SSI Live Podcast

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Jacob Stoil, a research professor of Middle East Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, regarding the ongoing operations against Iran. The conversation explores the historical context of tensions with Iran and examines current and futures challenges that region may face in light of recent events.John DeniHello and welcome to SSI Live. You’ve long known the Strategic Studies Institute, or SSI, at the US Army War College, as the go-to location for issues related to national security and military strategy, with an emphasis on geostrategic analysis. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the US Army War College curricula; assist and inform Army, DoD, and US government leadership; and serve as a bridge to the wider strategic community. Now, we are bringing you access to SSI analyses, scholars, and guests, through this, the SSI Live podcast series. Thanks for joining us.        Brennan DeverauxWelcome back to SSI Live. I’m still your host, Major Brennan Deveraux. Today, we’re talking with Dr. Jacob Stoil, a research professor of Middle East Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute. He’s also the chair of applied history at the Modern War Institute. Dr. Stoil specializes in applying lessons and understanding from military history to the contemporary and future operational and strategic environment, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and practitioner focused solutions.He is a historian who received his doctorate from Oxford. And today we’re going to really push his looking back to looking forward method for this conversation. We’re exploring the ongoing US Israeli military campaign against Iran and its potential strategic implications. But before we jump in, I want to be clear that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Thanks for joining us, Jacob.Jacob StoilThank you so much for having me. This is going to be, I think, a really fascinating talk.DeverauxYeah. And I’ve actually tried to get you on just for a regular SSI Live podcast. But for obvious reasons, as we look to the Middle East, you’ve been quite busy.StoilThe Middle East does tend to be one of the hotter theaters, both in terms of temperature and activity.DeverauxYou’ve done great so far at SSI, tied in with commands. I know you’ve worked with ARCENT (US Army Central), CENTCOM (US Central Command), [the] Joint Staff, and have taken some trips not just to their locations, but out to the Middle East itself.StoilYeah. And I think this is one of the strengths SSI really brings to the force is our ability to link academics who can then tie into academic networks, who have a practitioner focus in their work and bring it at the time and place of need, bring that academic and research background in whenever we can. So it’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this position.And I think really if this podcast can advertise that, not just me, but the entire team at SSI stands pretty ready to do this kind of work.DeverauxAnd we have every region represented. And you bring over a network you had built up, when you were working over at SAMS (School of Advanced Military Studies) out of Fort Leavenworth.StoilYeah, I had the privilege to be a SAMS instructor for nearly eight years. Five years on the AMSP (Advanced Military Studies Program), which dealt with the kind of majors and lieutenant colonels from the operational level planning and then three years with the O6-level program called ASLSP (Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program), working on the strategic level, which has the benefit of getting to visit every combatant command that the US military has and get briefed by them.So it’s a great program for understanding kind of the strategic and integrating the strategic picture.DeverauxAnd I know when you talk to the some of the senior leaders, the uniform wearers, it also provides some instant credibility. Maybe, you know, the secret handshake. We like to joke about, but probably a nice, fun foot in the door. We’ll go ahead and transition. But before we get into what’s ongoing, and everyone, I think, is tracking what’s ongoing, we’ll talk a little bit about it in detail, can you offer up some historical context on the region? Why tensions are what they are and kind of how we got here without going too much into, you know, maybe a graduate seminar on the history of the Middle East.StoilI think the key point to remember here is Iran has really been at war with the US for nearly 40 years. The US has not necessarily reciprocated being at war with Iran, but Iran has seen itself at war with the US since essentially the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini, in his writings, is very explicit about the US as his enemy.As a really fun fact, when he was getting ready to take over in Iran. The US was very much in the Cold War frame. And so we thought of him as a religious leader and therefore an anti-communist, which was true. He didn’t have much love for the communists and was anti-Soviet, but we didn’t hold his rhetoric that he also hated America to be true, because in our mind, if you were a religious leader, you were anti-communist, and if you were anti-communist, you were pro-America.The Soviets also backed him because they looked at all of his “Death to America” rhetoric and his revolutionary rhetoric and said, “well, if you hate America and you want death to America, then you’re obviously a Soviet.” Even if you say communism is evil. So, it’s really inbuilt into the idea of America as an enemy. Is really inbuilt fundamentally into the Iranian revolutionary ideology.And it’s something they’ve been carrying out since the beginning. Obviously, a lot of our listeners might remember or be familiar with the Iran hostage crisis, where one of the first things the regime did when it took over with stormed the US embassy and take our diplomats hostage. Then there were a lot of times where they killed US personnel in Lebanon, both civilians and military, the Marine Corps barracks bombing, the embassy bombing, all our key parts of them.And this didn’t stop. It continued going.DeverauxI think it’s important to note, when we say they’ve been at war with…, that’s tangible. There are tangible actions, not just Iran hates us. But we’ve seen historical events and even fairly recently, if we looked at, say, the global war on terror, I remember, very much finding weapons that were clearly supplied from, Iran. So good points on some of these more actual historical events.StoilYeah. And I think that’s really important, especially for our veterans who are veterans of the, global war on terror. They will know that Iran used that as an ability to, use that as an opportunity to target American service personnel and American civilians throughout the globe, though principally in Iraq. And we can talk about everything from some of the rocket systems that came in to the explosively formed penetrators.Iran has been responsible for the death of potentially thousands of Americans over the years. So they very much took actual practical action on this war. And the US largely did not. And this leads to a historical context where after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran starts to look at more means to secure itself. That it feels that it might be in jeopardy, that there’s some US rhetoric coming after it, and it also is feeling kind of its strength that it’s been able to use its proxies to target America and target Israel for quite some time. And there hasn’t really been blowback against it.And so it begins to invest very heavily towards a nuclear program and the alignment of three key aspects of their strategy. The development of the nuclear weapons program, long range missile and then drone strike and loiter munitions, and also the backing of proxies, really become the cornerstones of their approach to their global power.And through the way they enter deals with Russia, and even now or until very recently on as Russia was fighting in Ukraine, they served as a strategic deep area for Russia, helping Russia with its drone production and some of the Shahab drones that have been raining over Ukraine are directly coming from Iran.DeverauxSimilar to a lot of Western nations. Then, the Ukraine battlefield has been really a battle lab, potentially for Iran.StoilThey have taken lessons from it. It has been something of a battle, but it’s more of an area where they’ve been able to provide critical support to an ally. And in return, that ally was supposed to provide them critical support. It certainly provided them money. It’s provided them resources towards their nuclear program and of course, their air defense system, which as of now is in somewhat of tatters. Not a great advertisement for buying Russian product, I suppose, but, it less about a lab and much more of an opportunity to really integrate with an ally.DeverauxI think you make interesting point about the air defense, and I don’t think Iran had the most exquisite potential Russian systems. I know for a while they were sitting still on S-300. I don’t know their current capabilities and what we’re targeted. It kind of helps build a narrative that I had talked with, Evan Ellis about in here about Venezuela.One of the takeaways was air defense is defeatable, which is something people kind of struggle with because there is a narrative that I have this giant protective bubble. But even the United States, you know, we built these exquisite systems. Something can still get through. There’s only so much air defense can do, when overwhelmed by an attack.StoilAbsolutely. And it’s not just overwhelmed. One of as we’ll get to kind of what we talk about in the more recent history, one of the big features of the last year was the 12-Day War, Operation Rising Lion from the Israeli side and Midnight Hammer from the US side, which really set the conditions for where we are now by degrading a huge amount of Iran’s air defense capability in the early hours and days of that war.And so Iran going into this situation was not Iran, you know, going into the summer. But when we look at the overall history, essentially Iran developed a strategic vision that was about deterrence that it believed and just kept getting reinforced that through its proxy, through its missile system, through offering a very high cost for US activity, certainly higher than the US was willing to pay, it could deter the US long enough that its nuclear program would be able to develop, and that it would develop kind of more security relationships and really become a prominent Middle East power.And until three years ago, that very much looked on course. It was heading [in] that direction. It had signed agreements with Saudi Arabia to start to end some of the local tensions there. Hezbollah was powerful. It looked like it had stabilized the Assad regime, which was one of its weak points. The things were looking like they were going Iran’s direction.DeverauxIt’s not that that’s not a potential viable strategy. The pursuit, I know, at least theoretical. The pursuit of nuclear weapons, very dangerous, often leads to trouble. But the successful production of nuclear weapons makes it very dangerous to engage with a nation. So, I at least understand the premise.StoilEspecially when you combine it with their proxies. The US maintains global strike capabilities. Iran would talk about, essentially, that their proxies were essentially their global strike. They could reach out and hit Europe, and have, they could hit South America, and they have. And between them in their ballistic missile program, they have the ability to have significant reach, which increases the deterrence value.And they also understood that if the US really wanted to come in and topple the regime with the full force of the US military, this wouldn’t stop them. So they developed what they called the mosaic defense plan, which was an idea of how to increase the deterrence by showing that it would be very, very costly for the US to enter Iran.And at the same time, that same plan is very important in how they’ve repressed their own population. So Iran coming into 2023 had reason to believe that its deterrence strategy was working, had reason to believe that it could continue to work going forward, and although it had weakened its internal security position because it had engaged in more and more repression of its own population, it still had reason to be fairly confident, at least coming into 2023.DeverauxOne of the things I love debating, when talking about deterrence, is this challenge of measuring the negative. Theoretically, you are successful with deterring until you’re not right. So, it’s hard to judge the difference between a, and especially when you’re probably not getting the best advice and you’re receiving a lot of propaganda for your intel, but it’s probably really difficult. Historically, even looking back, I’m sure it’s very difficult to measure the difference between my deterrence plan is working. Or is the adversary potentially just not yet ready, to advance with their plan?StoilI think in Iran’s case, because they had such a long period where there were lots of things they had done to the US that would normally or you would think would merit some kind of retaliation, and the retaliation had either been relatively minor or targeting a proxy or not forthcoming. They had reason to they had pretty good indication their strategy was working.And you can look at things like after the Marine Corps barracks bombing and the embassy bombing in the 80s, the US did strike back against the Iranian proxies in Lebanon. And then we withdrew from Lebanon. And so Iran built up an idea that the US might be able to inflict pain on them if they cross the line, but that there would be a limited appetite and a limited duration for that pain.And again, this was contingent on their proxy network being intact, their missile program being an attack and then being able to really affect lots of different areas simultaneously to raise that cost.DeverauxI would challenge and you definitely know more than I do, but the nuclear program itself, whether that’s from, attacks from America or other actors, has been a historical target. Very few actors want Iran to get nuclear weapons. And I could think of a couple different instances of some sort of strike or, I know there was, what, the STUXNET, you know, program.So there’s been at a minimum, you know, some efforts, kinetic non-kinetic through other means to deter them from pursuing that pillar on their strategy.StoilI would actually say it’s less to deter and more to retard, right. All of these were there to mitigate the development, to get Iran to raise the cost of Iran’s development, to slow it down. And even on the diplomatic side, things like the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the framework, the diplomatic framework for reducing Iran’s nuclear development, which had a sunset clause and a whole bunch of other things built into it.None of these were able or were really going to stop the nuclear development. What they were going to do is slow it down, make it harder, make it more expensive, make it more of a challenge, but not fully stop it. Unfortunately, the only two really way ways to fully stop it would either be for the Iranian government to go to the page in their playbook for to try something different.This is not what we want in life, or for it to be kinetically destroyed.DeverauxThere were some attacks, I know, some things have gone boom, you know, but it’s I know it’s also very challenging. It’s challenging to target all that stuff. It’s challenging to find all the things that need to be targeted. Things start getting buried underground. Individuals can be targeted and I know have, or have had accidents,StoilWorkplace accidents seem to be very common among Iranian nuclear scientists.DeverauxRight. And that’s what I mean. But I don’t know who the actors are. But, you know, the program at least has been targeted. But if we look. Okay, so a little bit more recent history, I know that tensions have always kind of been high or in my lifetime, at least, with Iran, but more recently, we’ve seen kind of a buildup.You already talked about the 12-Day War. What’s been going on the past month, past couple of months.StoilBefore we get to the past couple months. There’s one really key date that we have to remember, which is October 7th, 2023. This is Iran at the height of its power and the height of its offensive capability, endorsing the plan by one of its allies to really change from using a from a kind of deterrence defensive position to actually trying to move into this offensive, attaining strategic goal through force position.And it seems initially like it’s going to work and then it doesn’t. Right. And when we come out of the 2023 October 7th War, if we look around the region, Iran lost a lot of its deterrence capability. Hezbollah was very big and scary before the war. Then it wasn’t. Yeah, right. And Hezbollah, even in this war, has been reluctant to get involved, got involved a little bit late in the game and is now taking a lot of punishment.And the Lebanese government is basically going to them and saying, hey, stop it, and have just ordered the military to actually stop. Hezbollah’s rocket launches, which is the first time, to my knowledge, that this has happened in any way, not just statement, but with perhaps facts on the ground backing it up. Hamas was a very powerful entity, as could be seen by its launch of the October 7th attack, with a large missile array that could cause a lot of effects by last summer. By the 12-Day War, it was no longer: it’s minimized, it’s contained, etc.And we can kind of go around the region and see that a key cornerstone of Iran’s deterrence and defense, this proxy network, because of the aggressive activities coming out of October 7th, and because of their involvement, is no longer what it was until they lost one of the key corners of their development.What’s happened in the last couple of months since the 12-Day War, since the summer is, when the US launched Operation Midnight Hammer, the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, following from the Israeli Operation Rising Lion, which degraded a lot of Iran’s command and control air defense missile and some of their nuclear capabilities, the US was essentially offering Iran an off ramp, right?The US did a very limited strike. Certainly nothing near or total capability, and offered Iran the chance to change course, to go and say, “okay, we’re not going to have a nuclear weapons program. We’re not going to pursue long range strike missiles, and we’re going to stop funding terror and attacking the US.” That have really consistently been, for what it’s worth, the US’s three key negotiating demands would be nice if they stop massacring their own people and repressing them.That’s something we obviously very much want to have happen, but it was not one of our key negotiating demands. Iran consistently declined to take that offramp, right. Those were its three red lines in negotiations. Will there will be willing to talk about a lot of things, but what they’re not going to do is stop their proxy network, stop building their offensive missile capability, and stop entirely their nuclear program.Okay. So that means we…DeverauxWe’re at an impasse.StoilWe’re at an impasse. And part of the reason Iran felt that they could survive that impasse is, first and foremost, they didn’t believe the US actually wanted to strike Iran. We can look back at our history. We can see a number of times we’ve appeared to be at an impasse. A number of times rhetoric has gotten very heated, and yet there have not been strikes.DeverauxThere’s also been whether it’s a narrative or just kind of an assumption, with the pullback of the US presence from the Middle East, whether that’s in prioritization or in actual capabilities, could also potentially foster, you know, that narrative that maybe the US doesn’t want to operate here.StoilAbsolutely. We’ve been very, very clear that the Middle East should not be our focus anymore. The National Security Strategy said as much. Right. It said we don’t need to be in the Middle East anymore. That was written essentially into the National Security Strategy. And I think, President [Barack] Obama, with our first pivot to the Pacific, and we’ve been in a long pivot or repeated fast pivot ever since we’ve been very clear.We’re not that we don’t want to be in the Middle East. And that reinforces Iran’s position and reinforced their view in the world, that there was a lot they could get away with by just saying no.DeverauxActually, I talked with a couple of strategists in here, not long ago about the recent, National Defense Strategy. And they had framed it in this really neat idea of not, we had the pivot to the Pacific, with the new one looking at this pivot to the Americas. Either way, kind of downplaying our role in the Middle East.StoilAbsolutely. And there’s a lot of signs that the American public is supportive of this idea that, you know, we don’t want a forever wars again. Nobody wants another Iraq, another Afghanistan. Been there, done that. Not our favorite.DeverauxI have. Yeah. Been there, done that.StoilExactly. And so this reinforced Iran’s position that it could negotiate, do a little bit harder negotiation. And that kind of dragged on in the autumn time period. Now, in the meantime, they began to reconstitute. They looked at reconstituting using Russian support. They looked at building back their defense, their missile program, all of these things that were exactly what we told them not to do.And it’s really comes to a crescendo as the economic crisis and drought crisis in Iran create a lot of popular discontent. And you start to see mass protests of the Iranian population as we get towards winter, as we get towards the kind of December January time frame. So on one hand, we have the US saying, “hey, we gave you an out here, we could have hit you a lot harder. We didn’t because we want to negotiate.”On the other hand, you have the Iranian population saying, “we’re really done with this regime” or large parts of the Iranian population.DeverauxAlthough they weren’t necessarily affected by it. I’m sure the Arab Spring is probably something in their mind as they look at what a population can do in the region.StoilI think it’s somewhat in their mind, but not majorly, more their own history. Right? The Iranian population brought down the Shah. Before that it had brought down other leaders, right? So they don’t need to look outside their country to understand what popular anger can do. And the Iranian regime built a[n] entire structures of repression to keep the population down.Now, what they tried to do earlier, in previous kind of decades is balance. Give some liberalization potentially, while also repressing. Give economic activity, give subsidies, give outlets for culture, all kinds of things, while still repressing as their economic situation became worse and, the inherent tensions of being a revolutionary republic, and revolutionary and republic are very important to their backers, and also being the Islamic Republic and also wanting this kind of aggressive foreign policy.That said, a lot of internal tensions that don’t really all live comfortably in the same house. And so as those tensions continued to arise, they had fewer and fewer means to mitigate them, and they continued to fall back more and more on straight repression of their population. And this again comes to a head in December. And they try to figure out a way to talk their way out of the December and January protests and popular uprisings.And in the end, they can’t, they don’t have the resources to do it. And so instead, they massacre their population. And that obviously has big impacts in the US, big impacts globally as we are watching on the nightly news, and on YouTube and anywhere else you’re getting your news from the massacre of the civilian population.DeverauxAnd then as we start getting closer to just this last weekend, we start seeing some potential movement of US capabilities and the increase in diplomatic efforts, warnings. I know articles are floating around the internet. If you look through February talking about the, you know, what kind of military potential the US is pushing, just like if you looked at, you know, Latin America, before the [Nicolás] Maduro action, any thoughts on, kind of how that was unfolding?StoilYeah. So it was unfolding as part of the backdrop of negotiations. Right. We were attempting to show to Iran that they really did have two options here. One option would be to negotiate meeting our fairly minimum terms. And the other option is what ended up happening. Right. The show of military force should crystallize the future potential to any country.In Iran’s case. Again, they didn’t think this is what would happen. And to an extent, they’ve built a structure to allow for, if we think about operations against them in terms of frequency and duration, they’ve built a structure of resilience that can survive a very high frequency of operations, a very intense period of operations. They have resiliency, they have redundancy, they have the ability to survive a very intense period of operations, provided that’s a short duration.Right. So they built they had confidence that even if the US was going to operate against them, it would not be over a long term. It would not be sustained. It would not really be pushing regime change, that US operations would be relatively short but intense, and that they could survive that.DeverauxI’d be curious how much of the resistance to, you know, meeting any sort of demands, how much of that resistance is based on calling the potential bluff right, thinking that the US isn’t actually going to act, or it’s going to act in a way that they could survive and work the tit for tat, as we’ve seen, you know, historically, balanced against sign of kind of a regime security to domestic population aspect, it’s easy to say, “here’s the thing I know I need to do,” but if I then look back home and that’s going to end furthering the revolt, getting me overthrown, forcing me to lose power. How much is that, leader potentially playing that two level game of having an international conversation or saving face back home?StoilI don’t think the issues of the nuclear program would be saving face back home for a very long time. Iran’s official position is we don’t really want a nuclear weapons program. Wink wink, nudge nudge. We’re doing it anyway. But on the open that they’re saying they don’t really want one. The missile program there and the wars that they’re fighting abroad and the support of the proxies have been increasingly unpopular in a large segment of the Iranian domestic population.So I don’t think they were risking a two-level game issue there, but they are ideologically risking something because it is. And we’ll go back to there. It is written right into the revolution, right into Khamenei’s writings, that they really do want to wipe out Israel, and they really will look forward to the downfall of the US. These are very important ideological points for them.DeverauxAnd that’s kind of what I’m thinking is it’s not necessarily what the demands are, but saving face as not conceding or, you know, being bullied by the Americans. I’m envisioning, since I live in pop culture, Talladega Nights and Ricky Bobby refusing to even just say “I like flat pancakes” and getting his arm broken instead because he can’t, you know, tell the other person, I can’t concede to you. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a reasonable request.StoilI don’t think that’s as much a play Iran has conceded to the US in the past. JCPOA is a good example, and their proxies have certainly conceded, both in terms of Hamas’s agreement to the 20-point ceasefire plan and Hezbollah’s agreement to repeated ceasefire plans. Iran’s view of concession is that a lot of times you can concede and when it comes to implementation, that’s a whole different ballgame.But I do think the fundamental aspect of it was they did not believe that regime change was really on the cards, that this was something that was imminent. And there they believed, again, it could be bad in the short term. They don’t doubt the amount of combat power the US or Israel can put into their country, certainly not the Israelis after the 12-Day War this summer, but they do doubt that they’ll be able to stick it till the end.Right? That this will have long enough duration to bring down the regime.DeverauxWell, I think that takes us right up to what we saw this weekend. And I know that, literally by the day, our information will become less and less relevant. It’s a very fluid situation. But what can you tell us a little bit about that opening salvo, the, you know, the first 24, 48 hours, kind of what you were thinking from your foxhole, and then, you know, in your community that that really looks at the region.StoilYeah. I think the first 24 hours, a lot of what you’ve seen in the news or may have seen in the news seems fairly accurate to me. It was wildly successful. Probably more successful than one might have assumed. The senior leadership of the Iranian regime was largely eliminated. And so in that way, the first 48 hours looks very successful. The Iranian missile program is being degraded. The Iranian air defense program is all but missing at this point. It’s almost entirely, it seems to be almost entirely destroyed. And a lot of key Iranian facilities, both for their command and control and their repression of their own population, have been destroyed.So in that sense, it’s very successful. I think what’s very interesting is Iran strategy coming out of that.DeverauxThey’ve even published, you know, on the US CENTCOM website, some strike videos, so we can see Iranian systems being destroyed. So it looks like the targeting and employment of US and, really Israeli assets, at that aspect, the operational aspect of it has been highly successful.StoilYeah. And we can see kind of what the Iranian strategic reaction is to this, which is they’re trying to broaden the war. Right? So we’ve seen Iran violating international law very clearly by directly targeting hotels in Dubai, and other civilian targets, obviously in Israel and now trying to, targeting places like Cyprus, trying to draw the British into the war.And the reason they’re trying to draw everybody into the war to widen this as possible and spread the pain as much as possible, is because what they’re really aiming to do is build pressure on the US, to force the US to stop the war. Right. So, as UAE (United Arab Emirates) gets involved, as Saudi gets involved, as Bahrain gets involved with Qatar, gets involved as even Oman gets involved, it’s Britain gets involved and Jordan and Israel and, Iraq and pretty much now everybody in the region right there have even been missiles, though probably not on purpose, landing in Syria.Right. Everybody’s getting involved. Hezbollah just joined in bringing Lebanon into this fight. What they’re hoping is that the pressure these countries will build is that they’ll support the US and coalition efforts. But at the same time, call for a stop. This is getting too expensive. This is losing our citizens’ lives. We didn’t want to be in this in the first place.And now we’re getting targeted. Find an off ramp, America. And this is an absolutely necessary strategy because of the successes of the American and Israeli strikes. They need this to not continue to last. They need to achieve a short duration.DeverauxI think that’s actually an incredibly interesting point. And to be honest, worth a small paper. It goes completely counter to a Western look at how we leverage partners and alliances. We intentionally will put, you know, boats from a couple different nations together so that if a strike on one, you know, “oh, you didn’t just hit me, you hit my friends. And now we’re bringing people in.”And there’s the joke that, you know, an attack on America is the best thing, or an American asset is the best thing for an ally who’s in a conflict. Because now America is all in. So I think that’s really neat to kind of flip the narrative to say, if we could bring in some of these partners, in the region, it might bring more pain for a short time, but it also might throw up the guardrails.Yeah. Really interesting way to reframe the value, the role of the partner, an ally. They don’t just come with their own restraints. They might reshape how the coalition looks at the problem.StoilIran’s taking into advantage the economic vulnerability of both the global economic system through oil and hydrocarbons and all the things coming out of the Middle East, but also the Middle Eastern economic system, the countries such as UAE and Dubai that have a, that are very networked in I mean, obviously Dubai being part of UAE, but the extent to which they’re networked into the global economy, the extent to which they rely on foreign direct investment and tourism and the global economy functioning, this all becomes very expensive to them very quickly and therefore also very expensive to the US and the entire globe.And so this is a way they can, if they can convince those leaders, that would be better for this war to be over, then those leaders can try to put pressure on the US in a way that Iran does not have the capabilities to do.DeverauxI think people underestimate how expensive war is apart from the obvious collateral of, you know, a loss of life, or even the loss of systems. Right? Like, oh my gosh, we lost the system. That system was so expensive. Just shooting the missile is incredibly expensive. Just flying the planes for extended periods of time is incredibly expensive.StoilAnd there’s at the end of the expensive. And then there’s also the broader end of expensive, right. Air traffic is no longer transiting the Middle East. Well, that’s a huge problem because it means the fastest flight route from anywhere in the northwestern hemisphere to the South Pacific to Singapore, and through there, is no longer available. Right. So, the knock-on effects of a war in the Middle East are actually fairly profound across the entirety of the integrated global economic system.And again, that’s what Iran is really counting on here. They know at this point that their military capabilities are not sufficient to deter the US and to deter Israel, that on a purely military level, that they’re defensive capabilities are no longer sufficient to stop the US and Israel. So they’re trying to maneuver in the strategic space. They’re trying to move in through information, and you can see all kinds of misinformation spreading.There’s reports that US ships have been found that the Abraham USS Abraham Lincoln was severely damaged. All of this is kind of misinformation coming out of the Iranian regime. There are conflicting reports about how many civilians have been killed. All of this kind of stuff that’s coming through, and that’s all part of them trying to leverage the strategic environment.And it’s something they’ve learned from their proxies. Hamas and Hezbollah performed fairly poorly in the end against the Israeli military but were able to be very effective in the broader global strategic environment and information environment. So they’re trying to do the same thing on a macro level.DeverauxAnd information is hard to stop. Information is an incredibly effective tool, especially when laced with either a bit of truth, or just believability. I mean, it’s very believable. I’m trained and have done the firing of rockets into an urban environment. I fully understand those rockets might blow things up that are not necessarily the intended target.So, to say that rockets or missiles blew something up, at face value, that would be very easy for someone to take as truth or to say that there are strikes getting back in that are successful because there is an aspect of Iran has had a little bit of success. And there’s also potential incidents with friendly fire, just accidents.The things can be shaped well, even just an old video of something happening could easily be framed as something successful now. And then, once it’s online, it’s spreading like wildfire. I think everyone saw random videos of the US base in wherever is on fire. And you can see smoke. I don’t know where the US base in, you know, country X is, and I’m in the military. So my random uncle who’s just following, the news updates, it’d be very hard not to just accept that at face value.StoilYeah, and it’s not just your random uncle. Most news outlets no longer have on staff, military analysts, Earth, your defense analysts who can look at this material. Some news outlets have inadvertently republished or put out false Iranian claims. Right. And Iran is very good at maneuvering it in the space. It’s been maneuvering in this space for a while.Additionally, US news outlets and global news outlets need to generate headlines. And without military analysts, a video of a strike doesn’t tell them anything. It’s just a strike. So they’re looking for quotes. They’re looking for a “this person said,” “that person said,” and this is again, space that Iran has become very, very adept in maneuvering in. But it may not be enough without, again, the strategy of targeting other regional countries to try to get them to increase the pressure.I think that’s really the crux of what we see. If you ask me where we are now, where we are now is that the US and Israel are doing that high frequency thing that Iran expected as its worst case scenario, very effective strikes throughout the country, degrading Iranian military capabilities, degrading Iranian security capabilities, degrading and killing the Iranian leadership.Unfortunately, of course, there have been US, Israeli, and other partner and allied casualties because Iran is able to strike back. And that’s one of the of course, always the terrible cost of war. But it’s going much better for the US than Iran would have anticipated. And so now they have to put all of their eggs in the basket of reducing the duration.So that’s going to be information that’s going to be diplomatic, that’s going to be targeting allies and partners to get them to put that pressure. And of course, targeting the US to raise the cost and raise the cost and raise the cost. So that way we also look at a shorter duration operation. That’s really where their attempt to survive life.And in doing so, then they believe that if they can survive, even at a very, very limited capability, as long as the regime can continue to repress its own population and achieve internal stability, it can continue to reconstitute and it can build back up. And, it will have taught the region a lesson, which is that as scary as the US is and as powerful as the US is, it stood up to it again and managed to survive and come back.And now, if you’re another regional country, the next time there’s a crisis, you’re not going necessarily want to bet on the US. And so that’s really the crux and center of Iran strategy. Obviously, the counter strategy to that is necessarily protecting our partners and allies, as we’ve seen that the US is doing, but also making sure that Iran can’t walk out of this war with a narrative, even if Iran as a regime still exists at the end, if we take the off ramp, is not capable of walking up out of the war with an off ramp narrative of we confronted the US, we confronted it throughout the two scariest people in the region, and we came out okay.DeverauxWe’re going to shift a little bit. Not quite future predictions, as no one knows the future. But if we could take kind of what we know from the past, what we know what’s happening now, and as I joked before, you know, “now” starts changing very quickly, let’s look at potential challenges that these different actors, because there’s a lot of different actors that you talk about are going to face.So let’s just start with, with Iran. So you laid out a plan for them to go forward. What’s their biggest challenge to executing in.StoilTheir biggest two challenges really are one, the US doesn’t fight right to us, becomes convinced that regime change is necessary. Our partners may say stop. And we say, actually, we agree with the Israelis on this one. We’re going to continue and see this one through. That’s a really big challenge because Iran has no way to control that. There’s nothing Iran could do if the US become set on that.A second challenge, if they’re making a bet, they’re making it better by broadening this war. What they’re going to do is increase pressure on the US to end the war, right? To bring it to a quick conclusion, probably a negotiated or limited one. There is a possibility that in broadening the war, they’re going to convince all of their neighbors that really, this Iranian regime should not still be a player in the neighborhood, that it needs to go.So they’re going to bring people who were neutral to them, who had an understanding with them, who had, perhaps even military-to-military cooperation with them. They’re going to take them from going, yes, we’re okay with Iran. We don’t love them, but we can live with it, too. Actually, they have to go, please US, take care of them, and maybe we’ll help too.Right. And so there is an inherent risk in the strategy of the Iranian strategy is not a strategy you want to do if everything’s going swimmingly. This is really a strategy of last resort because what it does risk, if it risks increasing, if you want to put it in Clausewitzian terms the amnesty of the entire region against them and possibly drawing in Europe, the UK has certainly changed its stance over the last 24 hours and may continue to do so.Right. So as a draw, the European partners, perhaps a consensus formed that actually the regime needs to go and this is the time to take care of it, even if they were not, if the countries weren’t initially in favor of these operations. So that’s a huge risk for them. Another huge risk is that this goes on just long enough to destabilize them, right?That they have internal factions to split off, that they come out of this in a way similar to Assad, where he came out of the main part of the civil war victorious, but not strong enough to hold on for the next shock. Right. Did the next time something happened in that case, the Israeli strikes against him that further weakened the Assad regime.And then the, you know, usher coming in, right, that Iran may survive this but be too weak for the next thing. So I think those are their three big potential challenges going forward.DeverauxAnd if we go around the region, then, some of these actors who are potentially being pulled in at a minimum, are facing collateral damage, the region: what are some of the challenges as we look at? You don’t have to go by country by any means, but a couple of these countries that, either are in close proximity to Iran or have worked with Iran or, are just finding themselves, a surprise that they’re getting drawn in.StoilOf course, there are the physical and economic challenges, right? They’re getting hit. There’s only a certain amount that getting hit can happen before it starts to cause some serious pain, whether that’s economic, whether that’s, you know, capability, physical stability, all of those things are on the table. OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) has agreed to increase oil production temporarily to keep oil prices from skyrocketing.But severe damage to oil infrastructure will have long term impacts. Right. So for a lot of kind of the Gulf actors, there’s a lot of danger here in terms of their long-term success. Now it’s a danger they could rebuild from. Absolutely. Do they have the economic wherewithal to do that? Pretty much certainly. Right. These are not poor countries, but it’s not something they’ve had to deal with in a very long time, certainly since the Iran-Iraq war.There’s a potential for serious targeting and economic fallout. It puts a spotlight on their military, on their defensive capabilities. For countries that rely on a lot of expat population, if this goes on for a longer duration, that expat population may consider that maybe they don’t want to be living under rocket bombardment, maybe as their countries to repatriate them and to bring them back in a noncombatant evacuation. This could have huge knock-on effects, at least temporarily, for the countries in the region.As we move elsewhere. Lebanon, this can be very profound. So Israel does shaping operations. Before this war, they’ve been increasing their targeting of Hezbollah and especially have below rocket forces. In the weeks leading up to this war. They also communicated to Lebanon that Israel would not target Lebanon once this war began. If Hezbollah didn’t strike Israel. Well, now, Hezbollah struck that Israel and Israel responded by a fairly intense wave of operations in Lebanon. And the Lebanese government has now said that the Lebanese Armed Forces are ordered to stop Hezbollah from future rocket launches.This is a really big deal. It’s a big challenge to the internal stability of Lebanon. It’s a big challenge, obviously, to Hezbollah, but it enters us into a fairly unknown period of what happens if the government really does decide to stand up to Hezbollah in a very serious and military context as we look to Israel, obviously, this has profound effects on Israel.The removal of Iran as a major adversary would be the first time Israel has lived without Iran trying to kill it for a very long time. It’s been a major focus of their defense establishment. It change its dynamic obviously, with Lebanon, it may change the dynamic with the Houthis in Yemen about whether they can continue to pose a threat to Israel.Hamas has insulated itself somewhat from the loss of Iran. There will still be a big deal for them in Gaza by relying increasingly on Turkey and Qatar or Qataris for some of their support. And so it does have the potential for strategic change, but perhaps more limited there.DeverauxI’m actually really curious. We don’t have to dive too much into it, but the proxies, if home base kind of goes away, whether that’s just a kind of re-shift or, you know, adjustment and, and how that regime exists. I’m curious, really, what happens to those proxies as they find themselves in a little vacuum of, you know, kind of how they operate, who they necessarily answer to, but, you know, coordinate with, provide funding for or, you know, maybe the leashes just cut.StoilI think it very much depends. We tend to colloquially look at all of these kind of Iranian-backed groups as Iran’s proxies, but there are significant differences in how they operate. So Hezbollah is very closely tied to Iran and relies on Iran for quite a lot. Hezbollah will be in a much, much weakened position. It will be very hard for it going forward without that close Iranian support.Hamas has existed without Iranian support and with Iranian support at various times or with different levels of Iranian support, is probably the better way to say it, and has taken moves to insulate themselves that this won’t be a killing blow for them if the kind of center of the network collapses, it will change how they have to operate.It will change who they’re operating with, but it won’t be the end for them. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, by contrast, is a lot more tied to Iran, but have operated under the umbrella of Hamas before and may do so again. The Houthis were originally not closely tied to Iran and then became very closely tied to Iran, are now very dependent on Iran.But in recent years, we’ve seen them starting to reach out to countries like China, and China providing them capabilities and support. And so there’s a possibility that they may find a different patron in another great power. And I do think that is something that is kind of one of the missing aspects here, which is China. I know there’s a lot of people saying, you know, that for the Indo-PACOM (US Indo-Pacific Command) problem set for the Pacific, this is very bad, right?There’s a lot of US stuff not in the Pacific, but China in recent years has been making trying to make on trades and strategic growth in the Middle East. China was the one who negotiated some of the non-aggression pact and the kind of return of relationships between the Iran and some of the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia. China was very much involved in that.And they rested on kind of that Chinese diplomatic effort, which is now been shown to not really be worth the paper it was printed on, as Iran has completely violated, had violated the terms of it. And it’s striking the very countries with which China had helped negotiate an agreement. So it’s really hurting some parts of Chinese global standing.Additionally, China has start to back Iran. There was the potential of a deal for Iran to get hypersonic anti-ship missiles from China.DeverauxWhich is a bad day.StoilPotentially bad day. That didn’t happen because the war began beforehand. And Iran is kind of been flailing around looking for support from Russia and China in terms of practical, actionable support. And it has not been forthcoming. So, to an extent, one of the interesting things that are coming out of this is that in the Middle East at least, this is doing significant harm to China’s strategic position and global position for global competition.It’s also showing that the US does what we say we do, right. We had been saying that if you don’t, if Iran doesn’t meet certain standards, you would strike. It would be a much bigger strike and the US is living up to that. So I do think there is a global perspective to take here, and that this is not necessarily been as dire as one might think for our kind of global competition with China.DeverauxI think it’s worthwhile to take that into account with what I talked with Evan Ellis about, when looking at Venezuela as well. He said similar comments that, China was, you know, surprisingly quiet, or, where it was making noise. It was definitely doing it just through diplomatic channels. So that’s an interesting aspect of the partner you choose.StoilIt’s the partner in choose. And also, one of the things that I think when comparisons are made, it’s often forgotten, is people will look at the size of the Chinese military. They are, they have this huge military with lots of new capabilities, etc., etc. True they do, but they haven’t invested in the global reach and the global logistics chain.I think they’re especially in some kind of more popular publications. There’s this idea of, well, how much what percentage of US military personnel are engaged in sustainment and maintenance, and all of this in China is much more warfighting that, well, the truth is, what you’re seeing in Iran is the reach of all of that sustainment and maintenance.Our ability, the tip of our spear, can go very, very far and very deep because of the sustainment and maintainers and all of that staff work that’s behind it, that’s pushing it forward. And when countries bet on China, when they bet on China in the Middle East, whether they, TEF analysis point bet on China in Latin America, the fact is China doesn’t have that capability, at least not yet.And it’s something that gives us the decisive advantage that we’re seeing in practice in Iran today.DeverauxWhen that global reach, I mean, that’s built into strategy. It’s not just we can go from the United States to anywhere, as we have positioned capabilities, sustainment capabilities, operational capabilities, combat capabilities, really around the globe. So to be able to, as we talked about before, to position for a show of force, isn’t necessarily a deployment from, you know, the Atlantic off to the Gulf. It’s moving forces from various parts of the world where needed, to kind of show what we can do.StoilAnd that’s also heavily based on our alliances. Right? We were able to put up quite a lot in Israel this time, including an F-22 squadron, our partial squadron, a packet of F-22s. Right. We were able to put in Israel because we have the integrated partnership with them. We’ve practiced with them, we have that close relationship, and we have a common understanding, even if we don’t always agree on strategic ends, we do have a common understanding of how to operate and have that experience and have a level of mutual trust with them.And so it’s something else that this really shows, which is our ability to leverage those allies and partners to achieve our reach and our policy goals in the region.DeverauxNow, I think it’s a great point. I’m going to push the envelope a little bit. So I said, I’m going to take advantage of your applied history. We like to look back, to look forward. You don’t have to go overly specific like I made you do in a recent project, which is going to be great, and everyone should check it out.StoilIt’s going to be great. It might need a little revision on what happens with Iran, but it’s a great project. And he’s referring to the global China project. And when this comes out, I really encourage everyone to read it. I was a bit skeptical being a Middle East person on getting all of us together to work on China, but it is, it did end up being a fantastic product.DeverauxForecasting China’s Posturing for a Global War. I think it’s going to be really good. You don’t have to go overly specific. But if we could take our, you know, what we know about the past, what we’re studying on the region now, with a little bit of a lens as we open up that cone towards the future, what are some potential scenarios for how this plays out? And it’s kind of strategic impacts?StoilI think that’s a great question. So I’d really divorce two futures. There’s really a point of departure of if we’re talking about a future where the US takes an offramp and leave some form of the regime, whether it’s an IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) led regime, whether it’s realized by kind of the survivors, however, it is some form of the regime in place in some kind of negotiated future, or if we really pursue regime change. And these bring us to two very, very different kind of chains that go from there.I’ll talk about the first one, the limited one. From there. It will really depend on what narrative Iran has at its head after this, there will be really two narratives. There will be something along the kind of there, but for the grace of God to go, I right.DeverauxSo they learn the lesson.StoilLearned the lesson, essentially they crossed a red line. Don’t do that again. All right. There’s also the option that they’ve taken repeatedly of saying, “hey, look our strategy worked, the US hit us really hard or Israel hit us really hard, or they hit a proxy really hard. But basically, we’re in a position to reconstitute and to kind of wait until the US gets distracted, gets bored, changes position, and then not actually implement any of the things we might have agreed to or implement them.”But get around them here and there around the edges to really go back to our old ways. In that case, you’ll see eventually a resurgent Tehran, Iran who’s doubling down. And unfortunately, what that likely means is more future conflict. Either from Israel or the US, as this becomes a more regular form of activity around us. Bad things and somebody strike them back.It could be what was used to be referred to an Israeli strategy of mowing the grass, of a kind of repeated system of Iran. The bad. There’s the raid, Iran death, bad there, the raid.DeverauxAnd it’s going to be probably challenging to distinguish between those two paths, because public facing Iran will have learned its lesson. But we’ll really have to look for the indicators to see if, that’s really just for show.StoilYeah. And that’ll be a lot about how they the future becomes implemented. Right. How we go from whatever the negotiated end is until the implementation of that kind of reality, whether it’s inspections or whatnot. And that will be a real challenge to see. So we’ll see on that one. Now, if we go to the more regime change model, the way the regime changes will be determined a little bit by how the strikes go and how the work goes.I like to liken it to figuring out which way a tree will fall. When you’re cutting it down, it really depends on how you strike the final blow. I know there’s been a lot of talk about, you know, there’s no unified opposition that’s out there that can just take over. I would say as a historian, it’s very rare that there’s a unified opposition that just kind of walks in and takes over.When you think about, say, the French Revolution or in fact, the Iranian Revolution or the Russian Revolution, there’s this period where everybody can agree that they don’t like the previous regime, and they’re unified on that. They’re coalesced all around that, and then there will be ideological differences. So I’m not as concerned that there’s no unified opposition to take over.DeverauxI might not have the same historical background, but from books, TV shows, and movies that once we get the country, that kind of model, often ends with a lot of violence, as well as they look internally for that struggle for control.StoilTransitions among governments are very rarely peaceful. I think that’s one of the great Testaments to the US system of our democracy, in that when we have an election, we get a government transition, and there’s not usually a lot of violence around it. But even if we look at our own early history, the period between the end of the Revolutionary War and the Constitution was not free from violence and rebellion.You had things like Shays Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion. Since we’re sitting here in Pennsylvania, it’s worth mentioning. So we can expect that almost any way the regime falls, there will be a period of violence in transition, how it falls. You have a couple of different options. You have something of an internal coup logic, right? At some point, the punishment is enough that various actors in the military and security enterprise get together and say, we really want to stop taking this punishment.And it’s the more ideological government that’s causing this. Let’s get rid of them. That could come from the Iranian conventional military. That’s not the IRGC. It could come from other elements of the security service. So there’s one version which is done kind of security service led, military led something of a coup. And changes the government, keeping largely the structure intact but allowing for new options going forward.There’s another version that we could call kind of Tehran first, where in the regime becomes significantly weakened in Tehran and its kind of core heartland provinces, its security mechanisms are no longer there, and the population, either spontaneously or in a coalition, rises up and removes the regime from power. Obviously, that will create some deal of chaos, but it can also lead to quite good things down the line.Another version would be a regional dissolution that Iran holds enough power at its center, protecting its core a little bit like a boxer, but in doing so loosens its grip on some of its other regions. So the Kurdish areas, the Azeri areas, Balochistan by the Pakistan border and kind of, Arabistan on the Iraqi border, some of those areas and what we could see is something more akin to a regional, either temporary or permanent regional breakup.In all of these cases, what you would then see is regional competition for influence. Who can influence the future of Iran, because Iran is a just naturally a fairly fertile, though it does have these drought conditions, populous, strong economy with lots of hydrocarbons. There will be competition, and that competition will need to be managed as well to get the best possible outcome.In addition to that, you could expect to see kind of some unexpected groups where Iran has been under repression for a very long time. When you lift the lid on repression, society starts to try to find its new way. And that’s also can lead to surprises. And we don’t know what the surprises might yet be, but they should be anticipated.In any case, any way the regime falls, I think we will see this competition from regional and great powers to gain influence in the future. We’ll see a period of instability, and we’ll see an attempt to bring new stability. And when we’re thinking about that attempt to bring new stability, we need to understand some of the drivers of instability in Iran, such as the water crisis that can be addressed, that would help any new Iranian government to achieve stability, and that will become an important part of our future outlook.DeverauxI appreciate you taking the time. The future for anyone is unclear. But this one definitely will be changing rapidly, and I’m sure you’ll be watching. I’ll be watching. And maybe in a couple months we could sit down again and, kind of rehash, you know, where it went. I also would challenge you on behalf of my boss and SSI to pen something short to get it out there as well.For those that don’t neces

LTC Loris Lepri, Army strategist focused on homeland defense and the Western Hemisphere. COL Michael Long, Army strategist and China specialist analyzing Indo-Pacific security. They discuss the National Defense Strategy’s homeland-first shift, contested deployment challenges, missile defense and sensing, deterrence approaches toward China, burden sharing with allies, and bolstering the defense industrial base.

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Richard Lacquement on his involvement in NATO’s Defense Education Enhancement Program as the Academic Lead for Morocco. The conversation explores how the US Army War College built its relationship with this NATO program and the varying roles the college’s professors play.John DeniHello and welcome to SSI Live. You’ve long known the Strategic Studies Institute, or SSI, at the US Army War College, as the go-to location for issues related to national security and military strategy, with an emphasis on geostrategic analysis. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the US Army War College curricula; assist and inform Army, DoD, and US government leadership; and serve as a bridge to the wider strategic community. Now, we are bringing you access to SSI analyses, scholars, and guests, through this, the SSI Live podcast series. Thanks for joining us.Brennan DeverauxHello. Welcome to SSI Live. I’m still your guest host, Brennan Deveraux, as we wait for John Deni to finish up his sabbatical and hopefully put out a pretty cool book. I am joined today by Dr. Richard Lacquement. He is a research professor of national security affairs here with me at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). Dr. Lacquement earned his PhD from Princeton University School of Public and International Affairs.He’s a retired US Army colonel who served as a field artillery officer and as a strategist. He has been at the Army War College in uniform and as a civilian for over 15 years. Dr Lacquement has published on ample topics related to national security and is SSI’s resident expert on the military profession. For this conversation, we’re going to be diving into Richard’s role with the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Defense Education [Enhancement] Program [DEEP] and his recent trips to Morocco.Richard, thanks for coming. I’ll jump right into the questions. First, let’s just start from the beginning. What is the Defense Education Enhancement Program, sometimes referred to as NATO DEEP?Richard LacquementThanks. First off, thanks for having me. I look forward to the opportunity to share experiences and information and perspective on NATO’s Defense Education Enhancement Program. Really, it’s something I’ve been familiar with for a long time but had not participated in directly. It’s about 20 years old, a NATO initiative that kind of comes out of the Cold War, where, in the immediate wake, we were helping with former Soviet states.And to this day, some of the countries in the DEEP program are some of those former Soviet states. [Currently] none of the programs [are] for any states that are part of NATO. Briefly, Croatia was part of it, while they were an early NATO member, but for the most part, it’s focused on countries that are partners with NATO, [to include] some remaining … former Soviet Republics like Kazakhstan and Armenia and Azerbaijan, some that are tied to what they call the Mediterranean Initiative, which is where Morocco comes in, [as well as], Mauritania, Tunisia. Some in the Middle East and then some, related to other, activities we’ve had. Iraq and Afghanistan had been a part of it before. And right now, a very active program supporting Ukraine. But the key point is sort of working [with] defense education institutions. So, helping out with professional military education, how to develop curriculum, develop faculty to teach about national security or security topics in general in these partner countries.DeverauxOkay. And I’m assuming that these are very much tailored not only to the country, but maybe to varying mission objectives on what that country is looking at for its threat or where it is technologically, along those lines. Is that a fair assumption?LacquementThat’s fair. And one of the, you know, taglines is that this is very much demand-driven by the country. Of course, it’s, you know, NATO has its interest. So, NATO is the partner [to] countries who have identified who we are working with. So, there is a US, you know, NATO national interest involved in every country [we work] with. But a lot of it is working with them to identify where we can help them.So very much a kind of, you know, teaching, teaching folks how to fish, not fishing for them. Going to them and saying, here’s what we have in terms of, areas of expertise, curricula, model curricula that we’ve developed, as a group through this program and faculty development, English language training--because the language of instruction that we use is English.And so we also help them in being able to do that. So, there’s some key skill sets that we’re looking to do. But then from the menu of things that NATO has been doing, which has been expanding a bit, the countries get to decide or ask kind of where they think they need some help. And so, for Morocco, for example, to be more specific, that program started in 2019, where they did kind of an initial assessment, and the Moroccans asked specifically for assistance with their NCO (noncommissioned officer) corps.So, there’s a big program in Morocco helping on NCO professional development. And then they also, their war college and command in General Staff College, equivalent, essentially, it’s both of those together like the other [US] services other than the [US] Army. So, they’re in one location. Their War college and Defense college. Their ILE [Intermediate Level Education] and their senior service college, so to speak.And they said, “hey, we would like some help with some key topic areas.” The first round was logistics, cyber security, and counterinsurgency. And future rounds include operational planning, intelligence planning, use of drones, concept of doctrine development. And so, these are all topics they requested. And then, as I’m the academic lead for the Morocco program, so we can get more into detail about how that works, but just a sense that I’m helping now to join a team, which has been around since 2019 to help meet the Moroccans needs.DeverauxNo, that’s really neat. I think about my time doing a weird mission, doing kind of the security cooperation development. I remember my unit went to Africa and we did something similar where it was what that country needed. So we sent these small two-person or four-person teams out for exactly what you’re talking about. An NCO academy, a sniper training, a little bit more tactical focus, but it was very much here’s a menu of the skill sets we have. How can we be of assistance? One thing you talked about, the “we,” used it as the “royal we,” the NATO. But as you transition to that academic planner, I think the question comes up is, where does the Army War College fit into this?LacquementSo I would say the Army War College sort of fits the, the broader constellation of subject matter experts across NATO. So the folks doing a lot of the subject matter expertise support come from many different NATO countries. And as an illustration, let me back up just a second too, actually there are other Army War College folks who’ve been involved.Actually, though, one of the people who stood this program up from inception was a former Army War College professor, Dr. Al Stolberg, who still lives in the area. But he created the National Security Policy Program, which is a program I still run for the resident education program of the Army War College. So there’s been several people from the Army War College involved throughout the, as long as DEEP has existed.At this particular moment, the provost, [Dr.] Dave Dworak is an academic lead for Azerbaijan. Dr. Nelly Lahoud in the Department [of] National Security Strategy, is the academic lead for Jordan, and I volunteered to pick up—when somebody else retired—to be the academic lead for Morocco. So that’s the Army War College, we’re kind of volunteers, of sort of external service time to this broader NATO effort, to be part of this team. And so the Army War College has been literally in since the inception in many ways, like I said, particularly the leadership role that …Dr. Al Stolberg, has had with the organization.DeverauxOkay. And you kind of answered my follow up there, which is, you know, how did you get roped into this? I love that you volunteered versus the voluntold. Most of my security cooperation efforts were voluntold, as the uniform wearer. But, can I ask a little bit, why you kind of jumped on the opportunity?LacquementSure. So partly I was aware of it. I’ve seen opportunities in the past when they were looking for volunteers for different countries, and really just in terms of my commitments at the time, I didn’t see it as a good fit or didn’t feel like I had the capacity to sort of do that. This particular year when the call went out. “Hey, would somebody be interested in being the academic lead for Morocco?” And it was and again, you sort of compete for the job. It’s not just, hey, volunteer. And they said, … “you’re the person.” I mean, part of it is that I am a, I’ve had a lot of experience and professional military education. So I have a lot of expertise in key topics like counterinsurgency, stability ops, just teaching strategy in general, national security approaches.I’d been the dean of the Army War College for eight years. So the sense that I also know faculty development and curriculum development. And so I was, you know, considered to be well-suited to be the academic lead, which is to oversee the academic components of all the things going on within the Morocco program. And given that it is the Defense Education “Education” Enhancement program, the idea that sort of education background, and it probably helps that I’m a practitioner. I am a retired Army colonel who’s done a lot of this. My professional military education experience was to put it into use, particularly by the United States, but obviously with many other partners, over the years.DeverauxOkay. So you signed up. You’re joining a team that’s been in place. You’re going out there, as this academic lead, you actually did, finally go out. You went on ground, you went to Morocco. Can you talk a little bit about the efforts ongoing now? What that mission in particular, you mentioned a couple, of what they had done in the past, what they’re looking for. But this last trip you did or trips. Can you talk a little bit about what the objective was that you guys had going out there?LacquementSure. Really, kind of within the Morocco support, the Morocco DEEP team from NATO. I’m kind of dual-hatted. So that’s, let me just briefly describe the larger team that I fell in on. To give people an idea. There’s actually a program lead for Morocco who’s based in NATO headquarters. He happens to be a Bulgarian national who is essentially a NATO civil servant who worked in the Bulgarian government at senior levels for a while as an advisor to the prime minister at one point. And one of the program managers up there is a Hungarian national who used to be in the Hungarian foreign service but has been at NATO headquarters for a while. So, she’s been with the program since inception and then within… And so they helped oversee the, the creation of the Morocco mission, you know, like six years ago.And they tend to check in periodically. So that’s kind of the NATO headquarters dynamic. And then within Morocco itself, there is a sergeant major from Slovenia. His name is Aleks Varga, Aleksander Varga, who is the lead for the NCO development program. And he’s been doing that since 2019. That was the first program to go into Morocco.So he works very closely with them. But he also works, one of his partners is AFRICOM [US Africa Command], who tends to be part of NCO development in Africa. And the Moroccans are considered a security exporter and that they bring other African country representatives to Morocco frequently for NCO training, their war college, and defense college-level things. So, in general terms, they are helping the Moroccans to help others in Africa has been a fairly prominent component.I am also the project lead academically for all of the programs in Morocco, but I’m the project lead for essentially their War College and Command and General Staff College, which is in Kenitra, Morocco, just outside of the capital, in Rabat, in an airbase that was prominent as part of one of the bases we occupied in 1942 after Operation Torch. And we went into North Africa and the French had been the protectorate at the time.DeverauxOne of those neat things, I guess, about signing up to travel abroad, you actually get to go see some, some pretty cool places and you’re definitely, you are talking to the ‘royal we’ there, you’re including it sounds like a whole NATO effort.LacquementCorrect. And so in partly highlighting that it. Yes. So yes, I’m the only American on the team right now. For sort of the, the standing team, if you will, for Morocco, with the responsibility particularly for that for their war college and, and I should have it written down in front of me. It’s acronym is CREMS, which is for its French name, but it’s essentially the Royal Military College of Higher Studies.But it is really kind of equivalent to both our War College and our Command and Staff College two separate programs, one for more junior officers of the O4-O5 level, one for more senior officers, O5-O6, which is kind of their war college, but that program teaches both of those. And that’s where I’m the project lead for those.And then before I go into more detail about just, CREMS, they’re sort of war college equivalent. There’s also a program for essentially their Directorate of Security for Cyber Security. And again, it’s kind of their French acronym is the DGSSI. But there’s a Canadian retired Air Force Canadian colonel from the Royal Military College who helps them with their curriculum development.Think, National Security Agency/ CYBERCOM [US Cyber Command]. That’s what that agency represents. And so, and then we’ve in addition to, so in addition to the programs at those locations, there’s also a Spanish officer who assists. And he was on the trip as part of one of the routine participants. And so if there’s, that core team. So I just think that, you know, a Canadian, an American, a Slovenian, a Spaniard, a Bulgarian, and a Hungarian who are all sort of representatives, from NATO countries, who are coming in to assist the Moroccans.DeverauxIf I can, real quick, that’s a challenge in itself. Nonetheless, you know, working with the partners, do you guys as that team, do you have a chance to get together? Are you, before you’re hopping on a plane, and you said you’re already joining the team, but, are joining a team that’s already in place. But before you are hopping on the plane, are you guys doing TEAMS meetings?Are you getting together and having these chats? Are you getting together as a group outside of, you know, the actual operation of Morocco?LacquementYes, absolutely. Matter of fact, my first engagement with the team was when I first signed up, like back in April or May of 2025, when I volunteered. My next meeting was essentially with the NATO team members, a TEAMS meeting, a virtual meeting. We all talked through and they explained kind of what my role would be, explained where things were in Morocco and where I’d be picking up.My very next meeting was with some Moroccan counterparts who join that same group as we talked about, you know, what would be happening. And then my first trip to Morocco ever. So I yeah, I never, never set foot in Morocco. I literally never set foot [o]n the African continent before, before I went in late September.But I went there falling in on some workshops supporting their war college and defense college. And now, and I mentioned the workshops because there’s another layer of people supporting this who talk about subject matter experts. So we were doing a logistics workshop which included, in this case, mainly Americans from National Defense University (NDU), who are associated with National Defense University, who came over to work on logistics with the Moroccans at their war college.So they’re just they’re kind of for a, just for a set of workshops. So they’re not part of the Morocco team, per se, but they’re subject matter experts in that area. Logistics in this case.DeverauxWhen was this?LacquementThis was in late September.DeverauxLate September 2025.Lacquement2025. And then there was a cyber workshop and the there was a, and again, that happened to be Americans, two other Americans. I attended to sort of oversee and learn with my first visit to their war college in September 2025. And so I was both the, the logistics and the cyber workshop, and it was an NDU professor who was kind of the lead and a Lieutenant [O-3] from the U.S. Naval Academy, who’s a cyber expert.Who was one of the other SMEs (subject matter experts) helping them with their cyber curriculum. Now, there was supposed to be a counterinsurgency workshop, but the [US] government shut down, sort of dropped right in the middle of that. So, we’ve postponed that till February 2026. And, we had some Portuguese officers who supported that the first go round, along with, our director over at SSI, [Dr.] Tony Pfaff and Dr. John Nagl from the Department of Military Strategy, Plans, and Operations, who are counter-insurgency experts, were doing that workshop. And they’ll go back in, hopefully a few weeks here, assuming the government is open in February.DeverauxAnd then so you went back after the workshops in December, correct?LacquementOh, yeah. And so I did the workshop. One was probably my hat one to get to Morocco and meet the Moroccans face to face and also focus on the project. I’m the immediate overseer within the program. But then in December, I went back with that team I just described for the annual review. So when we kind of sat down.So we went to the NCO Academy and met with leaders there about the NCO program. We went to the War College/ Command and Staff College, talked to the leaders there, and where I was kind of the lead for the NATO team. Then we went to the, the Directorate of Cybersecurity and met with the leaders there. And then our final meeting was with the Armed Forces General Headquarters, J-3/5 (operations), their training people there in the capital of Rabat to review where we were and what the plans are going forward.So this is an annual review and adjustment to the plans to confirm where we’re going. And like I said, Morocco is on a pretty good path. It’s a fairly mature program. In terms of the relationship with the Moroccans, the Moroccans are very enthusiastic, very easy to work with and very, very, thoughtful in how they engage with NATO and appreciative of the sorts of things that we do.And I can see them expanding in the future. In fact, we’re talking about adding links to their maritime education institutions and seeing if we can add that to the portfolio of education institutions that we’re working with going forward.DeverauxOkay. Apart from the upcoming one in February, you already talked about, any others this next year, you know, kind of worth highlighting just a couple examples that, you guys will be pursuing?LacquementSure. So we’ll wrap up, so we’re on the counterinsurgency one, for those first three. That’s really we’ve kind of done the teach them how to fish thing. The idea is that now they can teach it themselves. That was that. So we’re done. They will move forward. Well, we’re adding some other topics. So we’re doing some, we’re doing some faculty development on how to develop curriculum, which was a request they made.We’re doing it on operational planning and intelligence planning this year. And then in future years, we’re also looking at some other topics that they’ve requested, like how do we integrate… teach about how to use drones is one they’ve asked for, which is, projected to be maybe a year or two down the road.I did skip over one point that’s worth noting, too. So this NATO effort there was the actually my first travel event was to go to Germany, to the Marshall Center, where they hosted what they call the “Clearing House.” So this was the, where all of the different reps for the different countries all come together to share what they learned and also talk about best practices. And so we learn from each other. So actually, my first chance to meet with the other members of the Morocco team were in Garmisch, Germany in June of 2025.DeverauxAlso not bad travel.LacquementYeah, not bad travel. And that moves every year. So even though the Marshall Center and the Partnership for Peace Consortium, in particular, a NATO element that the United States is very tightly tied into, at Garmisch, sponsors a lot of the work and funds a lot of the work that is done for the DEEP program. I guess they move that conference, that “Clearing House” every year.This year, that “Clearing House” will be in the Czech Republic at a place called, I think it’s Brno [], about two hours outside of Prague. So we’ll go back and do the “Clearing House” there. Typically, somewhere… it’s NATO. Yeah, somewhere in one of the European NATO countries where they host a “Clearing House,” a 2-to-3-day meeting for the different reps. For the 15 countries we currently support.They come together, compare notes, adjust our programs. And also, that’s one of the places where we talk about the clearing house is where we talk about, “hey, my country, the country I’m working with is looking for expertise in this, who might be able to assist?” For example, when we set operational planning last year, last summer, the Italians said, “we would be very interested in assisting with operational planning, curricular development in Morocco.”So, I already have kind of a string that for that particular subject, for that particular issue, the subject matter expertise. I’ll turn to the Italians first, to see what, what they have and then maybe build a team around them, for that particular set of workshops.DeverauxOkay. Now that’s really neat. As the program potentially expands or an opportunity becomes available, like it did for you for Morocco, [any] advice for a faculty member at the War College? Is this something you wish you had jumped on earlier? Something you know, you really encourage someone to take their chance with? A little bit of extra work, sounds like some good travel, but all around pretty good experience? Rewarding experience?LacquementI would say yes. I would say for, because, you know, mindful as I look forward, the topics that I mentioned, I don’t have, subject matter expert names associated with a lot of that. So there’s a part of me, you know, knows that, you know, I have a lot of networks, most of which are centered at the Army War College, as you might imagine.So when somebody gives me a topic the first thing I tend to think of is who else at the Army War College knows these things? I’ve been cautioned by my NATO counterparts, “hey, this can’t just be an all-American thing. Don’t just fall back on your own, own school.”DeverauxYeah, just bringing in a Pennsylvania thing.LacquementI think that’s right. And so I, I am mindful of that. But nonetheless all these groups are looking and that’s kind of where the clearing house came in. So a lot of different faculty members from the Army War College aren’t just going to the countries where Army War College, you know, academic leads are. So the idea of, we do have Army War College faculty who helped out with Ukraine.We’ve had, you know, other countries, Georgia, where they’ve helped out in the past. And so that what I would say to anybody else interested in there, there’s really kind of the two levels. One might be kind of the longer-term, because the other thing it was, I was asked, “could you do this for at least 2 to 3 years?”They’re looking for some continuity in sort of program oversight. Whereas workshops tend to be a little more than 1 or 2 events on one specific subject and you’re done and move on. So there’s that level of being a workshop subject matter expert for a variety of different topics, or, potentially if the openings come, being one of the, like I am, academic lead or some other sort of project lead for one country in particular.DeverauxYeah, well, it sounds like the workshop might also be a good way to kind of dip your toe in the water, go out, experience it, and then similar to your situation a couple years down the road and you feel you’re in a better spot. You know, a really neat opportunity to jump on. I’m actually curious, as we look at the students who come to the War College, I know we get students probably from all these countries, or at least a good portion of them.I don’t know about you personally long-term, but I, I would think this would be a great opportunity for, how you’re engaging that international fellow as well. Having a personal relationship with the training they’re getting over in their country. If you’d have a chance to then, you know, sit down with, and maybe it’s the next, you know, academic year now that you’ve gone through this to sit down with the Moroccan.If we get a, you know, a colonel from Morocco to come in and talk about DEEP and maybe get some of that unfiltered feedback, you know, back from them as they’re getting down, like, “oh, yeah, our War College is changing” or, “oh, yeah, you know, our, our institution has as developed these things.”LacquementYeah, that’s a great point, because I had actually before I went to Morocco for the first time, one of the people I spoke to is this year’s, meaning class of academic year 2026, Moroccan student in the Army War College class. There’s typically, there is one Moroccan officer. It typically it’s a lieutenant colonel from the Moroccan army, who is in in the Army War College.So I talked to him, and I, I had a list of others who have been there. I didn’t encounter any of them when I was in Morocco. However, among the other workshop participants from like NDU they did encounter some of the former students that they had had and in fact my main interlocutor at their war college, or he’s really the faculty of the War College at the Command Staff College, are really, overlap a fair amount.He’s actually a graduate of the US Army Command General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. So partly his English is fluent. He’s very familiar with American approaches, and he’s been our main liaison with the leadership at the school for higher, higher military studies. So that there is a lot of, there are connections with the international fellows who were coming to American programs, and, again, not just the Army War College, but with the other ones as well.So being mindful of that, as far as feedback on that, we haven’t been working with CREMS that long. So none of our graduates have been there after these things have after some of the curriculum changes. But that’s a, it’s an excellent point and I’m sure something we’ll pay attention to.DeverauxYeah. My, my time here at the War College, one of my big takeaways has actually been the, the importance and the value of the international fellows’ network. Not just because they’re going to become, you know, seniors in their force, but they’re, I mean, they’re a great insight into their country, their great insight into, just different perspectives.So we recently got a talk from, you know, an Australian, someone from the Philippines, and it’s like, “oh, you’re thinking about problems differently than me.” But then expanding that out for programs like this, for access, getting in. It seems like a, a huge asset, but I know the DoD (Department of Defense) has been leveraging for years. I’m just now, as I’ve been in long enough, really starting to kind of see that firsthand and see, you know, that investment, come to be.So if we can make a shift, I think the DEEP program’s really neat. I’m going to study up on it a little bit. This was actually, you joked you had heard about it for years but never jumped on. I didn’t hear about it until you told me you were taking a trip to Morocco. So one thing I need to get smarter on.But let’s shift over to you, in general. What’s next for you here at the school? I know you have a program you run. I know now you’re committed for at least 2 to 3 years, in NATO DEEP, any other big projects on the plate, things you’re working on?LacquementSo, just to describe it briefly, because it is good connective tissue, so I kind of have been working on a project on how to think about the future of the US military profession. And.DeverauxAnd you’ve published on that before. I know I came across a monograph from just a couple of years ago.LacquementI have and really kind of, if I’d highlight two things. One, when I was part of a project focused on the Army back in the early 2000s, 2004 or [200]5, we did, we published some volumes on the future of the Army profession. Which I kind of picked up again, taking a broader look in 2022, Tom Galvin and I published a monograph on Framing the Future of the US Military Profession and looking at some of the challenges in this era.And if I were to boil it down to that, you know, key challenges, what people will be familiar with is sort of the changing character of war. If you put it in sort of professional terms. What professions do is usually provide a particular body of expert knowledge addressed at certain sets of problems that society can’t solve for itself. And that may sound a little abstract, but if you think of, you know, people will say, “what does the military do?”Well, we fight wars, but there’s a lot about what wars and security that the military provide that vary, certainly not just at the margins, but at its core level. Okay, what is war? What is combat? Is cyber activity war or not war? Should you have a military component? What about space? Should we have a separate service for it? What makes that military, versus NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)? So there’s a lot of things where we try, we and most others in the world, and this includes the Moroccans. So, a lot of interesting overlaps when you try to say, “what is it that your armed forces, your military, provides to your society at this moment in time?” And some of it’s about the changing technology and character of war.I’ve mentioned drones already. I’ve mentioned cybersecurity, things that really do sort of challenge all of us trying to figure out “how do we address that,” and “what’s the military part of that,” or “is there somebody else who should be dealing with it?” And so my project, my research project, has kind of looked at where we should be going with that.And I’m kind of trying to put together sort of a summary on kind of where we are after a couple of years of study based, after we did the framing monograph that I mentioned and may put together kind of a, and again, not a final answer, it’s never final. It’s kind of a sense of what are some of the challenges for the US military profession now, as it looks at the changing character of war, the high technology challenges, which include, which also run over to things like and who can actually perform well in addressing these challenges.And if there are, you know, conceptions of, you know, how much, how much does muscle power matter in the current era? If you look through most of millennia of warfare its horses that mattered until we get to the Industrial Revolution, we figure out how to substitute a lot of things for horsepower. We can sever a lot of, you can…DeverauxAnd I can tell you, doing some historical work on artillery, I know you have that same artillery background. There was a whole lot of people in that community, and in others that were very resistant to moving away from that horsepower.LacquementYeah, that sense of, so there [are] ways we’ve done things that certainly in a lot of cases in particular, if you get to the core of warfare, really hasn’t changed much in millennia. I really, human beings trying to kill other human beings on behalf of, you know, goals that their collectives are after. But if that has been defined by, you know, human and animal muscle power for many millennia, that sort of gave way to, you know, machines. They think gunpowder, the reason artillery became so important is gunpowder, sort of to change one of the dynamics in terms of how you could, you know, put force behind a projectile to hurt somebody as opposed to a longbow being, you know, you know, all human, you know, muscle power. Versus now, the things that you can do with machines and, and long-range weaponry, and what, you know, like in things like cyber war and drones and who’s actually operating those to deliver lethal effects.DeverauxWell, and I’m thinking not even just the battlefield, although as soon as you, you turn the conversation pretty dark. I thought about the, the T-shirt that says, “I just hope both teams have fun.” No one’s out there doing that, right? It’s a very dark conversation. But as we talk about what technology can do, it’s not even necessarily just this escalation of ‘my bomb is bigger. My bomb is more accurate. My bomb’s even bigger.’ It’s maybe I’m able to undermine your nuclear plan with ones and zeros. Right? I know there was something. You know, I’m going to turn off the dam, using a computer. And so, to your point, who is the player in that, is very different, from, you know, 40 years ago it’s a plane who drops a giant bomb, to, you know, it’s a someone in a basement who’s very tech, you know, who’s…LacquementWell, that gives you sort of a point of view for, for example, in a lot of discussions about what is artificial intelligence going to do for us? And sort of where the human[] in this thing is? Part of it is, you know, artificial intelligence tends to be really good at pattern recognition. And coming up with answers based on looking at all the data that if things that have happened in the past, but it’s not good at novel situations or really creative answers.So the question is “what humans do that well?” And so, but if it were to go to a different point, is that if we’ve learned, found a way for machines to do a lot of the routine literal heavy lifting and all. What it has done is put a premium on people with the right minds who can think through these things.And so the human capital of bringing intelligent solutions and knowing how to take advantage of that, and that’s been a forte for the United States for its whole history. We’ve been a very independent, individual-minded sort of society that tends to validate, you know, the individual instincts and views of the people within our formation. So, our NCOs and enlisted soldiers tend to have a lot more latitude than in many other militaries. And it’s something that others prize. They look at us and say how do we replicate that?DeverauxYeah, I remember there’s a quote, I’m going to totally butcher it. But to paraphrase, it was, the challenge of fighting the Americans is they just don’t follow their doctrine. Right? So we, we have this innovative culture to do that. And I think 100%, and it’s definitely, it’s a good time, to explore the profession.I think we’re in transition, and the Army is very open to this conversation. I don’t think anyone has the answers. And it’s probably good to be in a field where, to your point, there isn’t a correct answer. It’s, it’s one we could keep working on for a few years.LacquementYeah, but it’s been interesting. I watch this with the Moroccans, too, because I think that when one of these ways these things connect is I’m watching them go through professional challenges in some ways that we’ve already dealt with. Their NCO corps, for example, is not nearly as extensive and as empowered as ours. And that, you know, that that’s true in many other societies.Many have remarked that our noncommissioned officer corps really is fairly unique. It’s a very American creation that goes back to the Revolution in terms of, you know, how you deal with an army of citizens who have agency and feel very invested in… you want to be taken seriously, and in any context. And so, figure out how to convey that to others, that’s actually a military effectiveness boon.It’s not a, it’s not a threat to discipline and control. It’s actually an incredible, you know, value-added element of how our institution operates. And so being open to finding out where the talent is and being able to tap into it. And, you know, and I suggested some of these things that you’re watching the issues that sort of ‘what merit counts?’ in the current era, a forte of a meritocracy, which we’ve been pretty good, it’s really the US Army’s been a pretty good equalizer because ultimately it’s about performing some fairly discrete tasks well in incredibly dangerous situations. And it’s not about who you are, what you look like, what your identity is: [It’s] “can you do the job?” And we’ve been really good at that. And I think that’s, that’s an advantage over the Chinese and the Russians in particular.But many, many others, when we think of, and NATO more broadly, how well we can tap into the members of our society. And one example, I think, you know, the in the Western world, you see, we actually have done a much better job of tapping into women to be part of our formations. And if you look at the Ukrainians versus Russians, there’s some fascinating things going on with how many, with the percentage of Ukrainian combat or at least combat-oriented ones, you talk about drone operators and others who are out there, or cyber operators who are, who are very active there, you know that.So, Ukrainians may be smaller by, you know, like one-third the size, population wise, of the Russians, but they’re tapping into a broader percentage of their population than the Russians are, and that the intellectual capital seems to be a bit of a mismatch. Don’t get me wrong. The Russians have tremendous advantages of mass and weight and industrial power.But the human capital/talent side is a little more even when you realize what the Ukrainians are doing. There’s some, I think, lessons there about what modern warfare looks like and who can actually provide real value to warfighting capabilities in this era that the, like I said, we’re watching the Ukrainians. We’re learning from the Ukrainians that it had been a, it’s a, they’re teaching us things that I think, for us and others are paying attention to.DeverauxYeah. No, that’s a great point. And it’s changing so fast. It’ll be interesting to see really what comes out of looking at, at some of these ongoing conflicts and getting our hands around what future war looks like. You know what is valuable on it? What kind of traits are we looking for in people or systems? You know, who is the purveyor of violence? All right. Is it the person with the drone? You know, is it the guy with the bayonet? Or is it both, on a crazy battlefield?But we’re going to have to call it. I think we could probably go on for a while, and I’m sure we will later today in the hallway, over at SSI. I look forward to the project. I hope to see it in the near future. And I know our listeners out there feel the same.As we transition out, listeners, for more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, Conversations on Strategy, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.DeniYou can now find SSI Live on TunIn radio and on popular podcast directories like Stitcher—and at the iTunes Store. If you have any comments on our podcast, thoughts on what you’d like to see addressed, or a response to something you heard here at SSI Live, please go to our website. That’s SSI.armywarcollege.edu. Find me, John Deni, in the staff directory, and send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you. For the SSI Live podcast series, I’m John Deni. Thanks for listening.

This episode discusses Latin American reactions to the recent US operation in Venezuela, noting that some governments expressed criticism but with notable restraint due to domestic political and economic considerations. Dr. R. Evan Ellis explains that the operation exposed the ineffectiveness of Russian and Chinese air‑defense systems in Venezuela, which may influence future military procurement and perceptions of US capabilities in the region. The conversation also explores how China, Russia, Iran, and other extra‑hemispheric actors may recalibrate their engagement in Latin America in response to renewed U.S. focus and pressure.John DeniHello and welcome to SSI Live. You’ve long known the Strategic Studies Institute, or SSI, at the US Army War College, as the go-to location for issues related to national security and military strategy, with an emphasis on geostrategic analysis. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the US Army War College curricula; assist and inform Army, DoD, and US government leadership; and serve as a bridge to the wider strategic community. Now, we are bringing you access to SSI analyses, scholars, and guests, through this, the SSI Live podcast series. Thanks for joining us. Stephanie CriderI’m in the studio with Dr. R. Evan Ellis and our guest host, Major Brennan Deveraux.Ellis is a research professor of Latin American studies at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western hemisphere actors as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region.Deveraux is a US Army strategist serving as a national security researcher at the US Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute. He has three defense-related master’s degrees and focuses his research on military innovation, emerging technology management, and the characteristics of future warfare. Brennan DeverauxOkay, great. I’m looking forward to this conversation. Evan, a lot going on. The region, in Latin America, really interesting right now, not only with a resurgent US focus as we look at strategy, but everyone is tracking the operation in Venezuela.And I don’t think we need to really go through the events and the lead up to and the why, I think that conversation has been had. But I’d like to pick your brain today because I don’t think we get many opportunities to really sit down with an expert on the region and talk about some of the broader implications, if that works for you. R. Evan EllisAbsolutely. It’s great to talk with you, Brennan. DeverauxSo first, let’s just start with some general impressions then. How are other Latin American countries responding to the actions in Venezuela? EllisIt’s really a range of responses, many of which are what you would predict. So, you have Lula in Brazil, the president there who has indicated that this is unacceptable; he’s expressed reservations but with some degree of caution, understanding that he has elections coming up this October and thus doesn’t want to put himself too far on the left of the spectrum as the principal opponent to the US in the region. You have, predictably, Gustavo Petro, the current leftist president of Colombia, who has indicated this was a barbaric act. Indeed, under his instruction, Colombia called a special session of the UN Security Council to talk about this.Indeed, some of that rhetoric got him on the radar screen with President Trump, who had suggested that maybe Petro, with his own lack of control over drug production in his country, could be the next, which precipitated Petro kind of backpedaling a little bit and turning down some of the tone. You have others in the region who have bet strongly on the United States, who have been extremely supportive.I’ll just mention a handful. You have the Luis Abinader government in the Dominican Republic, who again provided access to important US air bases in his country that played a role in those operations again has been very supportive. You had the Kamla Persad-Bissessar government, the new UNM government in Trinidad and Tobago, which, again, went on a bit of a ledge to support the US in the lead up to the operation, and I say is now looking pretty good.And then, of course, you have the traditional US allies in various parts of South America. So, Javier Milei in his government in Argentina, the Ecuadorian government of Daniel Noboa just to name a few, who will, again, have been relatively supportive. And so, again, those you’d expect to be critical have been critical, but I would say tempered in their criticism.Another I would mention is the left-oriented Claudia Sheinbaum government in Mexico, who again have indicated that this was problematic. But again, Sheinbaum, understanding that they’re in a critical renegotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement and about 90 percent of Mexican exports depend on access to the US market, Sheinbaum has been tempered in taking criticism of what the US has done too far. DeverauxThat’s a lot. And what it tells me is you are an expert in the region, and I know, I know this. I read a lot of your work, and you’ve been studying this region for a long time. I think what would really help for our listeners—did any of these reactions stand out to you? Was any of these unexpected? You talked Brazil. I know Brazil kind of sits the fence sometimes, but did anything really kind of catch you off guard by a country? Maybe someone not speaking out or speaking out overly aggressively? The Colombia, for example, was an obvious reaction. Is there any of that on the other side of that spectrum? EllisI think to a degree, the restraint of those who you’d expect to be critical has been instructive. And so, again, the degree to which Lula in Brazil seems to be trying to avoid becoming, you know, too shrill or leading too much. The anti-US pushback in the region, I think, was a calculated decision or, you know, to a certain degree, the degree to which Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico was very measured in her response, understanding that in ideological terms, this is something that goes against everything that she and Mexico stands for.It’s instructive, if nothing else, the concerns and the desires for different reasons of different what you’d call left-oriented governments in the region to try to avoid conflicts with Washington for domestic political reasons, as well as to avoid, you know, being kind of on Washington’s target screen. DeverauxAnd that’s the two-level game we talk about a lot, right? It’s one thing to have a loud, boisterous opinion about something as it relates to your country, but you then have to turn internally and see what the country says, too. Then finding that balance is a unique skill set that politicians have.So, I will shift us to the actual operation itself, not its conduct, but one of the things I heard you say, the operation in Venezuela highlighted the ineffectiveness of Russian- and Chinese-supplied air defense systems. And you’re not the only person to say it. I saw that in a couple of articles. I’m sure this is going to be a major topic for military analysts. More broadly, you know, what is the role of air defense? Is it penetrable? I know we do the big scary anti-access aerial-denial (A2/AD) stuff. I’m hoping you can actually talk it more specifically to Latin America.If we’re looking at these countries that look to China or Russia for exquisite military equipment, or that might have the opportunity to now look to the United States for military equipment. Do you think that this is going to have some sort of shift in future military sales, as we look at the effectiveness of the operation and the ineffectiveness of the systems designed to stop it? EllisI think, in part, there’s a difference between what you see in the media or in the political domain versus what the military decisionmakers who understand the details of these type of operations will decide to do. In general, I think there was a lot of media expectation that the Russian S-300, you know, medium-range air defense system, for example, would perform relatively well or at least present a clear threat to the US.There is some other media references to, for example, the dispersed Igla-S man-portable air defense (MANPAD) that munitions that would create some sort of threat. And in the end, none of those really produced any significant effects whatsoever. But when you looked at the detail, what it was really all about was in part that we, at least what publicly been released, had a pretty sophisticated, you know, layered series of things that we did that had to involve information warfare, space, the electronic warfare space, of course, kinetic strikes against some of these sites. It’s about as much detail as I can get in this program.I think, for military planners, there was never the expectation that the S-300s would be that effective, maybe a little bit more than they were. It wasn’t sure, you know, whether the Chinese JYL-1 one or JY27-A radars would be effective or really play a role at all. And so, I think it was interesting that they were just completely nonfactors.Very few people who were actually military professionals thought that people carefully positioned with these MANPADs, you know, the Igla-S would do anything unless they just happened to get a lucky shot off. And so, I think at the end of the day, with respect to Russian equipment, there’s an understanding that already Russian equipment is problematic because the ongoing war in the Ukraine because of the, you know, difficulty in getting spares and, you know, Rosoboronexport, or Rostec’s, kind of poor record in, in doing, you know, maintenance and other things. It’s already been a hard market for the Russians in general. So, I think this will contribute to some degree to that.I think the Chinese, understandably, this probably took a hit to interest in some of their capabilities. But in general, there’s an understanding that the Chinese equipment is relatively cheap. It has, you know, some good performance in other places. For example, the Chinese J10 fighter, I believe it was, got some attention when it performed relatively well in the recent skirmish between the Indians and the Pakistanis. I believe it was. And so, I think military professionals looking at these systems in a more kind of technical context will, you know, continue to shy away from certain things but will not completely turn away from, you know, cheaper Chinese systems or mid-range Russian systems just because of what happens here. But, you know, it certainly doesn’t help the case for those trying to sell those systems. DeverauxAnd the inverse, it probably helps the case for those trying to sell some of the US systems, right? EllisAbsolutely, yes. DeverauxI think you bring up a really good point, though. So, I come from a field artillery background, one of the, you know, primary missions we talk about, as an observer, is suppressing those air defense systems and generally trained and accepted that they are defeatable.I mean, best case scenario, you strike it with artillery round, it’s not going to do much anymore. But you saturate it. You understand it has limited access to things, limited time to execute, those kind of things. And, I think you hit a really interesting point that there is a perception outside of the professionals who are thinking about that, that thing where we talk about China’s A2/AD bubble. “We must operate with inside it.” “We have to penetrate.” I don’t want to get shot down, but it’s not, it’s not a 100 percent impenetrable shield either. And I think when we see images of Israel being able to shoot down hundreds of rockets coming in, so that’s what we think of when we think of this defense system and say, “Why don’t I have that?” But to your point, people are still going to buy equipment, and sometimes the cheapest equipment is the equipment that you can field at the time.So, I’m going to shift us a little bit to some of those actors outside of just selling equipment. You’ve talked a lot about the impact that what you call these extra-hemispheric actors have in the region—the Russia, the China, the Iran, potential non-state actors as well. Any thoughts on how the recent US attention in Latin America, so, both highlighted in policy as we look at the National Security Strategy (NSS) as well as direct action, whether that’s moving vessels, and/or in the very visible Venezuela operation, are going to shift some of the desire of the regional nations—so putting it to the regional nations lens to look to these external influences, whether that’s for regime security, further economic partnership, you know, or just as a potential partner of choice? EllisAbsolutely. And I think it’s important to recognize that this will probably, you know, increase the hesitation by many to engage with China in certain areas known to be of concern with the United States. And that would probably include military-to-military cooperation, space cooperation, and maybe cooperation in some certain, you know, digital or other strategic sectors.But I would go back to even the first Trump administration and the very clear pushback that you saw in the 2017 National Security Strategy. And certainly, with President Trump returning to power now and the new National Security Strategy highlighting our emphasis on the Western Hemisphere and the explicit intention to push back against extra-hemispheric actors, broadly understood to mean China, especially in the military space.You know, Latin American nations can say they have been advised. And it’s interesting, in my own travels around the region, even last year, it was striking to see how certain partners that, for example, the Argentines who used to train Chinese, PLA (People’s Liberations Army) officials in their own national defense institutions have subtly stopped doing that, even though they send and continue to send people to their Chinese counterpart institutions in places like Nanjing for the command and general staff college, or, for example, the way in which Colombia or others, or even Mexico, have been flirting with Chinese liaisons in the space domain, however, again, have become much more cautious about doing so.My sense is that, you know, certainly the fact that we just demonstrated our willingness to, you know, take out a foreign, you know, leader, Nicolás Maduro, you know, albeit one that we did not recognize as legitimate—and do so with a sophisticated military operation—kind of adds to that sense of, you know, the US, you know, if it sees certain things as problematic in the security domain, may act—maybe in economic fashion, maybe in military fashion.But my sense is that even understanding that the US will act and, thus, with partners shying away from some of that military space cooperation, digital cooperation, they will still try to make money where they can, even our very pro-US partner Argentina, the Javier Milei, for example, still is selling a lot of soybeans and other agricultural goods to China, as well as allowing multiple Chinese companies in the lithium sector to invest there and exploit that for exportation of lithium to Argentina, just to give a few examples.There are other actors who, frankly, try not to get, I mentioned Brazil before, too far on the US bad side, but still continue to engage with China, even understanding that is an item of concern. I mean, the Brazilians literally have named three out of their four attachés in China at the general officer (GO) level. You know, so even a colonel—that says you’re serious when you’re naming three GOs out of, you know, four attaché, it says that you mean it.And, you know, the Brazilians, just about two years ago, hosted 13 Chinese GOs in their own national defense institutions. They had the Chinese into an exercise, Operation Formosa, that they… and so there are a lot of actors that may shy away from doing too many explicitly military or strategic things to the Chinese, but there are some actors in the region, Brazil, I think, explicitly, that will not be entirely deterred.And, you know, that’s the message also that they want to send that they’re not going to stop doing these things with China just because they know it bothers Washington. DeverauxI think that’s okay. It’s okay to do something with China. So I, I would go back to a paradigm that I struggled to break out of, and I only did a couple years ago. And I think that it’s indoctrinated, not, I know that word has a connotation but really ingrained in American culture—and definitely in the military—when we look at a “us versus them” or “it’s us or them” kind of mentality and, and it comes out of the Cold War. You know, you’re either with the United States or you’re with the Soviet Union, you’re with the West or you’re not.But that’s not reality, especially as we shift away from our backyard into China’s backyard. Right? Some of those nations aren’t going to have a choice not to deal with China, who’s right there economically. And I’d be curious, as we’re looking at those countries, and you already gave examples of, you know, some of the operations, some of the actions that these nations are doing with China, I’d be curious on kind of that lens, if they feel that there’s any sort of pressure to say, “I can’t do this because it looks like I’m against the US or against China,” or does China offer them the, “Hey, you can work with both of us. You don’t have to choose,” kind of mentality? Which is a real shift, I think, for how we approach the problem. EllisIt’s a great question, Brennan. And I think clearly there is an understanding of the pressure from the US, especially when there’s cooperation in the military and in other domains. I think, again, you know, some of those often-explicit threats, and again, it’s in our new National Security Strategy. And so, I think from the US, the message is very clear.Now, on the Chinese side, it’s interesting to see that they’re playing a very different game. As a matter of fact, just three days after we published our NSS, the Chinese have published their third white paper toward Latin America. They’d released one in 2008, one in 2016, and, you know, this most recent one in which they basically said that they intend to continue full speed ahead, not only in economic initiatives, but also in areas such as governance, working, you know, not just on the bilateral level, but in the multilateral level through things like CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), where the US is not present; working with congresspeople; working with politicians; also working in space and technology (SNT) collaboration and artificial intelligence; working in the security domain in areas like cybersecurity, which will cause a great deal of concern to the US; as well as other areas like money laundering and counter-narcotics; and, indeed, also talking about people-to-people exchanges. And so, the Chinese regularly bring over to the PRC (People’s Republic of China) everyone from, you know, police officials to military officers to judges to journalists to think tank personnel, and they basically indicated that they’re going to double down on some of these things, something that raises some pretty significant, you know, espionage concerns and in others.Now, the Chinese in places like Venezuela, notably, have kind of rolled with the punches here. They made some comments about that, you know, that this was unacceptable. And, it’s interesting to see that the Chinese have tried to score points for themselves by discomfort about what the US is doing in their messaging to other countries and in the international domain.But, what they don’t seem to be doing is showing either, you know, through their actions in Venezuela or elsewhere that they, you know, have their backs. I mean, the Chinese were nowhere to be seen in terms of any type of actual, you know, defense or role in the defense of Venezuela when the US came in. The Chinese have not been, at least, you know, publicly, you know, pushing back against, you know, what the US came out with in the NSS, you know, saying, you know, “You can work with us, we’ll protect you against the gringo” and, you know, pressure.Again, they’re trying to score points on this, you know, speaking out against the, so to speak, US bullying. I would say they’re trying economically to take advantage of concerns about the United States. And so, this week, actually, Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister is actually in China, I believe, meeting and talking with the Chinese.Brazil has increased its sales of soy and meat and other products. And other countries are silently doing the same thing. China is kind of quietly taking advantage of this, but it is not overtly pushing back and trying to get countries to say, “Yeah, you push back against the United States, we’ve got your back.” You don’t see any of that from the Chinese. DeverauxIt’s interesting. And China often has a pretty good narrative for this cooperation with countries, like in Latin America, like in Africa and some parts of Asia would be BRICs, the Global South, kind of an underlying narrative that not necessarily an “us versus them” mentality of the Cold War, but a “I’m one of you. We’re not the country that’s coming in and taking your resources.” And then they might come in and take your resources. But “we’re not the country that has historically done this to you. In fact, we’ve been a victim of this and moved to prosperity.” I’d be curious on your thoughts on that and how that kind of plays into, you know, what you just talked about. EllisIt’s a great point. It’s quite ironic because the same China that is imposing territorial claims on its neighbors almost up to their borders in the South China Sea with its famous, you know, 9- now 10-dash line, almost destroys Philippine Coast Guard and fishing vessels with water cannons, and other things that regularly, you know, contests US and other actors doing legitimate freedom-of-navigation [operations] FONOPs in that area that, you know, builds militarized islands, you know, in that area, China that has regularly, you know, ignored, you know, United Nations law on this, the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) stipulations on those things now talks about, you know, the US, you know, bullying in its near abroad. And so, there is a certain amount of duality to what the Chinese are trying to do.But beyond that, you know, my sense is that China tries to respond obliquely. It is not investing in the explicit defense of partners, especially those that it knows are going to lose. For example, and you alluded to some of this, China, through its Global Governance Initiative, that it first rolled out with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization but now has applied to Latin America in its white paper.It’s basically saying, you know, we don’t think that anyone should impose rules upon the other, that there’s no, you know, right or wrong, etc., etc. The same thing with its Global Civilization Initiative. You of course, just mentioned the Global Development Initiative, in which China fundamentally says, “You know, we developing countries need to stick together to help each other work together. We understand each other and in ways that those developed nations like the United States and Europe,” they don’t exactly say that, but they imply that. “And thus, we China, you know, want to support you by essentially, you know, penetrating in, you know, in developing your market in areas like artificial intelligence, where we want to set standards that benefit our companies, where we want to come in and work with you on, on space, with the lure of taking some of your personnel to space. But in consideration, getting access to your Western hemisphere space facilities, etc., etc.”And so, the Chinese are a very kind of sophisticated that in the name of things that sound good, like development, they are moving in and using that as an excuse to try to position themselves in these technology areas or other things that explicitly cause problems strategically for the United States in these sectors. DeverauxAnd back to that two-level game. They also probably sound really good to a domestic audience. “Look how we can advance. Look how we can be developed. Look how we can take advantage of this opportunity from an investment.” That’s really interesting.Let’s flip the kind of focus. So, instead of the Latin American countries and their perspective, let’s go to those extra-hemispheric actors. What do we think about the motivation of China to come in and secure its strategic investments? Or, you know, we talk about an opportunistic non-state actor to disrupt US efforts to really, you know, secure the region. Does recent activity or US policy change how they might be looking at their approach to Latin America, even if the Latin American countries themselves might have shifted their, kind of, desire to have them in there? EllisThe first part of the question about, you know, China’s securing its strategic investments is interesting. In the short-term, they have certainly, again, rolled with the punches on Venezuela. For example, the embargoed oil, which was Chinese oil with their tanker The Centuries. There are some reports that maybe the fourth or fifth tankers that the US more recently has seized may have had some Chinese ownership tied to it. In addition to that, you see that the Chinese, again, you know, making some, you know, complaints. I mean, clearly some of that 50 million barrels of embargoed oil that is being put under US supervision and sold and put into account for the Venezuelans, apparently some of that was originally supposed to go to China. And I believe that some of the, the smaller what often are called “teapot refiners” in China that had been taking surreptitious deliver on this oil and paying for it in cryptocurrencies.The Chinese government seems to have largely kind of sold those, you know, Chinese companies, you know, down the river. But even while it kind of rolls with the punches about what Washington is doing in Venezuela, it is good in the fine print of its contracts, whether it’s in the hotel sector, construction sector, or elsewhere, to make sure that it gets paid even when it’s things may not provide any net value.I remember it had a disastrous performance on the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam in Ecuador, but it was actually able to renegotiate that, saying basically, “Okay, we’ll give you some money and take responsibility for some of the bad work that we’ve done.” But oh, by the way, we’re also going to give you a, I believe it was $400 million line of credit. So, we’ll actually get more work out of this and more control of the facility for ourselves.And so, the Chinese have a very good way of working through lawfare or subsequent negotiations of winning, even when they run into problems. And, I think you see this across the region, again, with also the relationships that they build with many government personnel. Sometimes, places like Nicaragua, where there are non-transparent contracts in the mining sector, in others, construction contracts, the Chinese get very, very generous rates of interest, very, very generous, arrangements on fees, indemnification things so that the less transparent, the more kind of anti-US and isolated the country, the more that whatever happens with the Chinese, they win.Now, with respect to the second part of your question, whether there are impacts on the way that, you know, China or other extra hemispheric actors approach Latin America, I would say there’s different approaches from different actors. So, on the one hand, I think China’s kind of reeling in Venezuela in trying to figure out how to maneuver with whoever is the current government, to continue to make money there.I remember during my time when I was at the State Department back in 2019–2020, that, you know, even while China was complaining that our pressure against Nicolás Maduro was bad at the time, they are also secretly negotiating with Juan Guaidó, the de jure president, so that whoever won, they would have a stake in the game. And, I suspect that they’re kind of quietly trying to make that adjustment in Venezuela right now.I haven’t seen a broader effort to change their policies in other parts of Latin America, but I am sure that they’re reassessing some of the risks, trying to figure out where the US could act next. You know, could their positions in Cuba be at risk? Could their positions in Nicaragua, you know, be at risk if the US continues with action there? Now, with respect to, you know, Russia and of course, Russia’s has been a loser on the embargoed oil of its own, although it does have close ties to, you know, Delcy Rodriguez, Cuba as well has ties to some of the other actors working with Delcy.And so, I suspect, although I don’t have firsthand knowledge about this, that Russia and Cuba are playing a delicate game of trying to figure out how to work with different power brokers to keep from being completely thrown under the bus.I suspect that the actor that will wind up on the short end of the stick here—because they are weakened and they have limited options—is Iran and Hezbollah. Hezbollah, of course, their leadership being weakened after the Israeli strikes against their leadership in Lebanon last year. And of course, strikes against Iran itself. And now, US pressure and the virtual risk of a collapse of the Iranian regime. And so, to the extent that Iran, really beyond the oil sector and some arms, wasn’t really a key stakeholder for Delcy Rodriguez, nor are they much of an opposition, either Iran or Hezbollah, to help much. I suspect that of all the actors that to comply with US pressure that are greatest at risk of being thrown under the bus, with the least they can do about it, Iran and Hezbollah, if there is follow through by the US administration, is probably the most vulnerable at this point. DeverauxLet’s keep going with Iran and potentially a North Korea, or any really country like that. I’m sorry to ask you to step outside of the Latin America bubble, but what might they be thinking as we’re looking at, you know, an action that removes an adversarial, you know, regime from its country efficiently, quickly, quietly. And we see tension in Iran right now. We always, I mean, give me three or four months, we’ll see some tension in North Korea. Does this kind of change some conversations over there? Any thoughts? I know we’re outside of Latin America. EllisI think it certainly does change some. So, the Iran case is particularly interesting because we can remember that just days before the decisive US action to capture Nicolás Maduro and bring him to justice in the United States, President Trump had made a threat against the Iranian regime, who in confronting, you know, protests of really unprecedented size, was looking towards using violence and, indeed, has subsequently used significant violence. I think there’s an estimate that maybe as many as 2,000 protesters in Iran have already been killed. But, you know, the question of, you know, did US willingness to act in Venezuela and previous US action, you know, the B-2 strikes against the Fordo complex and the other nuclear complexes in Iran, did that increase the credibility of the US threat and perhaps limit Iran’s repression against the protesters?It would appear in that case, not so much. Although it may have caused some hesitation. Now, in other areas, you know, always hard to know what Kim Jong-Un is thinking in North Korea. I think as we look at other parts of the world, you know, certainly, I think the US has shown that its capabilities and its ability to use them in surprising ways might exceed what was previously calculated just by counting up the numbers of systems.What he’s done in Venezuela, I’m sure also, as you know, China thinks about what the US might do with respect to Taiwan, or what, you know, potentially, you know, Russian and Putin think about, you know, what the US might do in in Europe, although that’s a harder issue. What’s happened in Venezuela, I think colors the interpretation of previously made or indirect threats in all other parts of the world. DeverauxSo, if we could shift it off of what the US did, there was some commentary that came out right after the operation about what this actually means for what another country could do, the precedent’s set. Any thoughts on what a China is thinking about with relation to Taiwan or a Russia with Ukraine? Although I don’t think Russia has the capability to go in and snatch up President Zelensky at the moment. But thoughts on that as maybe a precedent or just in general what adversaries might be thinking about? EllisThat’s a great question. So, there’s the question of, you know, whether there is a quid pro quo and spheres of influence versus the ability to actually, kind of, copy the technical example. I would say more the quid pro quo than the ability to copy.I think it’s a relatively unique situation that the US has done. You know, certainly China has long said even going back to the first, you know, Trump administration. “Well, sure, we’re willing to respect what you do in your near abroad if you respect, you know, our management of our own near abroad,” that, by the way, happens to include this, you know, pesky semi-autonomous, province of Taiwan and maybe other actors like the Japanese in the Philippines. “So, you know, we’ll respect you if you respect us.” And so those types of quid pro quos maybe get rehashed, but I’m not sure, you know, how much actual impact that they have.With respect to the copy ability of it. I think a couple of unique considerations in Venezuela. Number one, you know, you have a situation where you know, however much the military leadership has, you know, stuck with Maduro because they don’t want to return to democratic accountability. That does not mean that they do not despise him, nor does it mean that the population, you know, does not understand that he is not legitimate. And so, I think, especially when you had the authorization publicly of, you know, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) engagement and, you know, you sprinkle in there, you know, was a $50 million, you know, reward you had just for Nicolás Maduro, unprecedented.So, you know, money plus a lot of people who are just dying to get rid of Maduro anyway and who don’t believe in his project. I think you get a lot of people willing to talk and cooperate in a lot of different ways. And so, I think it was no great surprise that we knew, you know, exactly where Maduro was, even, you know, according to some public accounts, you know, like what his dogs like to eat and things like that.So, the question is obviously that, you know, with a country like Ukraine, with Russia, who has fought a bitter battle, I think you would be hard pressed to find, you know, 10 Ukrainians who would be interested in selling out Zelensky to help out the Russians. So, a little bit of a different context there. And frankly, if you look at the intelligence planning and you look at the amount of coordination in the systems that the US used to go in with precision.And, oh, by the way, if you look at the geography of it, given that, you know, we had forces, you know, right there, you know, literally just miles off of the Venezuelan coast and supporting facilities in the continental United States are, again, you know, an hour or so, depending on the place, you know, flight away. And so, the ability to put lots of different types of forces, you know, on both in terms of, you know, intelligence, surveillance, the forces generating kinetic effects, etc., it was a lot easier versus, again, if you think about, you know, Russia flying halfway across Ukraine.Now, arguably there could be a temptation of the Chinese, the PLA thinking, “Well, you know, why couldn’t we just, you know, grab William Lai? We probably have Taiwanese that we could, you know, in the name of being co-Chinese, with sprinkling a little money around your willingness, you know, to cooperate.”Although my sense is that the, and of course, the geographic distances are similar, although my sense is that the level of sophistication of Taiwanese defenses, the level of patriotism that the Taiwanese feel, and in probably the differences in really what the high-end, best-of-the-best special operators in the US can do versus maybe where their Chinese counterparts are.I don’t think the Chinese are quite there yet, nor are they willing necessarily to risk that, which involves, you know, not just taking the leader out and trying to bully the rest of the country but somehow, you know, hoping that, you know, once you take out one leader that, well, what do you do then?And I think, you know, one of the big differences, even if the PRC could grab President Lai, is there’s an understanding of that’s not going to get you to, you know, Taiwan’s surrender. You know, you’re going to need an option for the PRC, much more boots on the ground rather than you just grabbing the leader. DeverauxAnd I think that’s a great point.And I struggled when I saw that—the article—and then I saw some commentary on it as well. There is an idea that maybe you could try to do something. I don’t know their technical capabilities. I don’t know if they could manage it. Political objectives are inherently different. Right? And in all those situations, the Russian political objective against Ukraine doesn’t disappear just because you got the leader. Taiwan doesn’t necessarily just capitulate because you got their leader. It’s a different dynamic of what it is you’re trying to do.I know we could talk a lot, and now we’re borderline getting into some speculation as we look at the future. And I know I’m asking a lot of you there. I want to thank you for the time. This has been great. I know that there’s a lot to look forward to coming out of the implications and coming out of your region, which is an exciting time for those who study Latin America. So, this has been great. EllisBrennan, it’s always a pleasure to do this. And, and again, I think those of us who followed the region for quite some time, one of the things that’s refreshing is the perception that there is this understanding that there is no region in the world that most directly impacts US physical security, nor economic security, than the region which is adjacent physically to us. And so, the idea of getting some more focus on the region, some more military thinking, some more strategic thinking, I think these are welcome changes, but stay tuned for the ride, because I think we are only at the beginning. DeverauxGreat. Thanks, Evan. EllisThank you, Brennan. DeniYou can now find SSI Live on TunIn radio and on popular podcast directories like Stitcher—and at the iTunes Store. If you have any comments on our podcast, thoughts on what you’d like to see addressed, or a response to something you heard here at SSI Live, please go to our website. That’s SSI.armywarcollege.edu. Find me, John Deni, in the staff directory, and send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you. For the SSI Live podcast series, I’m John Deni. Thanks for listening.  

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Colonel Kyle Marcrum and Lieutenant Colonel Paul Milas on the SSI-developed China Strategic Competition Seminar. The conversation explores the origin and relevance of the seminar, highlighting the initiative to educate Army officers on understanding how the People’s Republic of China implements its instruments of national power, its objectives, and its activities both in the Indo-Pacific and globally. Brennan DeverauxWelcome to SSI Live. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m your guest host, Major Brennan Deveraux, filling in once again for John Deni, who is on sabbatical this academic year.I’m joined today by my SSI coworkers, Colonel Kyle Marcrum and Lieutenant Colonel Paul Milas. Colonel Marcrum is new to SSI, as well as to the China Landpower Studies Center (CLSC). He is an Indo-Pacific foreign area officer (FAO) who served at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the office of the Secretary of Defense, and as a military attaché in China, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Taiwan.Lieutenant Colonel Milas is also a foreign area officer at SSI and has been our resident Director of African Affairs for the last few years. He previously served at the US Embassy in Rwanda and at the Defense Intelligence Agency.For this conversation, we’re going to be exploring the SSI-developed China Strategic Competition Seminar (CSC). Colonel Milas, I’m going to start with you.I’ll just start with the most straightforward question. What is the China Strategic Competition Seminar or what we call it around the office, CSC. Paul MilasThanks, Brennan. So, the CSC seminar is designed to provide foreign area officers, FA [Functional Area] 59 strategists, and really the everyday warfighter with the tools really necessary to compete with China in this world of great power competition. The course focuses on understanding how the PRC implements its instruments of national power, its objectives, [and] its activities both in the Indo-Pacific and globally.And the aim of the course is to identify opportunities for our army to counter China’s narrative, counter their initiatives, and advance US interests. DeverauxIf I could follow up, what was kind of the spark that led to this class and how long has it been going? MilasSo I became involved with this in early 2023 when I first got to SSI. The year prior, and sometime before that, some of the senior Indo-Pacific foreign area officers identified that there was possibly a gap in our China knowledge due to the reorganization and consolidation of the FAO areas of concentration in the Indo-Pacific. And they recognize that all Indo-Pacific FAOs really need to have a baseline knowledge of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] to better support the joint force.And they saw that some of that was possibly lacking due to that consolidation. Brigadier General Pat Teague, the SDO-DATT (Senior Defense Official- Defense Attache) in Beijing at the time, has really been the main driver of this course and implementing this course. And so, again, a few years ago, about 2022 or so, the USARPAC (US Army Pacific Command) Security Cooperation Division wrote an information paper with an idea to create a course similar to the European Russia Way of War course, but [for] this one we focus on the PRC.And so, during that whole process of thinking about a course, recognizing that we need more China expertise, they reached out to the Army War College and asked us to develop a curriculum because we are an academic institution. And at the same time all this was happening, SSI decided to stand up a China Landpower Studies Center.And so it only made sense to bring them into the fold and start developing this course, leaning on their China expertise. And so with Josh Arostegui, the [chair] of the China Landpower Studies Center, we started developing a curriculum, the lessons, syllabus, schedule, and the program of instruction. And so we ran our first pilot course in February of 2024. DeverauxThe course itself, who’s teaching, is this you and Josh who [are] teaching the course? How many students are out there? Is this a TDY [temporary duty] kind of experience? MilasSo we run two courses per year. Each course is about two weeks long. Our first course was ten days. We adjusted that initial course, the pilot course, shortened it down to eight days. And then we finally settled on the nine-day model that we’re running now. And so we run that 9-day model twice per year.And so this course is really geared to Indo-Pacific foreign area officers. And so we’ll TDY those individuals throughout the region back to Fort Shafter in Hawaii to attend the course. But then we also pull in individuals who are on island, some strategists that are on island, some typical normal warfighters that are on the island. Most recently, we had a 25th ID [Infantry Division], G-2 person that attended our course. And so it was great having her perspective within the course.And so really, we’re pulling from anybody, captain, major, or even lieutenant colonels who really need China expertise, but focusing primarily on the Indo-Pacific foreign area officers. As far as our teaching team, we primarily rely on folks from our China Landpower Studies Center. So we’ve got a few research professors and instructors that will come out to the course to assist with the teaching.But then we also bring in TRADOC (US Army Training and Doctrine Command) G-2 personnel. We rely on USARPAC personnel. We’ll have General Clark, the USARPAC Commander come in and provide his insights on the course. The Deputy Commanding General, Major General Winter, attended the course and provided his perspectives. And we’ll also bring in some of those other resident and island folks, strategists, G-5, G-2 personnel to help instruct the course. Kyle MarcrumI would also add that, you know, this was my first attendance to one of these courses, and I was really impressed with the fact that, you know, this is a course intended to teach FAOs about China, but then we also have the people, senior leaders, like the USARPAC commander, came to not only talk about what his goals and objectives are in the Indo-Pacific, but also to kind of talk about his perspective.We had all sorts of senior leaders. We also had senior attachés from the field coming in, such as Brigadier General Teague, who’s currently, he was the senior defense official and defense attaché in Beijing. He’s now in New Delhi. But then we also brought in Colonel Warr, the Army attaché in Beijing. It allowed them to share their knowledge and experience and things like, you know, Colonel Warr, just talking about the recent Chinese parade that had just happened.Maybe that means for the United States and others in the region, it really helps to bring that home for these brand new FAOs, which is really our target audience, is FAOs who are coming through the pipeline, really helps them to understand what’s going on inside the embassies and out in the field, as well as hearing from the commander, USARPAC, seeing how they can better inform the commander, help him to make his decisions. DeverauxWhen you start talking about the actual content of the class, what level of classification are you able to go to in there? MarcrumYeah, that’s a great question. So we mainly do unclassified instruction, but we are able to go up to secret level. The main thing with it being primarily unclassified, and I’ll emphasize this almost all the time, is that the Chinese, there’s so much about China that’s out in the unclassified realm that we really can use to understand and better understand their decision-making process and their objectives in the region. MilasAnd with that classification level, the great thing about teaching, mostly at the unclassified level, is that when our students leave the course, they can share what they’ve learned in the course with either their other fellow soldiers, FAOs, but they could also share it with international partners as well. So we kind of get a common understanding and common learning through what we teach in the course with our partners and allies. DeverauxI think that’s a great point. And it’s not just the students’ ability to share, and this is one of the things I actually really like about CLSC, and it’s been really helpful for me learning about China is because we operate primarily in my unclassified side, we can put that information just out to the world, and it really builds on, instead of stuff being stovepiped, maybe in a G-2 shop or on island, where they’re really, that is their focus.It gets it out to the force. And just as important, it gets it out to academia, it gets it out to other people who will weigh in back and say, “actually, no, I disagree. Here’s why.” And I think the CLSC really helps the conversation. MarcrumYou talked about how the CLSC, you know, builds the knowledge and distributes it to the force. I think that the CLSC, as a group of full-time researchers, is able to expand and build on the US Army’s knowledge of China. And then this, among other forums, you know, our publications in this class and others helps us to bring that knowledge to the force.And I think that that’s a key component is, you know, spreading the knowledge, making sure that we’re all aware of what we’re trying to achieve, what China’s trying to achieve, and how we compete with that. DeverauxI know for me personally, the aspect of them, almost all the researchers speaking Mandarin. Or reading Mandarin, I don’t hear them speaking it a ton, but I know they’re reading. It is invaluable for even projects I’m working on where I talk with Josh and he goes, “Oh, hey, actually, here’s what China thinks about that” and sends me over what China published on it.That’s awesome, and it totally changes my assertion to here is actually what’s happening. I will transition us a little bit to this last class you guys just did. And actually, Colonel Milas, I think this is probably your last class. Colonel Marcrum you already said was your first. Can you talk a little bit just about the experience of this last class and you know, what you thought kind of handing off this big project? MilasAbsolutely. So this was the fourth iteration of the course that we just executed. And it happened in early September at Fort Shafter. We had 17 students in this class. Total throughout the four classes that we’ve had, we’ve trained about 90 or so, foreign area officers and warfighters. And so this course model, we’ve refined each of our courses through senior leader feedback and from student feedback.So I think this course was probably one of the better ones that we’ve executed in the model that we used. Just to let you know about kind of the construct of the course is that we start off with the PRC broad macro level, talking about PRC instruments of national power. Then we discuss PRC activities and relationships in a regional and also a global context.After that, we transitioned more into the instrument, the military instrument of National power, focusing on the PLA [People’s Liberation Army]. And then the last part of the of course, we transitioned into understanding US strategy in the Indo-Pacific and the role of land power. And the last day and a half of the course, we do an exercise that allows the students to put everything that they’ve learned throughout the previous eight or nine days into practice in kind of an experiential exercise that they can apply to possibly what they’ll do in their future assignments. DeverauxIf I can follow up, two things, I’ll start with, I know you get a lot of feedback, you said you get feedback from the students. I’ve seen you managing those surveys and putting together the nifty charts for the seniors. I’m curious. You’ve got 90 through the course now. Are you getting any feedback from the field? Have you had the, you know, that lieutenant colonel who was in seminar one or seminar two reach back and say, “hey, I really like this” or “hey, I’ve been telling people about,” or “this skill really applied to” kind of feedback, that real world post-course feedback. MilasWe have. I’ve received several emails from students from previous classes just highlighting the importance of the course, how much they learned and how much it’s helped them in their positions that they’re in now. Most of the course right now is by word of mouth, and that’s how people generally find out about this course and the feedback that we’ve received, and the people who reach out to us have heard that it’s a great course from those people who have previously attended the course. So we do have plans to do, you know, long-term surveys to get a better understanding of how our material and how our lessons are impacting them in their future positions. But right now, anecdotally, yes, we’ve had a lot of good feedback and, and this, of course, being very beneficial. DeverauxI think that the anecdotal feedback might not look as good on a PowerPoint slide as that, that survey. But from personal experience, actually hearing someone say, you know, down the line “this was useful,” means so much more than, you know, “I checked box number four,” you know, “strongly agree,” which is also important, not to disparage it, but that longer-term impact, I think, is really valuable.I know you’re limited on how many people are attending the course, and I don’t know if that’ll eventually adjust, but are these students provided some pre-reading material? And then looking at it from an interested candidate who would love to take a TDY to Hawaii but probably will not get approved, is there any way if, say, I wanted just the syllabus to kind of see what people are working or, or the reading, would you guys be opposed to having that be something that’s open to… MarcrumI would be very much open to it. One of the main things that we like to provide is the resources so others can do their own homework. We do provide pre-readings for the course and readings throughout the course, although it’s not very heavy. But what we do provide during the course is a lot of recommended readings for [the] future.And so we could provide those to anyone that wants to reach out to us by email. And we can provide you with the full list. Definitely happy to help anyone, even if they’ve got a specific question or anything like that. We’re always, I mean, that’s what we do at the CLSC is we help the Army build their knowledge. DeverauxI think it might be worthwhile to even just pen a short little article on what the CSC seminar is for the CLSC website. And then, if you’re open to it, maybe even have the syllabus either available, or to your point, it could be by request, but I’d be curious to see it. So I might be one of those first to offer that. MilasSo something that we have for the course and it’s really just for the students who have enrolled. We’ve got an MS Teams site, a Microsoft Teams site that is basically a repository of all the information that the students receive throughout the course, all the lesson plans of the PowerPoints, the readings, the syllabus, something that they can go back to.And it’s still active even after they graduate the course. And we tell them upon completion of the course that they’re more than able to pull that stuff from those sites and share it with their counterparts. We do, like Colonel Marcrum said, we do think that the CLSC is that organization that is there to spread knowledge, and this course is just part of that sharing knowledge with the broader force. DeverauxColonel Marcrum, if I can transition over to you, just real quick and you already kind of talked about it a little bit, but this was your first course doing the seminar, the CSC seminar. Can you talk a little bit about the trip out there, how you kind of fit into the puzzle? MarcrumOne of the things I think, you know, as I said, I was really impressed with the senior leaders that are that participate in it, but also think that we’ve done a really good job. Paul’s done a really good job, of kind of shaping this to where we have the experts come in to teach. One of the things that I definitely impressed by, you know, I’ve a long time worked with Rick Gunnell. He was one of the instructors on this latest one, along with Peter Wood and they did it. Just their depth of knowledge really helps to bring that home. I think a big part of it is the students do the reading before. They come in, there’s a brief presentation, but the question & answers is where we really get a lot of knowledge that come from the instructors, help the students to learn more in-depth and more in their area.I think that I was really impressed by the level of knowledge of these two individuals. I think that with my coming in, I can lend a little bit of that experience from the field. Although particularly my knowledge from Beijing is pre-COVID. It’s a little bit dated, but we have, you know, this I’m able to hopefully kind of tie together the research and the experience part of it.I’m hoping that, in this next one, we can continue to make this seminar more practical. You know, these are the target audiences, the FAOs and the strategists going to the field kind of talking about how the competition will play in their future jobs. I’d like to see a little bit of that. I would definitely like to see a lot more students.And we do have a limitation on the number that we can hold, but we’d like to be able to fill that in. And then one of the other things not kind of related to the seminar, the strategic competition seminar will stay, but also looking at more adaptive classes. We want to bring that knowledge to the field, thinking about how we can have versions of this seminar that we can export to other locations.So kind of linking through all of those is where I see my role coming into this. Paul’s done a phenomenal job of shaping this one. I think the strategic competition seminar is fairly set with just the, you know, the practicality of it coming from, for these students. But I think that, going forward, it’s really kind of thinking about how we can get more people to learn this knowledge. MilasOne thing, I’d be remiss not to say is that we, like Colonel Marcrum, said, we do rely on a wide variety of faculty. Like I mentioned previously, the TRADOC G-2 and Peter Wood, but the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies APCSS, that’s one of the organizations that’s been integral to developing this course and specifically Colonel Matt Kent out there.He was involved early on with developing this course, and he opened up the APCSS doors and invited the course in. So each course we spend a half a day there at the center to hear from their experts as well from their faculty, provides us with a different perspective, not the military perspective, but more of an academic perspective.And so it’s a real valuable visit and a real valuable time that that we get to spend out there to learn and hear from those experts as well. DeverauxCOL Marcrum made a point about the kind of the mix of the academic and the professional. I think there’s something to be said that I remember going through the Basic Strategic Art Program for strategists, and one of the things we we’re very curious about as that coming into the new functional areas, “how do I communicate with the GO (General Officer)?” “What’s my role on the staff?” Some things like that.So I think the inherent value of having a senior foreign area officer, even if it’s not in their region, but a senior foreign area officer, having the actual commander or a deputy commander come in, a G2 come in, really adds to what you’re already talking about with the hey, here’s the expertise that you’re getting from the academic side. MarcrumYou know, one of the things, and Brigadier General Teague talked about this during the seminar, but one of the things, you know, particularly for the FAOs and the strategists, when you’re transitioning, you know, you’re a captain, you’re used to working at the battalion level. And then you suddenly transition to being a foreign area officer. You suddenly are thrown from the tactical to the strategic, grand strategic level.And so, learning how to communicate at the strategic level, the interagency level, how do I talk to the ambassador as their advisor on military affairs on this country? And on the United States? How do I talk to the ambassador? What can I present to the USARPAC Commander that is useful information for him? Because, you know, he’s got a G2 that’s presenting him intelligence.What am I lending to that commander or to whatever agency? What am I doing that is helpful to them? I think it’s such a huge change for the FAOs and the strategist and other officers as they transition to this strategic area, that it’s very helpful to hear from the seniors that have made that transition. The researchers and the academics have this fountain of knowledge, but translating that knowledge into practical, how do I use that in the field, is where these senior [leaders]come into play.And that’s where I hope that I can continue to lend to the course. DeverauxLooking at my transition as a strategist, I was lucky enough to bounce to a couple of different organizations, but I had some peers whose most senior experience was at a battalion, a very tactical battalion, and their first job as a strategist was on the Joint Staff or at a combatant command. And they’re doing great, and they’re really smart people. That’s why they do their transfer. But you want to talk about a culture shock, just the ability to talk to a colonel in their field who’s done that transition, or to talk to a general officer who’s on that receiving end, who says, “here’s how I receive information,” or the G2 who says, “here’s how I integrate with the rest of the staff” I think is really valuable. MarcrumI was very fortunate in my FAO career. My first true FAO assignment was at the Defense Intelligence Agency. And I know some people will argue that that’s not an advantage, but I think it very much was because when I went to DIA, and I was studying Chinese leadership and decision-making, and then they had the 2012 leadership transition, and I was briefing all of these people in the Pentagon, all these senior officers.I had a time of transition where, you know, I was able to learn and see how these briefings are done, and then I’m the one doing the briefing. It really did give me that transition time. But not all FAOs are able to have that kind of transition experience.And particularly with some, you know, some countries that we have our senior defense officials in, and we go straight from you are a fully trained FAO major, and congratulations, you’re the SDO-DATT [senior defense official and defense attaché] at this embassy. And welcome to the deep end. And so I think that there is a lot of value to be said for that side of it as well.I mean, again, our primary objective is to teach competition with China, right, and how that can play out in the field. But also making sure that they’re able to do that in a way that’s useful to the commander, I think is great. DeverauxI think all around the CSC seminar sounds really interesting, and I’m disappointed that in the two years I’ve been here, I’ve not been invited to Hawaii to attend. Like I said, I have been to presentations about the upcoming course, and I have seen lots of slides about how successful the course was. It’s awesome. It’s a good program.And I love that SSI was able to take the lead on it, because I think that there is a perception that SSI, the Army’s think tank, is full of, you know, people locked in their office doing a bunch of research, which isn’t necessarily untrue, but it’s so much more than that, right. And so I thought this was a great opportunity to highlight how our researchers coordinate and work with and support the force, whether that’s through engagements that I know that they’re having or through the publications, you know, where they’re sparking conversation. And this was a unique aspect where it’s literally partnered with the force, going out to the island and teaching, not the War College students that, you know, we also work with and teach, but teaching the foreign area officers, the strategists, other folks on the island, you know, and sharing that expertise. So I think that was really valuable.And then if I could ask one last question on the course. This sounds like such a good model, specifically for the Indo-Pacific FAOs. Do you think that it’s replicatable? You know, could this be something as a tool for Middle East FAOs? You know, for Europe FAOs? Is this something that big Army needs to relook and say, “hey, is there something else we need to add in the pipeline to try to make sure our FAOs are being exposed to this big thoughts, big thinking, strategic competition?” Beyond just the language, the culture and whatever else is in the pipeline. MarcrumI’m biased as a [Indo-Pacific] FAO that, you know, [a] Mandarin speaker, [that has] always been studying well, been studying China my entire FAO career. I think that all of our FAOs going to all embassies need to learn about how competition plays out across the globe, and I think that there’s something to be said about strategists, you know, being the Army’s planners, having you come in and learn how this goes, I think there’s a lot to be said for that. At the end of the day, though, you know, we are in a real world that has funding limitations.And so I think that it would be great to say that every combatant command needs to be funding one of these courses designed for their FAOs or for their strategists or for their staff. It would be great to get all the staff. In the real world of funding and time constraints, I think that that’s a decision that the combatant commander would be better to make.But again, I’m heavily biased. I think that if we want to really compete, if we really want to see US objectives succeed, I think that this combination of FAOs and strategists talking about how we compete overseas, having not only the instruction, but also getting those people in the same room where we can kind of talk through each of these problems. I think that’s hugely beneficial to the force.I have, I talked earlier about how I want to do the adaptive courses, how we want to kind of get, you know, smaller, more boutique classes that can kind of some… maybe we can accomplish it that way. But yeah. MilasTo echo what Colonel Marcrum said, this course is absolutely valuable for any FAO, regardless of their region, with the current model that we have, you know, we are limited in the number of students that we have due to financial constraints, but we have had other AOCs, other area of concentration FAOs, within the course. I think today we’ve had about ten outside of Indo-Pacific FAOs attend the course.So we are hitting some of them as able. But I think there is definitely a need to have something like this at other combatant commands. MarcrumI think you brought up a great point, Paul, when you talked about the other regions being in the class. I think that also really lent a lot of value and helped feed a lot of discussion when we had, you know, the AFRICOM (US Africa Command) FAO there to be able to talk through a lot of those things. Not that you’re not there for that course, but it helps to feed those conversations as we continue to go.I also want to emphasize, you know, we are limited on class space, but I want to encourage even non-FAO non-strategists that are in Honolulu to apply to go to the course. I think that there is a lot of benefit to having, like you said earlier, you know, we had a G-2 officer, we’ve had targeting officers, these individuals in the course helped to lend a lot to the value of the course itself.But also we, you know, we want to get the knowledge out there. And if there’s room in the classroom, we definitely want to have those people as part of it. DeverauxI think there’s some underlying logic on how we build seminars at a Command General Staff College or the War College, where we get that diverse perspective for a reason, because we don’t all look at the problem, you know, and just see nails that we need to hit with our hammer. And that’s great. I love those guys, and I love having them in my group. But having those diverse perspectives is probably really valuable, just for the conversation.Gentlemen, I really appreciate the time. I think that this is a valuable opportunity and I hope people take advantage of it. I hope to see it grow in whatever way we can. And maybe that first step is just helping people get access to some of the material. Material from the course or just material that we’re doing our best to put out, like we talked about on the unclassified side.So, I would encourage our listeners to check out the China Landpower Studies Center website. You’ll see a lot of good stuff coming out of there. And maybe something on the CSC seminar. I don’t know, it’s not up to me, but I thank everybody for the time. Listeners, for more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, Conversations on Strategy, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Brian Carlson, a research professor of Indo-Pacific security studies for the China Landpower Studies Center, on Central Asia. The conversation highlights two drastically different engagements Carlson recently had, one in Kazakhstan and the other at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in southern Germany. The discussion explores the nature of China-Russia relations and the significance of the Central Asian states in the context of great-power competition.Keywords: Central Asia, China-Russia Relations, Great Power Competition, Color Revolution, Kazakhstan, Foreign Area OfficerBrennan DeverauxHello. Welcome to SSI live. I’m your guest host, Major Brennan Deveraux. I’ll be filling in this year for Dr. John Deni while he’s on sabbatical finishing his book. I’m joined today by Dr. Brian Carlson. He’s a research professor of Indo-Pacific Security Studies for the China Landpower Studies Center here at the Strategic Studies Institute. Dr. Carlson received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and his expertise lies in the China-Russia relations.For this conversation, we’ll be diving into Brian’s recent travel and engagements abroad, with the aim to dive a little deeper into some of the nuance of studying Russia-China relations. And I’ll jump right in. You recently took a trip to Kazakhstan. Can you tell me about the event you attended and its significance to your work? Brian CarlsonSure. I went to Kazakhstan to attend the capstone conference for a program called US CARNet, that’s CARN Central Asia Research Network, and it’s sponsored by the State Department. The goal of this program is to build a network of Central Asian scholars who study China’s activities and influence in their region, and then to connect that network with American scholars who study similar topics.And I’ve been involved with this program for about three years now. In April of 2023, before I was working for the Army War College, this program sent me to the region, and I went to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. And I was one of four American scholars who went there during that period. We went at different times. We all spoke about China’s activities in the region.I spoke in particular about China-Russia relations in the region because that’s my research focus. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, I was able to speak at universities. In Tajikistan, the government wouldn’t allow that. I could only have individual meetings with scholars. And that’s probably because of all the Central Asian countries Tajikistan is the most “captured” by China. So that was two years ago.Another part of this program is that they select four Central Asian scholars who focus on China’s activities in their region, and then they connect them with American scholars who also focus on such topics. And in this case, there were four scholars, two from Kazakhstan, two from Kyrgyzstan, and all of them spent one semester in the United States working with an American professor and then coauthoring an article.I wasn’t able to take part in that part of it, but one year ago I went to [Washington] DC and met with them when they came to the United States at the start of their program. And so I’ve been familiar with their activities. This was the capstone conference. So all four of the scholars presented their research findings along with their coauthors.And so that was the first day. On the second day, we had discussion roundtables about various topics in the region. DeverauxWhat were some of the major takeaways of the conference? Big points for our listeners. CarlsonIt was interesting on the first day to hear about some of the research that the scholars were doing. They were looking at topics like China’s investment in infrastructure in Kyrgyzstan, and to what extent that helps along China’s interests of expanding connectivity and serving the interests of the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative], and to what extent it helps Kyrgyzstan with its own economic development.And the finding was that this infrastructure is really helping China with its goal of using Central Asia as a transit corridor, but it isn’t really benefiting Kyrgyzstan’s economic development to the extent that has been promised. So that’s just one example. Other topics looked at China’s use of history to try to support its narrative in the region, China’s use of Instagram in the region to promote its image, and then China’s use of education to try to expand its soft power in the region.And so those were some interesting research projects. And then I’ll skip ahead to the third day, because the scholars talked about how they are facing an increasingly constricted environment in the region. It’s more and more difficult for them to speak openly about China and Russia and what they’re doing in the region. If they publish research that is in any way critical of China or Russia, they’re likely to face some resistance from the government.And this is different from the way it was a few years ago. So the environment is becoming more constricted, and so that that is a concern. And that was one big takeaway of the conference. And also, that there is a kind of division among Central Asian scholars who look at China in the region. The ones who took part in this program are naturally a little bit more pro-Western. But there were also scholars in attendance who are more pro-Chinese and apparently in some of the side conversations, some of the more pro-Chinese scholars were critical of their pro-American or pro-Western counterparts for being true to pro-Western. So you see a real division emerging in the region. So that was a big takeaway. And then, I can go ahead and talk next about the presentation that I gave.DeverauxYeah, sure. I am going to want to pull on that thread. But real quick, why don’t you talk about your presentation that you did at the conference. CarlsonI spoke about China-Russia relations in Central Asia, and some of the basic points I made were that, number one, a lot of people have said that Central Asia could be a real source of tension in the China-Russia relationship. But so far, they’ve done a pretty good job of smoothing over those tensions and working together.And I would argue that this is because, number one, their interests in the region largely coincide. They have some potential sources of friction. But they have a lot of shared objectives, like limiting American influence in the region, promoting stability, preventing color revolutions and so forth, and counterterrorism, of course. And secondly, they share an overriding objective of opposing the United States and trying to revise the international order. And so they don’t want to let possible sources of tension like Central Asia interfere with the pursuit of that larger objective.I would say that some trends that we have seen recently are that China’s influence in the region is undoubtedly rising. And as I say, they’ve done a pretty good job of smoothing over any possible sources of tension with Russia that might result from this.But, at the same time, there are indications that Russia’s influence might be weakening a little bit. It’s distracted by the war in Ukraine. It’s not necessarily able to play the main security role in the region that it’s always played. And so over time, the question is whether China will want to get more involved in regional security. And if they do that, how will Russia react?Right now, China’s regional security presence is rather small. It’s confined mostly to a couple of military installations in eastern Tajikistan that are mostly designed to protect China’s western border and make sure that sources of instability don’t flow from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and on into China.So that’s the big question for the future. How much will China’s influence in the region expand? How much will they use that influence to try to become more powerful in the region? And how will Russia respond? And will they continue to maintain a good relationship, or will there be tension that will emerge? DeverauxOkay. A lot to unpack there. It sounds like it’s a really fruitful event. There’s one thing I really want to kind of pull on [that] you talked about. First, you use this term captured, which I think is a really interesting thing. I’d like [for] you to talk a little bit more about that. But we talked about this idea that we’re having different conversations in the West than they might be able to have in Central Asia.Western analysts and venues have long discussed the implications of the potential strengthening of Russia-China relations. We often use powerful words like partnership, collusion, although we never really say allies. How is this discourse surrounding the relationship being handled in Central Asia? You kind of already talked about the limited ability in certain places and the differing perspectives.But more generally outside of the conference. Any thoughts on that distinction? CarlsonYeah. First, on the question about Tajikistan being captured by China. I think this is apparent in a number of ways. When I went there two years ago, I saw the new Parliament building that’s being built there in the capital, Dushanbe, and it’s being built by China. China is funding the construction of Tajikistan’s new parliament building, which is an amazing thing.China has invested heavily in Tajikistan. They have gold mines and other mining operations there. They’ve built a lot of roads and tunnels and other infrastructure. And of course, as I mentioned already, they also have this, military presence in eastern Tajikistan, which is, by the way, is for the People’s Armed Police, not for the, main military force, not for a People’s Liberation Army base, but a PAP, People’s Armed police base.But again, the objective is, is to prevent, instability spilling across China’s western border. So for all those reasons, China’s influence has grown very steadily in Tajikistan. Now, Russia has military, has a big military base in Tajikistan. And so it still has the ability to project influence. It’s a little bit unclear whether Russia is fully staffing that base right now, or whether it needs those forces for operations in Ukraine.But the clear trend is that China’s influence there is growing and Russia’s is weakening. And it’s very hard for the United States to exercise influence there now. So that’s the first part of the question. Now on the overall relationship and how it’s perceived in Central Asia. I agree, I would not call the China-Russia relationship an alliance. At least not in the full sense of the term. They don’t have a mutual security guarantee that they offer each other. But nevertheless, they’re working very closely together. They call themselves strategic partners, and they are cooperating very closely, as seen most recently in the big military parade in Beijing that was attended by Putin as well as Kim Jong un and other leaders.And they are they’re cooperating, as I say, to try to oppose the United States and weaken the existing international order and try to revise the international order in a way that gives them more sway, especially in their own regions and in the world at large. And so they’re very strongly committed to this relationship. Now, in Central Asia, the countries there have long, with varying degrees of success, tried to pursue what’s called a multi-vectored foreign policy.So they want to not fall entirely in with one outside power or another. They want to try to be friends with everyone, work together with everyone, balance outside powers against each other so that they cannot be dominated by any external force, but in that way maintain their independence and sovereignty. And this is always a difficult balancing act for them.I would say largely they’ve done a pretty good job. But it’s becoming more and more challenging, I would say, because China’s influence is expanding rapidly, which in some ways is a big opportunity for them. They can get Chinese investment in infrastructure and other areas that can help them with economic development. At the same time, they have always tried to kind of balance China and Russia against each other.But now that’s difficult because China and Russia are so close to each other that it’s hard to sort of drive wedges between them or balance them or play that, play them off against each other. And, it’s very hard for the United States in Europe to play a really meaningful role there, because Central Asia is far away. It’s not high on the list of priorities.Russia and China are right there. They, the Central Asian countries can’t avoid who, you know, they can’t choose their neighbors. And China and Russia [are] right there. And so they can’t afford to alienate either one of them. But interestingly, one notable thing is that the Russian invasion of Ukraine did cause some concern in Central Asia about Russia’s possible intentions toward the Central Asian countries, especially in Kazakhstan, which shares a long border with Russia and has a fairly large ethnic Russian population in the north.So Kazakhstan worries that Russia could impinge on Kazakhstan’s sovereignty at some point in the future if the relationship went bad. And so three years ago, when Xi Jinping was in the region, he said that China supported the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other countries in the region. And so that was seen, by some outside analysts, as an attempt by the Central Asian countries to enlist China in supporting their sovereignty and territorial integrity against any possible incursions by Russia.So you still do see these attempts by the Central Asian countries to kind of play the two countries against each other. But at the same time, as I say, with China and Russia so close to each other, there’s not much room to kind of, play them off. DeverauxYeah, not too many seams to drive in there.You mentioned something I think is worth pulling on [is] the low priority, and I understand geography plays a factor. Geography is important for international relations. These Central Asian countries are right there in the sphere of influence, to your point, of these other great powers. But the West often talks about the battlegrounds of great power competition, not where we want to necessarily fight the war, but this battle for influence. And as we look at the areas, that the nations like United States, China, and Russia can be competing for influence. We often talk about Africa. South America definitely comes to mind. And I thought about, historically, some South American countries when you talked about playing the great powers off each other.I think you and Evan Ellis could probably put together an interesting piece doing a comparison of that strategy and see how it plays out. Is Central Asia one of these competition spaces, or does geography really limit the West’s ability to have much more of a footprint in there, if that’s something that the United States or the West more broadly wanted to do?Stated another way, is Central Asia getting the attention that it deserves? CarlsonIt is a challenging region for the United States because the priorities of US foreign policy, going back for decades now have really been Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. And that’s entirely understandable. And by Asia, I’m talking about mostly the western Pacific. And so it’s difficult for the United States to give high priority to Central Asia. But nevertheless, I would argue that it is an arena of competition.And I made the point in my presentation in the region that there are certain things the United States should be concerned about when it sees China’s influence in Central Asia growing. And broadly speaking, I think these fall in three areas: international economy, international security, and international order. And so, in terms of the international economy, as China becomes more and more involved and a driver of economic development in Central Asia, there’s a risk that the Central Asian countries will become economically dependent on China, which will give China a lot of leverage over them.And at the G7 summit a couple of years ago, there was a real emphasis on preventing economic coercion by China. And so that’s a concern that these countries could be subjected to economic coercion in terms of international security, there’s an idea going back more than a century to Helford Mackinder: he who controls the heartland controls the world, ultimately.And so if Central Asian, if the Central Asian states become client states of China, and they become a resource appendage and a power base for China, that could enhance China’s overall power position in the in the coming competition with the United States. And so that’s a concern. It is already a big source of oil and gas for China, and it could be very valuable in the event of a US naval blockade of China to have those secure overland energy supplies.It’s also a source of critical minerals. And so if China becomes so dominant in that region, it could enhance their power in ways that that could be detrimental to the United States. And finally, in terms of international order, as you say, China is trying to build influence around the world, in South America, and in Africa and other places.And it’s trying to get these countries around the world to sign up to China’s vision of international order. And we saw that a couple of years ago when China held the first China Central Asia Summit with the heads of state of all of five Central Asian states. And during that summit, and this was held in Qian China.During that summit, China got all of those leaders to sign on to China’s three global initiatives: the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. And so that raises concerns that Central Asia will drift toward China and toward its conceptions of international order. And so it could end up helping China in its efforts to revise the international order, which, as I say, is, is one of the main points of cooperation with Russia.So for all those reasons, I think Central Asia is really important. It just for reasons we’ve discussed, it’s difficult for the for the United States to compete effectively there. But I think the key is, work on soft power, people-to-people exchanges, encouraging Central Asians to come to the United States, like with this, CARNet program, with the scholars and, the United States traditionally has been a very strong, foreign direct investor in countries like Kazakhstan and other countries in the region.So there’s . . . it still has some economic weight that it can throw around in the region. And so there’s still an opportunity for the United States to play a valuable role in helping those countries resist domination by China or Russia and to stand on their own two feet and protect their sovereignty, which is in their interests and ours. DeverauxInteresting. When you talked about that economic dependence, I thought a lot about Europe in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the conversations on how much Russia can be sanctioned and the damage it could potentially do to Western allies. I just I don’t know if Central Asia has, to your point with the geography, the ability to have as much of an out with the West or the United States as some of those countries closer to Russia did.Question. As we look at the Central Asian states, you talk about, this becoming incredibly important to China as we look at national security, potential great power conflict. How is the stability in the region? And I think about the United States finding itself bogged down in a Vietnam, an Afghanistan, an Iraq, where the Middle East is very important for similar reasons, for access, for resources.Is that a potential problem set for China? Or is that one China could easily either wipe its hands of and walk away? Or is stability not really going to be a major issue pending Russian aggression or something to kind of redraw some borders? CarlsonChina and Russia share a strong interest in Central Asian stability. They support the existing governments. They’re opposed to any kind of democratic revolt, or what they call a color revolution. They want to snuff that out as quickly as possible. And so, they believe that stability in the region and the stability of existing regimes is important to their conception of regional security.If things would really get out of order there, if there would be a major uprising of a terrorist movement, if major instability would spill out of Afghanistan into the region, and if there would be revolts that would threaten the existing regimes in the region, then I think that that Russia and China would seriously consider intervening in the region to try to provide stability.That’s one potential area where China and Russia might cooperate on some kind of military intervention. Now, they hope it will never come anywhere close to that. And China really doesn’t want to get heavily involved in regional security. But if it reached a level where it threatened to spill across the border into China’s northwest region of Xinjiang, then it’s something they would have to very seriously consider.And so this is a big reason why more than 25. Well, about 25 years ago now, they actually it’s 2001. So just under 25 years ago, they established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with China and Russia and Central Asian countries. It’s now expanded to several other countries. But the main mission really originally was to oppose what China calls the three evils of terrorism, separatism, and extremism.And so the organization maintains that objective. So Central Asian stability is very important for China and Russia. DeverauxSo an Arab Spring type event in Central Asia would be the most dangerous course of action for a China [or] Russia? Looking at the problem set then, they would, we would expect some sort of intervention, before something like that could spread and flourish. CarlsonIt depends on how it would happen. There have actually been things kind of like that already. Kyrgyzstan has had a number of revolutions, but it’s resulted in the replacement of the government with another government that China and Russia can work with. So it hasn’t required an intervention. But if it was more destabilizing than that, and it threatened to produce instability, that would spill over the border into China or through Central Asia into Russia.And the situation really got out of control, then I think China and Russia would have to think about intervening. But in general, they don’t like these kinds of color revolutions or anything that threatens the existing regimes. DeverauxInteresting. I think when we talk about influence, and, how the great power competition is going to be played out, I think the region is definitely more important than we give it credit, especially when we look at it through that lens of, what could change in the region and what are the impacts to Russia and China versus what are the impacts to the United States.If I could shift you took another trip recently, getting that travel in, part of the job. No hate. You took a trip out to Germany. A very different event. Can you talk to me a little bit about it? [About] how it was different from your trip to Kazakhstan and kind of what the objectives and purposes were? CarlsonYes. I went to the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. That’s in southern Germany, in the Alps, in a beautiful valley. DeverauxRough travel. CarlsonYes. Not a bad gig. And I was invited to speak to the FAO [foreign area officer] program for Eurasian Security Studies seminar. DeverauxThat’s the foreign area officers? CarlsonThat’s right. So there were American foreign area officers in the class, but also military officers from several countries all around Eurasia, including Central Asia. And this seminar was all about or rather, the seminar was entirely about Eurasian security, broadly speaking. But there was one day that was all on China. And so I was speaking on that day. A former colleague of mine, who’s now a professor at the Marshall Center, spoke on China’s foreign policy and implications for Europe.I spoke on the China-Russia relationship and implications for Europe. So I focused on several of the drivers of the China-Russia relationship, including their shared views on world order, which I’ve discussed a little bit already here. Defense and security cooperation, which has been a major driver of the relationship. Russia has been the main foreign supplier of weapons to China in the post-Soviet era. It’s played a major role in helping China with its military modernization. And China and Russia have also carried out a long-standing series of ground and naval exercises, which have been beneficial for China and again, in this military modernization. And then there are questions about what Russia might do for China in the event of a war over Taiwan or some other war in the Indo-Pacific region.So I discuss some of that, and then I also discuss energy cooperation. Russia has lost a lot of its oil and gas markets in the West. And so it’s turning more and more to China. The Power of Siberia gas pipeline has been in operation for a few years now. It’s reached full capacity as of this year. And during the recent meeting between Putin and Xi, there was an announcement, at least on the Russian side, that an agreement has been built.An agreement has been made to build the power of Siberia to send an even bigger gas pipeline. A lot of the details still have to be worked out. It’ll be years before construction begins, let alone, the pipeline is completed and reaches capacity. But if that happens, then Russia will be providing about 100 bcm (billion cubic meters) per year of gas to China, which is a major contribution to China’s energy security and also has a lot of significance in the event of a war over Taiwan or somewhere else in Asia, because if the Navy imposes a blockade on China at the Strait of Malacca and cuts off seaborne shipments of oil and gas, China will be very reliant on overland supplies of oil and gas from Russia and from Central Asia. And so, if this pipeline moves forward, it’s a very major deal. And, Russia already has an existing pipeline, oil pipeline to China. There’s discussion of building another one sometime in the future. And Central Asia, as I said, provides large volumes of oil and gas to China as well.So those secure overland supplies of oil and gas are pretty significant. And so those are some of the topics I discussed. And then, I can also talk about what it means for Europe. DeverauxQuestion for you: If you could talk just a little bit about the tone, and the environment difference. So in Kazakhstan, you talked about, some of the pro-China team, you know, having some side comments about the pro-West team, the inability of certain people to say certain things. Just a very different kind of environment that I would assume you’d get at the Marshall Center.Can you talk about that different environment? And then a little bit with kind of what’s going on in the world. I know tensions are high. It’s not necessarily just steady state operations in the Russia-Ukraine war. I know there was a little bit of an incident and a flare up while you’re out there having the conversation.And I’d be curious how that kind of shifted the tone, or the environment from the, you know, the theoretical, to real world. CarlsonYeah. As it happened I was speaking on September 10th. So that was the day after Russia had sent drones into Poland during the night right before I spoke. And so, as we attended lectures and I gave my lecture that day, we were wrestling with what that meant. And so, yeah, that was a definitely a big question, you know, is this a major turning point in the war? What does it signal and so forth?So yes, I of course, my trip to Kazakhstan and Germany were very different. They were similar in topic. I was talking about China-Russia, relations in both, including Central Asian dimensions. When I was in Europe, I focused more on implications for Europe. And yeah, as I mentioned in Kazakhstan, there was this definite tension between scholars who are more Western oriented and more pro-China oriented. DeverauxI’m assuming not too many foreign area officers are pro-China. CarlsonThat’s right. Didn’t really have that problem in, at the Marshall Center. But, you know, this, as I argued, I do think the China-Russia relationship does have big implications for Europe in a couple of ways. First, and this was really emphasized more by my former colleague who spoke before I did.China is doing certain things to try to influence politics in Europe. They’re trying to co-opt politicians in Europe and try to get them to be more China friendly. They’re trying to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States. They want Europe to become economically dependent on China, both for supply chains of goods that they need, as well as export markets, so that they can expand their influence in Europe and try to prevent Europe from being fully on side with the United States in this confrontation with China.So there’s that aspect to it. And we should watch for China and Russia to cooperate on that element. But then there’s also this big issue that as China and Russia cooperate more closely, and as Russia is already fighting a major war in Europe, and there’s a risk of China invading Taiwan or some other big flare up in Asia, there’s a big concern about what would happen if war’s major wars would break out in both Europe and Asia at the same time.The 2018 National Defense Strategy said that the United States should have the capability to defeat one great power adversary while deterring another. So it sort of implies that the United States doesn’t have the capability at present to fight two great power adversaries at once. So this is a major question. What happens if wars would break out at the same time, or if a war would break out in one theater and then the other great power would opportunistically use that to mount aggression in its region, that would put major strain on the United States. And so the implication for Europe is that there has to be more burden sharing.And we see this already. We see Europe rallying to increase defense spending and support Ukraine further. But there is a big concern that if China were to invade Taiwan and the United States would be very preoccupied in Asia, that it would be difficult for the United States to fully play the security role in Europe in the future that we’ve grown accustomed to.And so Europe has to bear more of the burden of European security. DeverauxAll right. I hope we don’t have to fight two great powers. In fact, I would be okay if we didn’t have to fight either of the great powers. CarlsonAbsolutely. DeverauxBrian, thanks so much. This was really informative. Educational. I am really understanding more about Central Asia, and the biggest thing I’m taking away here is that I don’t know enough. It is definitely going to be one of those regions that I think is much more important than people give it credit. I know I need to hit the books, and I look forward to seeing some of your upcoming research.For our listeners, check out Dr. Brian Carlson’s work. You can look him up on the Strategic Studies Institute website. He publishes quite a bit. And you’ll catch him with the China Landpower Studies Center as well. Listeners, if you want more Army War College podcasts, check out Decisive Point, Conversations on Strategy, CLSC Dialogues, and A Better Peace.

From January to August 2016, Army strategist and SSI National Security Researcher Major Brennan Deveraux served in Iraq in a strike cell as the theater-level rocket artillery liaison for Operation Inherent Resolve, firing over 500 rockets that killed hundreds of enemy fighters. His recently published memoir of that experience, Exterminating ISIS: Behind the Curtain of a Technological War, is a raw, unflinching examination of how the U.S. military leveraged its technological advantage to eliminate the ISIS threat… and the moral dilemmas that come with an unfair fight. Given the central roles that artillery and drones play on today’s battlefields in places like Ukraine, the publication of MAJ Deveraux’s book is particularly timely. Listen here, download to your device, or subscribe below.

A year and a half ago, Javier Milei shocked Latin America by winning a landslide election in Argentina. His libertarian approach and dogmatic style worried many as he assumed the presidency starting in December 2023 – so how have things turned out so far? Dr. Evan Ellis, SSI’s Research Professor of Latin American Studies, joined SSI Live host Dr. John R. Deni to discuss his recent trip to Argentina, during which Dr. Ellis had the opportunity to gauge perspectives on Milei’s track record to date. Listen here, download to your device, or subscribe below.

America’s European allies have played a critical role in providing military assistance to Ukraine. Can Europeans maintain that effort or even increase it if the United States reduces its role? What lessons can the United States learn from the role of its European allies in this war, which might be applicable to future rounds of strategic competition with Russia and China? The National Defense University’s Dr. Lisa Aronsson joined SSI Live host Dr. John R. Deni to discuss their recently published monograph, The Role of America’s European Allies in the Russia-Ukraine War, 2022–24. Listen here, download to your device, or subscribe below.0Dph90W0WyideB2kBohM

Satellites and anti-satellite capabilities have come to play a major role in modern warfare and strategic competition. How are they being used today in the context of the Russia-Ukraine War? What role are government-owned systems and commercial systems playing, and how are Russia and Ukraine leveraging each? How has the war reinforced or created new norms regarding escalation? SSI Live host Dr. John R. Deni spoke with Dr. Ron Gurantz regarding his insightful new monograph Satellites in the Russia-Ukraine War. Listen here, download to your device, or subscribe below.