clausewitz, Mao used the tenet that war is a continuation of politics by other means to argue, famously, that peace is also a time of fighting – even if the tools are not those of war. He made this his main argument for breaking with the Stalinist tradition that sought to rely only on Communist strategic thinkers, and with Soviet tutelage. For Mao, ‘Fighting in times of peace is politics, war is also politics, even if it uses special means’. This doctrine perfectly captured the spirit of the Cold War. Professor Steve Tsang is the Director of the SOAS China Institute. Previously, he was the Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, and before that a Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He is also an Associate Fellow of Chatham House and an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College.

With a serious commitment to the ‘Just War’ tradition, Sir Michael Quinlan (1930–2009), chief British nuclear strategist of the late 1970s and 1980s, helped to construct the complex edifice of the British and NATO nuclear deterrence posture. Sir Michael was both a strategic analyst and, as a key British civil servant, a practitioner in so far as his analysis formed the British nuclear strategy. That he was a Jesuit-educated Catholic and an Oxford-educated Classicist explains much about his approach to nuclear strategy: throughout his adult life, he grappled with the nuclear paradox that peace could be the result of the mutual threat of unbearable nuclear conflagration. He sought serious debate with all and sundry, replacing secrecy with transparency and persuasion where at all possible. Dr Tanya Ogilvie-White and Dr Kristan Stoddart join Beatrice and Paul for this week’s episode. Both Tanya and Kristan knew Sir Michael and his writings at first hand: Tanya posthumously published his correspondence under the title On Nuclear Deterrence. She is Senior Research Adviser at the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network and a member of the International Group of Eminent Persons – an initiative working to achieve a world without nuclear weapons. Previously, she was research director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament at the Crawford School of Public Policy (Australian National University) and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and she has held positions at several think tanks. Dr Kristan Stoddart is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at Swansea University. He was previously a Reader in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth, and he is the author of Losing an Empire and Finding a Role: Britain, the USA, NATO and Nuclear Weapons, 1964-70 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Dietrich Heinrich von Bülow (1757–1807) was called ‘everything from a conceited crank to the founder of modern military science’ (R R Palmer). Probably the last Prussian strategist to sympathise with the French Revolution, he had a keen interest in the relationship between political aims and war as their instrument, and in geopolitics: he correctly prophesied that the 19th century would produce in Europe the smallest number of states since states came into being, after the territorial expansion of the strong by conquering or annexing smaller powers. Von Bülow’s Spirit of the Modern System of War combined geopolitics with geographic considerations, ideas about the balance of power in Europe and geometric treatises on how to calculate and establish the best chances of success in battle by focusing on magazines and lines of supply and movement. He was unfairly ridiculed for his geometric approach by Clausewitz, who, at the same time, borrowed Bülow’s main tenet: ‘If something can be effected by force and cannot be achieved by negotiations, diplomacy turns into war, or conflict with reasons becomes conflict with physical forces’. And he concluded: ‘war is a means for the achievement of diplomatic aims’. Sound familiar? This week’s guest on Talking Strategy, Dr Arthur Kuhle, studied History and Arts History at the Universities of Berlin and Belfast from 2006 to 2012. He completed his PhD at the Humboldt University Berlin on the intellectual predecessors of Carl von Clausewitz, a work subsequently published in German. After working at the University of Göttingen for some time, he is now engaged in research on the history of the climate of the Himalayas and its relevance for the emergence of early civilisations there.

Dr. Robert Johnson, author of T.E. Lawrence's recent biography, discusses Lawrence's unconventional guerrilla warfare tactics and the importance of owning flawed strategy. He explores Lawrence's perspective as an insurgent and his impact on irregular warfare strategy during World War I, emphasizing the need to understand local cultures. Johnson highlights Lawrence's role in the Arab Revolt and the challenges of integrating irregular forces with regular forces. The episode ends with insights on fighting well and a preview of the next discussion on von Büller.

Andrew Marshall, a legendary foreign policy strategist known as the 'grey cardinal' of US military affairs, is the focus of discussion with Dr. Thomas G Mahnken, an expert in strategic studies. They delve into Marshall's innovative methods of net assessment that revolutionized military thinking. The conversation covers how organization design shapes military strategy, the importance of diverse perspectives in assessment, and the Office of Net Assessment's influential role in military innovation. Their insights challenge conventional wisdom and underscore the complexities of modern strategic landscapes.

Kautilya lived in India from 375 to 283 BC. He ranks alongside Sun Tzu as one of the great early sages who wrote about the relations between polities, and thus also about wars between them. Kaushik Roy, Guru Nanak Chair Professor at Jadavpur University, India, joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss his work. Kautilya’s approach to strategy included an understanding of inter-polity relations that assumed that one’s ‘enemy’s rear-enemy’ would be a good ally against the shared enemy: in other words, ‘make friends with your enemy’s enemy’. Meanwhile, insurgents would get support from other polities, and aggressors could be just, or just greedy. He thus paired ‘realist’ views with moral elements. Also referred to as Chanakya or Vishnugupta, Kautilya was adviser to two successive emperors of the Mauryan Empire in India. He was thus not only a theoretician but also had considerable political influence. His main body of work is the Arthashastra, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, political science, economic policy and military strategy. While one is hard-pushed to argue that he had a lasting influence on the following millennia of political or strategic thinking in India, his views are worth pondering, as they cast fresh light on strategy and on relations between states. Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor in the Department of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Admiral Arne Røksund joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss a set of French strategists collectively referred to as the Jeune Ecole, ‘the young school’. The Jeune Ecole is considered the counterpoint to many battle-obsessed land strategists and followers of 19th century US naval officer Alfred Thayer Mahan. Leading among the strategists of the Jeune Ecole were Admiral Théophile Aube (1826–1890), who held the posts of governor of Martinique and navy minister, and Gabriel Charmes, an influential journalist whom he had met in the French colonies. For them, as for many other strategists of the decades before and after the First World War, treaties were scraps of paper to be torn up upon the outbreak of war; all was fair, they argued, for a weaker power in defence of its interests. Our guest, Admiral Arne Røksund, has had a distinguished career, holding posts including the Commandant and Commander in charge of all Norwegian military education, and Secretary General of the Norwegian Ministry of Defence. Currently the Secretary General of the Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Area, he holds a PhD in History from the University of Oslo.

John Warden III was an exceptionally influential air power strategist whose name is inextricably connected with Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 coalition campaign to free Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion. We discuss his influence with Colonel Dr John Andreas Olsen of the Royal Norwegian Air Force. Warden was a pupil of theorist Carl von Clausewitz, taking from him his concept of the ‘centre of gravity’, which Warden multiplied concentrically to identify five targets for air bombardment that would bring an enemy power to its knees – his ‘five rings’. But he also rejected Clausewitz’s emphasis on a decisive battle between land forces to achieve the same outcome. In an almost ‘Douhetian’ fashion, Warden made the case that air power on its own could bring about a decision in war – but very much unlike the Italian general, Warden wanted to spare the enemy civilian population, targeting above all the enemy’s centre of power. Our guest, Col Dr John Andreas Olsen, is currently assigned to NATO Headquarters in Brussels. He is a professor at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and a fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of War Sciences. He completed a doctorate in history and international relations at De Montfort University, and he holds further degrees from the Universities of Warwick and Trondheim.

Historian Dr Daniel Whittingham joins Beatrice and Paul for a conversation about Major-General Sir Charles Edward Callwell (1859–1928). An unabashed British imperialist, Callwell’s views are strongly reflected in his writings on Small Wars, by which he meant counterinsurgency operations. Callwell started his career as an artillery officer, and then went on to serve as a staff officer and commander during the Boer War. He also served in one of the Anglo-Afghan Wars, and later, in the First World War. But it was RUSI that launched him on his literary career: he won the Trench Gascoigne Prize Essay Competition in 1886 for his essay ‘Lessons to be learned from the campaigns in which British Forces have been employed since the year 1865’, published in the RUSI Journal Vol. 139. This success gave him the confidence that he could write and be read, and he later expanded his prize-winning essay into the famous book Small Wars: Their Principles and Practices, published in 1896. The work went through several re-editions and was adopted by the British Army as a textbook on how to conduct counterinsurgency operations. While his prescriptions in this domain were brutal, his equally important writings on naval strategy are sensible and restrained, foreshadowing Sir Julian Corbett’s views on the need for jointness and the pointlessness of naval operations that did not have the land dimension as their focus. Dr Daniel Whittingham is an Oxford-trained historian by background, who completed his PhD at King’s College London before joining the University of Birmingham in September 2013.

Join Professor Antulio Echevarria, a military strategist and educator, as he delves into the enduring legacy of Antoine-Henri Jomini. They unpack Jomini's ability to simplify the complexities of Napoleonic warfare, making his principles foundational in military training worldwide. The discussion contrasts Jomini's formulaic tactics against Clausewitz's nuanced views and explores the political implications of warfare. Echevarria also examines how Jomini’s ideas still inform modern military strategy and governance in conflict zones.