Modern War Institute

Turkey is in the middle of a presidential election, the closest challenge to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his twenty years in power. This offers an opportunity for a broad survey of the evolution of Turkish foreign policy, statecraft, and strategy during those two decades and an exploration of how these might continue to evolve going forward. This episode features a discussion with Dr. Ziya Meral, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and specialist in Turkish foreign policy. From the emergence of Turkey’s strong and growing defense industry to the challenges it must navigate amid tensions between NATO and Russia, this discussion offers a detailed look at Turkey’s position on a shifting regional and global strategic landscape.

How will the rapid pace of advancement in the fields of neuroscience and neurotechnology impact the changing character of warfare? Will they lead to the human brain becoming a battlespace as new scientific breakthroughs and novel technologies are weaponized? This episode features a discussion with a guest who argues that a convergence between neuroscience and the conduct of war is already occurring. Dr. James Giordano is the chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program at Georgetown University and codirector of the O’Neill-Pellegrino Program in Brain Science and Global Health Law and Policy in the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He describes what effects advances in brain science might have on the future of war.

Would Patton be an effective battlefield commander today? Do the characteristics of successful commanders generally remain constant over time? Or do they evolve alongside—and in response to—the changing character of warfare? And if they do change, what traits will commanders need on the battlefields of today and tomorrow? Dr. Anthony King, the author of the book Command: The Twenty-First-Century General, joins this episode to discuss these questions and more.

Arctic geopolitics are characterized by features that set the region apart from others. Eveything from governance structures to the way Arctic states engage with one another to the way they tackle shared challenges and address disputes—these all look different in the Arctic than elsewhere. But Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine led to a disruption in Arctic engagement, with the seven other Arctic states suspending participation in Arctic Council activities for the duration of Russia's chairmanship of the organization. This raises important questions: Is a return to engagement and cooperation even possible in the future? And what are the long-term implications of halting engagement likely to be? To explore these tricky issues and better understand Russian, American, and other stakeholders' strategic interests in the region, John Amble is joined on this episode by Dr. Elizabeth Buchanan, codirector of MWI's Project 6633 and the author of a new book, Red Arctic: Russian Strategy Under Putin.

In this episode, John Amble speaks with Chris Dougherty of the Center for a New American Security. He and his colleagues have conducted a wargame that sought to identify what strategic options the United States and Taiwan have to deter a particular fait accompli move by China against Taiwan. What they concluded was that the best option is something they describe as “the poison frog strategy.” Listen as he describes what that entails, and why it's the most viable means of implementing deterrence against China.

After twenty years of America’s post-9/11 wars and the US military’s struggle to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is an important discussion taking place about what role security force assistance should play for the United States in the very different strategic environment that is taking shape. Will it be a mission that we'll be required to do in order to compete with Russia and China? Or will it become tangential to our preparations for large-scale combat operations? And given the challenges we faced over the past two decades, what needs to happen to achieve better outcomes in the future? Will Reno, a professor at Northwestern University, and Franky Matisek, an Air Force officer and associate professor at the US Air Force Academy, have researched the topic deeply, including conducting hundreds of interviews in the field. They join this episode to discuss their findings.

One year ago this week, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Twelve months on, how should we think about the way the war has taken shape? What lessons about modern war should we be learning? What assumptions about the modern battlefield has the conflict challenged, and what assumptions has it reinforced? And what features will characterize the war in the months ahead? In this episode, John Amble is joined by retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan. With decades of military and leadership experience, he has been one of the sharpest and most insightful observers of the war in Ukraine. Listen as he describes his views of the conflict so far and illuminates what we might expect as the war enters its second year.

This episode features a conversation with MWI's chair of urban warfare studies, John Spencer. A leading expert on urban warfare and the coauthor of the book Understanding Urban Warfare, his deep practical experience and scholarship on both historical and modern cases of urban warfare make him the ideal guest to address a range of important questions. Are cities uniquely challenging for military forces? Why? What steps can be taken to achieve a higher level of preparedness for those challenges? And is it possible to replicate cities’ complexity in a training environment? These are just a few of the topics he offers his keen insights on.

In this episode, John Amble speaks to Sandor Fabian about a very specific approach to national defense: resistance. The war in Ukraine has made clear that comparatively small states can be vulnerable to the threat of aggression from larger neighbors. Resistance, Sandor argues, is the most viable means of defense for these states. But effectively embracing it as a strategic approach would require dramatic changes in force structure, training, equipment, doctrine, and more. And if small US allies choose to do so, it would have important implications for US special operations forces and for NATO.

Ukrainian forces have been praised for their innovation efforts during their ongoing war with Russia, particularly with regard to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. But what has that innovation actually looked like? Is it principally about repurposing equipment, like commercial quadcopters, or is it more a function of implementation, like experimenting with new tactics? And how has Russian forces' own innovation compared? Most importantly, what effect has innovation had on battlefield outcomes? Sam Bendett, an adviser at CNA’s Strategy, Policy, Plans, and Programs Center and a member of CNA’s Russia Studies Program, joins this episode to discuss these questions and more.