Western Way of War
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Western Way of War
A collection of discussions with those in the Profession of Arms that tries to understand the issues around how to fight, and succeed, against adversaries in the 2020s. We pose the questions as whether a single Western Way of Warfare (how Western militaries fight) has been successful, whether it re...
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78 episodi
So What Did We Learn, if Anything?
WWoW groupie Emilie Cleret from France’s École de Guerre challenges podcast host Peter Roberts over his methodology, principles and the basic idea tha...
Ben Wallace: Not Tinkering Around the Edges
UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace talks to Peter Roberts about spending trends, allies, terrorism, campaigning, budgets and reforming the...
Dr Matthew Harries: Matters of nuclear weapons
There is a lot going on with nuclear weapons at the moment - from UK and German announcements, changes in the way China is thinking about nuclear doct...
Joann Robertson: Rethinking Logistics
From Sun Tzu to Admiral Hyman Rickover, great military leaders really understood logistics and supply. Yet by outsourcing so much to industrial partne...
Sam Cranny Evans: Chinese Ground Forces
Peter talks to the latest RUSI recruit and People’s Liberation Army researcher Sam Cranny Evans about the professionalisation and modernisation of the...
Natia Seskuria: Russian Borderisation Tactics
When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Moscow annexed 20% of Georgia's sovereign land space using traditional military force. Over the subsequent 13 yea...
Alessio Patalano: The Evolution of Warfare at Sea
Peter Roberts talks to Professor Alessio Patalano, doyen of the development of naval warfare and strategy at King’s College London. They discuss comba...
Kafia Omar: A Deadly Decade for Children
The experience of children in war is getting worse, from mental abuse to physical torture, kidnap, rape and being forcibly inducted into militaries. P...
Sarah Ashbridge: Are We Proud of the Contract Between the Military and Society?
Veterans, families, casualties, death and the repatriation of casualties’ remains feature as key themes in a discussion between conflict archaeologist...
Justin Bronk: An Unhealthy Dependence on Air Power
Peter Roberts talks to RUSI Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology Justin Bronk about the realities of aircraft availability for contemporary ope...
Malcolm Davis: Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey
In facing down China, Australia is having to make some audacious decisions. Australian defence expert Malcolm Davis from ASPI talks to Peter Roberts a...
Prof Jim Holmes: There is a Problem with Western Navies
US Naval War College Professor of Strategy James C Holmes contends that navies are going to have to fight for command of the sea over the coming decad...
Katarzyna Zysk: Russian Creativity and Risk-Taking
Russian theories of war and warfare have never been one-dimensional. In conversation with Peter Roberts, Norwegian researcher Prof Katarzyna Zysk talk...
Anant Mishra: Street Smart Warfare
As Western militaries transition their forces towards a posture of great power contests, there will be a temptation to gloss over the last 20 years of...
John Spencer: Urban Warfare as the Great Leveller
Peter Roberts talks to the doyen of urban warfare research, Prof John Spencer, about why strategies of 'avoid and bypass' for urban conflicts just don...
Heather Venable: Gen Z - The Best Tacticians in History?
Dr Heather Venable, associate professor at the US Air Command and Staff College, offers advice to students in professional military education courses...
Minogue and Haines: Education in Conflict Zones
More than 110 states have now signed the Safe Schools Declaration about protecting educational establishments, students and teachers in war zones. Orl...
Rory Stewart: Failure, and the Villains of the Western Campaign in Afghanistan
Politician, scholar, diplomat and sometime soldier Rory Stewart joins Peter Roberts for a post-mortem of the West's failed campaign in Afghanistan. Ro...
Tarak Barkawi: The Vocation of Arms
In analysing the myths of a Western way of war, historian of colonial warfare and iconoclast Professor Tarak Barkawi from the London School of Economi...
General James McConville: Not Fighting the Last War Better
In co-operation with the Irregular Warfare Initiative of the Modern War Institute, Peter Roberts sat down for a conversation with Chief of Staff of th...
Eliot Cohen: Industrialised Precision Warfare
Professor Eliot Cohen, the doyen of grand strategy, talks to Peter Roberts about how the Western idea of war and warfare has changed to one with a 'pu...
Dr Jennifer Cole: Convergence and Civil Defence
Dr Jenni Cole, biological anthropologist and public health policy guru, talks to Peter Roberts about pandemics, climate change and civil defence. The...
General Jim Mattis: Reality is a Terrible Adversary
Opening Season 3 of the podcast, Peter Roberts talks to General (retd) James Mattis, US Marine Corps, former US Secretary of Defense, about the milita...
Highlights Season 2: More Optimistic Than Expected
WWOW host Peter Roberts covers the five big themes of Season 2: The American Way of War – what went wrong and course corrections; continuity of concep...
Jack Watling: Special Forces in Great Power Competition
RUSI Land Warfare scholar Jack Watling talks to Peter Roberts about the conclusions from his paper on the challenges facing Special Forces over the co...
Elsa B Kania: Catalysts for Change in the Chinese Military
Many governments watched the display of US military power in 1991, and again in 2003, and were awestruck. For some, this was a wake-up call that had f...
Michael Kofman: We Got It (Mostly) Right
The Russian military’s build-up around Ukraine between February and April 2021 was the topic of much media speculation. Russia analyst Michael Kofman...
Emma Sky: Fighting without winning
Emma Sky, Political Advisor to US Generals Odierno and Petraeus between 2007 and 2010, talks to Peter Roberts about what we need to learn from our exp...
Archer Macy: How Do You Know?
As modern military systems increasingly rely on software coding to achieve virtual effects, the question of how one knows whether these weapons work b...
General Martin Dempsey: Failures of imagination
The 18th Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, talks to Peter Roberts about how to deal with tensions and friction in civi...
Michèle Flournoy: The Enemy Went to School
Former US Under Secretary for Defence for Policy Michèle Flournoy talks to Peter Roberts about technology, concepts, young minds and competitive space...
No Neat Battlefields
Peter Maurer, the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, sees no distinction between how the West and other belligerents wage war....
Revolutions Of War
The cycle of "old wars" between nation states, followed by revolutionary wars and culminating during the 20th century into wars between communities wa...
Evolving the Western Way of War into (and out of) COIN
The truth universally acknowledged is that Western militaries seem to deliberately discard useful experience faster than they can accumulate it. Chang...
Using the War Law to Assert Legitimacy
Western military personnel often feel that laws restrict the way they can undertake warfare. Dr Janina Dill, Oxford University's expert in war law and...
Distinctions in war
Since war is a reciprocal relationship with the enemy, the idea of a Western Way of Warfare which is detached or abstract from the human adversary is...
Just War Theory and Not Just War
If the Greeks invented a national style of fighting (according to Herodotus), which the French followed (with élan and martial virtues), and the Briti...
Fighting for the soul of Western militaries
Manoeuvre warfare, the manoeuvrist approach, and manoeuverism as military concepts have been revered by Western militaries for half a century, while t...
Rose Roth, language and youth
Peter Roberts talks to veteran Welsh politician and former President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Madeleine Moon about her reflections on two de...
Hybrid is Everything and Everything is Hybrid
Since the Ukraine war of 2014, most Western governments have classified any hostile challenge as 'hybrid', 'sub-threshold', or as actions belonging to...