Midrats

In a very rough year, there were sprinkles of renewed optimism about the Middle East as Israel established relations with a few of the Gulf Arab nations, but the Middle East is, and has been, always about more than Arab-Israeli relations.From North Africa across the Mediterranean coast to Syria and across the Arabian Peninsula to Yemen, what is the state of play in the Middle East as a whole, and where are the trends taking the region?Our guest this Sunday, October 18th for the full hour to discuss this and more will be Steven A. Cook.Steven is Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Cook is the author of False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East; The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square, which won the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s gold medal in 2012; and Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.He is a columnist at Foreign Policy magazine. He has also published widely in international affairs journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers, and he is a frequent commentator on radio and television. His work can be found on CFR.org. Prior to joining CFR, Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–2002) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–1996). Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, and both an MA and a PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.

Let's go back to October of 2010 for a great pair of guests. First, since the end of US involvement The Vietnam War almost 40 years ago, there are just a few USN Commanding Officers who know what it is like for a warship under attack; one of the handful will be our first guest, CDR Kirk Lippold, USN (Ret.). He was the Commanding Officer of the USS Cole (DDG-67) when it was attacked while in port Aden, Yemen 12 October 2000 - the 16th anniversary will in a few weeks. We will discuss his experiences then as well as the work he has done since his retirement with senior military fellow with Military Families United, & any other topics that fold their way in to our conversation. (since his first guest on Midrats, he published his book, Front Burner) Our second guest will be from the shadows of the Navy EOD world, Steve Phillips. After graduating from Annapolis in '92, Steve found honest work as a SWO, but then transferred into EOD where he served as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician at EOD Mobile Units 6, 8, and 10. He is the author of Proximity: A Novel of the Navy's Elite Bomb Squad which received a Gold Medal from the Military Writers Society of America in 2008. Some of the proceeds from Proximity support the EOD Memorial Foundation which provides scholarship to the children of EOD Technicians who made the ultimate sacrifice. If you like his work, Steve is currently working on a non-fiction account of EOD Technicians in our current conflict with a working title of Improvised: EOD Techs in the War on Terrorism. The first two of the chapters for the non-fiction work are available at: "The Birth of the Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell" & "A Remembrance of 9/11"

Turning merchant ships in to warships is a story as old as mankind. From war canoe to privateers to auxiliary cruisers fo the modern era - they always fit a certain niche in the drive to control the seas.What of today? What options are there if we need the ability to get as much "national will" downrange and over the horizon as soon as possible? Combine that question with a new one, "Where are all the VLS cells we need?" - and you have a great episode of Midrats.Returning to Midrats to discuss these and related issues will be Chris Rawley.Captain Chris Rawley is Reserve Chief of Staff for Commander, Naval Surface Forces, helping to oversee 3,800 reserve sailors supporting fleet units around the world. During his 28 year military career, Rawley has filled a variety of leadership positions in naval, expeditionary, and joint special operations units afloat and ashore. He has deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa, the Persian Gulf, and Western Pacific. Rawley has a degree from Texas A&M University, earned an MBA at George Washington University, and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College and Joint Forces Staff College. In his civilian role, Chris is the CEO of Harvest Returns, a platform for investing in agriculture.

Some may call it the silly season, some may call it a quickening, some may just get eye cramps from rolling them all the time ... but here we are under 6-weeks from a national election and from swarms of unmanned ideas seeping out of the easy-button to solve all our worries, to doom and gloom from Taiwan to the arctic - all getting in the way of solid navalist conversation.EagleOne and I offer you a tonic for all this gibberish this Sunday as we cover the major issues from Dhahran to Washington, DC ... or at least try to boil them down to basics.It will be an open topic, open phones free for all ... so if you think our topics are bogus, bring your own!

The neglected American merchant fleet and industry is a problem long standing. The realization of the growing challenge on the other side of the Pacific, and the knowledge of what is needed to support it, has brought the problem in sharp relief.Like most long neglected problems, the causes are many and deep. Ships, personnel, legal, regulatory, and the latest punch from COVID-19 have all intensified an already gathering storm.Returning to Midrats this Sunday to discuss this critical foundation of maritime power will be Captain John Konrad. John is the founder and CEO of the maritime news site gCaptain.com and author of the book Fire On The Horizon. He is licensed to captain the world's largest ships and has sailed from ports around the world. John is an adviser at MassChallenge, SeaAhead, and the MIT startup blkSAIL. He is a distinguished alumnus of New York Maritime College.

Concerned with the ability of our maritime industrial base to not just build the navy the nation needs, but to help maintain it?Well, do we have the episode for you! Join us this Sunday at 5pm with out guest for the full hour, Maiya Clark, as we discuss the issues she raises in her recent work, U.S. Navy Shipyards Desperately Need Revitalization and a Rethink.Maiya Clark is a research assistant in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense, focusing on defense industrial base issues. Before joining the Center for National Defense team, she worked at Heritage as assistant to Dr. James Jay Carafano, Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. She originally joined The Heritage Foundation in 2018 as a research and administrative assistant in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Maiya holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations with a minor in economics from the University of Southern California.

This episode first aired in March, 2016.In the mid-1930s, Leni Riefenstahl showed the power of the latest communication technology of her time to move opinion, bring support, and intimidate potential opponents.The last quarter century's work of Moore's Law in the ability to distribute visual data world wide in an instant has completely change the ability of even the smallest groups with the most threadbare budgets to create significant influence effects well inside traditional nation states' OODA loop.How are radical extremists using modern technology, especially in the visual arena, to advance their goals, who are their audiences, and how do you counter it?Using as a starting point the Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press's publication, Visual Propaganda and Extremism in the Online Environment, Jihadology's ISIS and the Hollywood Visual Style, and Small Wars Journal's ISIS and the Family Man; our guests will be Dr. Cori E. Dauber, Professor of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Mark Robinson, the Director of the Multimedia Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Culture is upstream from performance.Behind a sometimes playful, sometimes serious, argument about what rank structure the new Space Force should use is the very serious matter of culture.Culture for any organization is the foundation future success or failure, and is a based on words, and titles. These mean things – especially when they are related to the actual work you do.Using their recent article, Parochialism, not Congress or naval history, will kill the Space Force, returning Midrats alumni Matt Hipple and Jack McCain will be with us for the full hour in a broad ranging discussion on building the right foundation and culture for Space Force … and maybe a few minutes about the upcoming Dune remake too.

First airing a little over three years ago, and still as timely as ever.Whenever there is a global crisis, natural disaster or manmade, civilians or of a security related issue - the world turns their eyes to the United States of America.The indispensable nation. The only global super-power. You all know the drill.Is it an honor, or a burden? Is it a habit we should, or can sustain?Our guest for the full hour to discuss this and related issues will be Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.As a starting point for our discussion, we will use the article he co-authored with William Ruger at War on the Rocks, No More of the Same: the Problem with Primacy.

In our COVID-19 summer doldrums, what could be better than kicking back with a nice cold drink with the kings of natsec social distancing, Sal & EagleOne for a live Midrats free-for-all?Come join us this Sunday from 5-6pm as we cover the waterfront from Sand Diego to DC; the Taiwan Strait to Cypriot gas fields.As always, the chat room will be up and the phone lines will be open.