Decisive Point Podcast

Due to a global trend toward urbanization and Russian and Chinese aggression toward Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, urban resistance to occupation merits greater study. The research here presents a much-needed and unique analysis of Dutch-language primary sources on the Netherlands’ World War II urban resistance to occupation. It provides deeper insights into the occupation experiences of a highly urbanized, densely populated country in which clandestine underground and auxiliary elements played paramount roles in resistance efforts for most of the occupation period. It also illustrates the feasibility of overt, guerrilla-based activity in urban environments during the final phase of a conflict and offers insights into an understudied Landpower activity that modern at-risk countries should develop and hone.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/14/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/20/2003344272/-1/-1/0/DP-4-23-TRANSCRIPT_STRINGER_HOOIVLED.PDFEmail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.Keywords: resistance to occupation, Resistance Operating Concept, underground, special operations forces, megacity

The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 largely prevented conflicts on the continent, but growing pressure on the treaty system could affect the global community and the United States. This article utilizes historical documents and press reports to examine these challenges, which include ice deterioration, unreported and unregulated fishing, resource extraction preparation, and hostilities between treaty members. Given that these challenges involve China and Russia, it is in the United States’ interest to understand them and the potential request for US military intervention to maintain global security and treaty interests.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/12/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/21/2003344884/-1/-1/0/DP-4-24-podcast-transcript-Bridely-Matthews.PDFEmail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.Keywords: Antarctica, Antarctic Treaty, sea levels, unreported and unregulated fishing, global power competition

Taiwan has become increasingly important to the United States and its allies as the Russia-Ukraine War has united democracies against authoritarian expansionism and indeed has developed an international democracy-authoritarianism dynamic in global affairs. Part one of this article clearly outlined the geopolitical, economic, and soft-power reasons why Taiwan is strategically important. Part two reviews the development of US and allied policy statements on Taiwan—from the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the present—and provides policymakers and military strategists with incremental but realistic recommendations for understanding the current dynamic of the region and fashioning responses to deter further authoritarian aggression.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/11/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/30/2003330634/-1/-1/0/DP-4-22_BELLOCCHI_TRANSCRIPT_STRATEGICIMPORTANCETAIWANPART2.PDFEmail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.Keywords: Taiwan, China, Russia, Ukraine, National Security Strategy, Biden

The United States must place Russia’s focus on geographic concerns at the center of future strategy development to build a constructive relationship with Russia and achieve US regional goals. This article analyzes Russia’s geography and historical impact on Russian foreign policy, outlines Moscow’s current foreign policy goals, and highlights underlying concerns for US policymakers and military practitioners. By pursuing policies that support Russian goals of economic integration, mitigation of demographic concerns, and security of national borders, the United States can set the foundation for productive engagement on critical issues.Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/13/Download the transcript: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/18/2003322978/-1/-1/0/DP-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-4-21-IRBY-US-RUSSIA.PDFKeywords: US-Russian relations, geopolitics, military strategy, demographics, diplomacy, geography, economic investmentEpisode TranscriptEmail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.Keywords: strategic inflection point, Ukraine, multidomain operations (MDO), mission command, large-scale combat operations (LSCO)Stephanie Crider (Host)You’re listening to Decisive Point.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, The US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.I’m talking today with Major Caitlin Irby, author of “US Russia Foreign Policy: Confronting Russia’s Geographic Anxieties,” (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/13/) which was published in the autumn 2023 issue of Parameters. Irby is an Air Force Intelligence officer currently serving at Fort Liberty, NC.Welcome to Decisive Point, Caitlin.Caitlin P. IrbyGood morning, and thanks for having me.HostYour article takes on the topic of the future of US Russia policy. What inspired you to write this piece?IrbyWell, I really started studying Russia during my assignment at Special Operations Command, Europe. “I got there in 2015, so it was shortly after the Russian incursion into Crimea and the Donbas. I enjoyed that work so much, I started reading about Russia outside of work and in my free time. And I really started thinking about the fact that the US goal was stated to deter Russia, but we had obviously failed at that a couple of times at this point. And so, I started just sort of thinking about what might actually work in line with all of my reading. And then, unfortunately, we failed again come 2022. So, really, this article is a conclusion of about seven years worth of me thinking about the subject.HostIn your article you address two types of geography. What are they?IrbyGeography is broken into physical and human geography. In the military, we tend to really focus on physical geography: mountains, rivers, key terrains. But there’s also human geography, which can involve the spatial distribution of human characteristics like ethnicity, industry, or political boundaries. It’s fairly unusual for analysts to group all of these together as part of a geographic analysis, so I really wanted to highlight both sides of the fieldHostHow does geography influence Russian leaders?IrbyOn the physical geography side, Russian leaders have historically had to compete with Russia’s insecure boundaries. They’re located on the European Plain. That really creates an insecure homeland. As a response, throughout history, they have had to militarily expand to keep their core safe, and this really manifests in trading space for time when an invading army tries to attack them, such as with Hitler and Napoleon. So, that’s one aspect: expansion is viewed as a matter of national survival.The second major physical geographic factor is their lack of access to warm-water ports. This is particularly relevant today in a globalized economy because Russia can’t export their primary exports, so oil and natural gas, like many countries do via the ocean. They have to use pipelines, which forces them to engage in multilateral agreements, as pipelines cross multiple countries. It generally makes them less stable, and you see this throughout the history of the Russian economy. It goes up and down based off of oil prices because, frankly, they’re just less competitive than countries that have access to warm-water ports.And then on the human geographic side, Russia has a shrinking population and has for a while now. And it’s only getting worse because their birth rate remains below replacement rate. When you combine that with the physical geographic factors, that means there’s fewer soldiers to put into their army to defend their expansive borders and fewer workers to run their economy. So, all of these geographic factors combined create potentially regime-threatening effects within the country. And so, that’s why it really preoccupies Russian leaders.HostSo what are your recommendations for how the United States can acknowledge and address Russia’s geographically derived anxieties to develop future policy?IrbyI broke my recommendations down into three categories. The first one involved economic assistance to enable Russia to develop in a way that decreases their reliance on warm-water ports. I recommended Russia transition from a oil and natural gas export to things that are more viable going into the future, such as renewable energy. Renewable energy is forced via technology to largely be a regional enterprise, which means it’s less competitive than the global oil market, which gives Russia an advantage, at least within its region. I also talked about expanding their agricultural sector because climate change might actually help Russia, they could develop more agricultural land. And then, also, building on their pre-existing manufacturing capability to sort of pivot into manufacturing sectors that are going to remain relevant in the future. They have a highly educated population, a robust industrial base, so they’ll be able to pivot to some of the more advanced manufacturing that is going to be required as the global economy continues to rev up, and that will allow them to remain relevant.My second category of recommendations involves improving governance and investing in advanced technology to address their demographic challenges. Numerous studies have found that the Russian economy is severely hampered by corruption and government inefficiency. And as a counterpoint, countries like Estonia and Latvia started from the same Soviet base, but their per capita GDP now exceeds Russia because they’ve made improvements in these areas. Building on their experience in helping Russia improve in governance areas will help their economy capitalize on what they are doing and not drag them down. Additionally, automation and artificial intelligence could ease the strain associated with the declining population. Germany and Japan already face declining populations, and they are some of the most heavily automated countries in the world. And so, these are US allies that could potentially help a Russian state improve in these areas to make their economy more viable.The third category of recommendations- most controversial category—has to do with giving Russia security guarantees that they’re not going to be invaded so that they don’t need to constantly expand to maintain the security of their state. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US debated a number of ways to expand NATO in a way that wouldn’t antagonize Russia. These included a NATO-Russia charter to have Partnership for Peace be nonbinding. Unfortunately, instead the US just expanded NATO right up to the Russian border, including former Soviet states, and that’s a sore spot for Russia. I sort of recommend revisiting some of those ideas and recommended giving Russia those legally binding agreements of nonaggression that they’ve sought. However, I also recommend that we do that in exchange for limited amounts of denuclearization and demilitarization. Obviously, a heavy cost. It would be difficult to execute. That is sort of the core of getting to the security guarantees.HostDo you have any concluding thoughts you’d like to share before we go?IrbyMy last bit is just that ultimately, I think an increasingly unstable and aggressive Russia poses a variety of threats to US interests. Whether it’s cyber attacks, interfering in elections, irregular warfare and partner States and the growing relationship with China. I think all of that is bad for the United States, and I think that investing in a stable and secure Russia in the future is the best way to secure our interests, which is why I ultimately make these recommendations.HostListeners, you can read the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters Look for Volume 53 Issue 3 (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/). Caitlin, thank you for making time to speak with me today. This was really insightful and informative.IrbyThank you for having me.​HostIf you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

Download this transcript: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/10/2003316775/-1/-1/0/DP-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-WILSON-JONES-CHECHEN-KADYROVTSY-UKRAINE-FINAL.PDFEpisode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)You're listening to Decisive PointThe views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.I'm speaking with Wilson Jones, author of “The Chechen Kadyrovtsy’s Coercive Violence in Ukraine (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/15/).”Jones is currently a defense analyst with GlobalData in London.Welcome to Decisive Point, Wilson.You write about the Chechen Kadyrovtsy—pro–Russian Chechens—and Ukraine. What does research say about military inequality and its relationship to coercive violence?Wilson JonesMilitary inequality theory is something coined by Jason Lyle in his book, Divided Armies. It draws on the ideas of many other researchers who have noticed how if a society has civilian inequalities and civilian divisions, those will be reflected in its military forces. So, if a society has a core ethnic “in” group with special privileges and a minority ethnic group who faces discrimination, then that divided nation will have a similarly divided military. The privileged “in” group is going to have priority for training and the best weapons and equipment and will typically be promoted to powerful leadership positions because they're seen as loyal to the regime.Now, the discriminated group, they'll be treated with suspicion and presumed to be disloyal. And so, they get the worst weapons (and) equipment, and are generally not promoted to leadership positions. They'll also be seen as expendable by their commanders, who typically come from that privileged “in” group. What this contributes to is using these minority ethnic soldiers in high-risk, high-casualty positions as cannon fodder.It also means that minority troops are more likely to experience coercive violence. Now, this term coersive violence refers to when allied soldiers beat torture or execute their own comrades. It's fratricidal violence. It can also involve the threats of these sorts of attacks and is used to enforce discipline or ensure that commands are followed. It can involve, literally, soldiers being forced into battle at the points of bayonets. And Russia and the Soviet Union have a very interesting history with this phenomenon. During World War II, Stalin issued Order 227, which included the infamous phrase “no step back.” It created blocking detachments who had the authority to arrest or execute retreating soldiers.Now, this is not a unique phenomenon to Russian society, and it's documented through many countries throughout history. There are many examples of coercive violence in history, but military commanders will resort to using coercive violence in desperate circumstances when they have few other options to enforce discipline. And when there is military inequality at play, it's more likely that troops seen as expendable will be victims of coercive violence.What's interesting is that soldiers from the discriminated group will produce poor soldiers not for inherent reasons but because discrimination and a lack of training and equipment naturally create demoralized and ineffective troops. So, the idea that one group is naturally superior or inferior often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.HostThrough this lens, tell us about Chechnya and the Chechen wars.JonesSo, Chechnya is a region of the Russian Federation, and its native Chechen society is Islamic and tribal, which is very different from Russia's Orthodox and non-tribal society. In the 1990s, Chechnya tried to cede from Russia in the context of the wider Soviet collapse, and Russia waged two wars to try and prevent this. Chechnya won de facto independence in the first war, but Russia would later reinvade and win the second war, where they installed the Kadyrov family as the local collaborator regime to rule this region.So, Russia's defeat in the first war came at the hands of a very vicious Chechen insurgency. Even though Russia had more troops, overwhelming firepower, and air supremacy, Chechens launched hundreds of guerrilla attacks. They used snipers, IED bombs, and hit-and-run operations. Russian forces lacked human intelligence to selectively target the insurgency and the civilian supporters of the insurgency, which meant Russia resorted to mass violence against the Chechen population, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and only increased the insurgency’s strength. Thousands of Russian troops were additionally killed, although casualty counts from the wars are very inaccurate. What did happen is massive anti-war backlash within Russia. After two years, the Russian military had been humiliated by tiny Chechen forces and was ultimately forced to withdraw.Now in the second war, Russia, adjusted its strategy by working with local pro-Russian Chechens, who had their own militia forces. This included the Kadyrov family and their Kadyrovtsy forces, who would eventually become the principal collaborator faction. Having Chechens fighting with Russia solved many of the problems of the first war, and instead of Russian troops dying, who had been drawn from all over the federation, eventually it would only be local Kadyrovtsy fighters who were handling the conflict. This meant that local ethnic minorities who were not official combatants were dying in the war, and these deaths minimally impacted Russian war support. Additionally, Chechen collaborators combined Russia's superior firepower with essential human intelligence on the ground to crush the insurgency. And the Kadyrovtsy and Chechnya, they were both an essential but an expendable force at the same time.Now the Kadyrovtsy, they also engaged in an extensive course of violence to maintain order within their own ranks. Torture is routine and many thousands of Chechens have been forcefully conscripted into these forces. This is especially true of former Chechen insurgents. An infamous practice is a Kadyrovtsy kidnapping an insurgent’s family to force the insurgent to surrender and continuing to hold that family as a hostage. The threat-of-kin punishment against fighter families is a defining tactic of the Kadyrovtsy.This is a very brutal regime in an impoverished area within Russia, and there's now a diaspora of several thousand Chechens who have fled the region. Kadyrovtsy fighters, however, know that if they desert, their families will be killed in retaliation. Coercive Kadyrovtsy behavior challenges some of the earlier writings on coercive violence and military inequality. I proposed in my paper that this is because of the unique regime within Chechnya.Although Chechens undoubtedly face serious discrimination in Russian society today, the Kadyrov regime has also been given extreme autonomy to rule Chechnya. The Kadyrovtsy both have a great deal of flexibility to act as they please within Chechnya and use these kin-based reprisals to maintain order. However, at the same time, their deaths as minority ethnics really don't matter to Russian society at large or the decisionmakers in Moscow. At the end of the day, they’re still a very important collaborative force to Russian control of Chechnya.HostHow did the Chechen wars relate to Ukraine?JonesThe Chechen wars were the first major conflict in the former USSR, and there's a very strong similarity between Russian warriors in the Chechen wars and in Ukraine today. In both cases, the leadership in Moscow is claiming to be fighting for control of a rightful or historical Russian territory and also to be fighting in the interests of the local population.In Chechnya, this involved a lot of rhetoric about fighting alleged neo-Nazis or Islamic extremists in the area, some of which was based in reality but a lot of which was mostly Russian propaganda. In Ukraine today, we're seeing, again, rhetoric about liberating ethnic Russians in the Donbass from the Ukrainian neo-Nazi government, but this is also a fabrication of Russian propaganda. Since Chechnya has been firmly under Russian control, Kadyrovtsy forces have been fighting in Ukraine for some time. They've been documented since at least 2014 with the initial Russian invasion of Crimea and the war on the Donbas. They've been present in Ukraine since 2014, with the war in the Donbas and the invasion of Crimea, but their presence has significantly expanded since 2022.The Chechen forces that are fighting for Russia in Ukraine are in a central part of Russia's military. They are generally very devoted, very well motivated troops compared to some of the more demoralized Russian conscripts and separatist militias that we observed. What the Kadyrovtsy have been documented doing, specifically, is acting as blocking detachments for Russia. When Russia fights and relies on their demoralized, poorly armed and poorly trained militia men and conscripts, the Kadyrovtsy have been the forces that force these first wave troops into Ukrainian machine guns, effectively. They are corralling masses of Russians and Russian allies into the battle. This is a significant break with military inequality theory. Typically, and this is what Jason Lyle proposed in his book, is that core ethnic troops are the ones dictating orders to minority ethnic troops. Privileged groups give orders to the underprivileged groups.What the Kadyrovtsy are doing in Ukraine is a reversal of this trend. They’re a minority ethnic force, and they are deploying coercive violence against the core ethnic groups. Again, I propose in my paper this is because of the unique regime in Chechnya and the unique relationship between Chechens and Russians. The Kadyrovtsy are a force that have experience applying coercive violence within their own ranks, and because of existing Russian-Chechen ethnic tensions, they're more than willing to beat, torture, and execute Russian conscripts; even though this causes significant Russian casualties, it ultimately helps the Russian army execute their strategy in Ukraine because it lets them extract maximum effectiveness from their poor-quality conscript troops.HostYou offer strategic proposals in your article. Please share them with us.JonesSo, Russia has fielded this two-tiered military force in Ukraine where Russia's core soldiers, it's crack contract troops, the airborne and armor forces who have great weapons equipment and training, and who are very reliable in combat and generally don't get demoralized. There's a second group of disposable Russian forces, who include the separatist militias from the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, the Wagner mercenary forces and other mercenary forces, and poor-quality Russian conscripts who are disproportionately drawn from poor, rural, and minority backgrounds in Russia. The most efficient use of Ukraine's military resources to fight this two-tiered military that they're facing is to target that first group the—competent head that's effectively leading the rest of this lumbering Russian body.My strategic proposals include exploiting divisions in Russia's forces for further opportunities for Ukraine. Prigozhin’s Wagner rebellion this last summer demonstrated that a large portion of the Russian military is unhappy with Putin's direction of the war, and it seems very likely that other commanders could be enticed to desert with the correct offer of financial reward (as well as amnesties for war crimes and protections from Russian reprisals.) If this were to happen, that would bring essential military intelligence to Ukraine, as well as any possible military units that would desert with their commanders.Individual Russian troops have also been demonstrated to be willing to desert. If Ukraine can facilitate this, then it lets them preserve their limited military resources for more determined Russian enemies. More determined enemies include the Kadyrovtsy, who need to be specifically targeted. This is a group that is forcing unwilling Russians into battle. Disrupting the strategy would seriously impact Russia's ability to conduct the war. The Kadyrovtsy are also what ensure Russia's control of Chechnya. If Chechen commanders or political leaders were to be killed and the group were to be shattered, this would destabilize the situation in Chechnya and effectively open a second front, potentially for Ukraine.Ukraine's already proven that they're able to target Russian targets deep inland, such as in Moscow with drone strikes. Strikes on Grozny against critical infrastructure or military targets may also have a similar impact and force Kadyrovtsy units to redeploy home. However, it seems unlikely that another Chechen war or insurgency against Russia will occur at this stage. More realistically, though, there is a Chechen government in exile, which Ukraine recently recognized. This is a secular and anti-radical organization, which is committed to building a functional democracy within Chechnya. There has been a great focus on sending weapons and material aid to Ukraine, but there should also be an application of international diplomacy to build a coalition against Russian aggression.HostDo you have any concluding thoughts you'd like to share?JonesWithin the military and in this academic idea, there's a risk of painting issues in very black and white terms and that troops are either part of the privileged “in” group or the discriminated “out” group. The Kadyrovtsy are an interesting example that demonstrates that these two groups can actually overlap. They're a minority force that's definitely less important than Russia's crack contract troops. But they're much more important than disposable Russian conscripts or Ukrainian militiamen. I think that this highlights a very important area for future research. For Ukraine, understanding Chechnya demonstrates how Russia's sitting government conducts war, and that helps characterize how Russia will act in the ongoing war in Ukraine.In the First Chechen war, as well as in the earlier Soviet-Afghan War, Soviet and Russian forces became demoralized from acceptable casualties. They still retained plenty of military means and resources, but they lacked a coherent strategy for victory and a political will to fight, which prompted a withdrawal. So far in Ukraine, we're not seeing the signs of a comprehensive military victory from either side, but instead, a very slow grinding attrition. Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive has been played up in Western media as a decisive final battle, but this was always an unrealistic characterization.I think it's more likely that we'll witness a result similar to the Chechen wars in Ukraine, either like in the First Chechen War, Russia exhausts itself and withdrawals, or like in the Second Chechen War, Russia's enemy is exhausted and collapses, and a pro-Russian collaborator regime is installed. Helping Ukraine means recognizing that this conflict is not ending soon, that they'll need support and material to outlast Russia in a long war.HostListeners, you can find the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 53, issue 3.Wilson, thank you for making time to speak with me today.JonesThank you for having me, Stephanie. I appreciate it.HostIf you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

Fifty years ago, the US Army faced a strategic inflection point after a failed counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. In response to lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command was created to reorient thinking and doctrine around the conventional Soviet threat. Today’s Army must embrace the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as an opportunity to reorient the force into one as forward-thinking and formidable as the Army that won Operation Desert Storm. This episode suggests changes the Army should make to enable success in multidomain large-scale combat operations at today’s strategic inflection point.Read the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/10/Read the episode transcript below.Email usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil to give feedback on this podcast or the genesis article.Keywords: strategic inflection point, Ukraine, multidomain operations (MDO), mission command, large-scale combat operations (LSCO)Episode TranscriptStephanie Crider (Host)You're listening to Decisive Point.The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.I'm talking with Lieutenant Colonel Katie Crombe and Dr. John A. Nagl today, authors of “A Call to Action: Lessons from Ukraine for the Future Force,” which was published in the autumn 2023 issue of Parameters. (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/10/)Crombe is an Army strategist currently assigned to the joint staff. She was the chief of staff of an integrated research project commissioned by TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command) during academic year 2023 at the US Army War College.Nagl is a professor of war fighting studies at the US Army War College and was the director of an integrated research project commissioned by TRADOC during academic year 2023.Welcome to Decisive Point, Katie and John.John A. NaglThanks, Stephanie, it's good to be here.Katie CrombeThanks, Stephanie.HostKatie, please give our audience some background and tell us about the establishment of TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command).Katie CrombeDuring this study, we went back to the last strategic inflection point that we saw the Army go through. And we recognized that as 1973, following the Yom Kippur War. And so, we began digging a little bit deeper on why that was such an important point for the US Army.What we realized was not only the Secretary of Defense, but the Chief of Staff of the Army at the time, Creighton Abrams, had a revolutionary and evolutionary leader in a guy named General William E. DePuy, who was a combat leader in World War II but also known for being a deep and thoughtful intellectual. They knew that the Army needed to change. They knew that the Army needed to rise to the occasion of the conventional Soviet threat, and they figured that the training and education that the Army had established was not going to get us there.So, they had General DePuy stand up something called Training and Doctrine Command in 1973. And what he did right at the beginning was do a deep study on the 1973 Yom Kippur War through a couple of lenses, both his intellectual lens—you know, he was just deeply interested in that as a curious man— and also, his combat lens, as he lost 100 percent of his battalion in World War II. That deeply affected him, and he wanted to ensure that the US Army never faced this again. So, when he established Training and Doctrine Command, his concept was really to lead training and education and do this through a series of exercises, different ways to train, and also the development of new fighting manuals that the Army would read at echelon. Everyone from the lowest in the squad up to the division commander really could understand how and why people were fighting. And so, we really used that as the genesis.Over the years, TRADOC—as we all know it by now—I think that it's a little bit of a culture thing, but we think of it as more the doctrine side rather than the training side. We don't think of it as a revolutionary kind of think tank–type of organization. And we know now what's going on with Russia and Ukraine and what will (or could, eventually) go on with China, that we need TRADOC to go back to its revolutionary roots and really start thinking about the future. And we think that they have infrastructure and the people and the leadership to do it. It's just that they need to be the drivers of change for the future.HostJohn, what else can you tell us about the study that this article is based on?NaglSo, this study began when General Funk (Paul E. Funk II), then the commander of Training and Doctrine Command, asked the Army War College, about a year ago, to look at this ongoing war between the Russians and the Ukrainians, the biggest war in Europe since 1945. And General Funk believed, as I do, that the lessons available to us from this rare, horrifying event were so important that we would be sadly remiss if we didn't learn from them. And I was privileged to be able to pull together a team of what ended up being 18 students from the Army War College class of 2023 (and) half a dozen faculty members. The leader of the students was Katie, and we looked across the Army's warfighting functions. But even more broadly, we looked at medical lessons we could learn from this war. We looked at airpower and seapower lessons we could derive, and we came up with a, I think, a pretty extraordinary list of ideas that the Army, we believe, can benefit from as it prepares to deter war with China and as it prepares for whatever other fights it may have to engage in in the years and decades to come.HostKatie, you argue that TRADOC “can lead the Army back to the basics of education, training, and doctrine development at the pace that was founded, a pace that drove ruthless prioritization and reassessment.” Please expand on this idea.CrombeWhat we were driving toward in that is when General DePuy created TRADOC, he was really trying to bring training out of these abstract and ambiguous threats and more into a real-time training that focused on imminent threats of the day. The Ukraine War is posing such a real-life experimentation lab for us that we can put into training now as we speak. We can put these young soldiers into learning how to move combat outposts, to be more ambiguous in, you know, hiding from the enemy. And we can take so many lessons right now. We do not need to wait for 10 years to compile these lessons, you know, in the back of a library, eventually put them in a SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) and then transfer them to some kind of training manual, eventually put them into doctrine, and then 10 years from now, we're actually exercising or rehearsing on these lessons learned.Our priority is to make sure that we get these out there in the unclassified environment as the fight is evolving and let units train to the standard that they will need to hold against a similar enemy, whether it be Russia or China, in the future. Another thing that he was really, really focused on, he being General DePuy, was carefully selecting and training soldiers and leaders and them doing this training together. It's not just sending someone out to a national training center one month a year and grading them on a scenario that they know is coming and that they've rehearsed all year. It's putting them in something that is changing by the minute, by the hour, by the day, and putting these leaders and soldiers together to learn to trust each other at echelon; to know that the person above them and below them is going to make the right decision, regardless of how dispersed or distributed they may be; and really build this trust that they'll need to conduct the kind of large-scale combat operation that we see in our future.HostTRADOC was established to transform the Army into the best-trained, -equipped, -led, and -organized land power in the world. What possibilities do you see for this organization going forward?NaglI think it still has all those same responsibilities, Stephanie, and what we are doing is calling the organization back to its roots. So, in 1973, the United States Army was coming off of 20 years of not completely successful counterinsurgency campaigns in Asia, and suddenly proxy force for the United States, using American equipment to American doctrine, found itself challenged by the Soviet Union. TRADOC was created in response to that wake-up call, and we think there's a similar wake-up call today in a very similar historic situation in which the United States is again ending, at least for now, 20 years of counterinsurgency efforts in greater Asia. Thinking anew about large scale combat operations, we think TRADOC has the responsibility to learn those lessons, but we have another organization that's being created in the Army, just in the past five years or so.General (Mark A.) Milley, when he was Chief of Staff of the Army, created something called Futures Command. I'm actually just back from a session at Futures Command. General Jim Rainey (James E. Rainey) and his team are very interested in this study that we've been doing and in what it says about what the Army should look like in 2040. We've been sharing these lessons with him, with Futures Command, and thinking hard about how the Army adapts to this new era of what appears to be persistent surveillance, Katie talked about that a little bit, and increasingly, the artificial intelligence, robotics, human-machine pairing. Those are some of the technologies that we're seeing in their early phases being used in this current war, and we think they have huge implications for what the Army and the entire Department of Defense should look like in the decades that we're preparing for now.HostKatie, what lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine should the American Army be paying particular attention to?CrombeI'll give you kind of our top five lines that emerged from this study, the first one being that organizational culture really needs to embrace this change coming in the Army. And what we mean at the root of that is mission command. It's not just talking to talk, but it's walking the walk with mission command. We've talked about that for the better part of two decades. It's much easier to exercise mission command when you have stadium-sized JOCs (Joint Operations Centers), perfect communication, a perfect sight picture of what's going on in the air and on the ground. That trust does not need to emerge as quickly when you have this perfect communication. So, mission command, although we say we've been practicing that, in reality, we probably are not as good as we could be, and, going forward, it's this trust that is going to be at the core of mission command. It's this training and rehearsing that we need to do together. It's understanding our fighting manuals at every echelon. It's knowing what your boss two up is doing so that if he goes that we can execute. That's what happened in World War II. And we would trust a battalion commander to become a division commander overnight because that person understood the training and the doctrine, and they trusted those around them. And that's the kind of fight that we might see in the future. So first, organizational culture needs to really adopt this mission command and walk the walk with it.The second part, and it's tangential to that, is that we believe the command-and-control nodes will be the first things targeted, and we've seen that throughout this conflict, repeatedly. The Ukrainians have adapted very quickly to this. They have very small command posts, and they move them every hour, every minute. They move them when they need to. They pick up and go. We need to do that. We need to rehearse that at every level across the Army. Along those lines, we need to make sure that our electronic signature is very small. We don't want to be able to be targeted by the enemy. And so, it's just trying to figure out how to, kind of, scramble that and make it more difficult for the adversary.The third one is that large-scale combat operations is going to produce casualties that would make our eyes water, right now, on things that we have not seen since World War II. The two decades of the fight against terrorism have not produced anywhere near the kind of casualties that we would see. So, it's not only moving casualties from a logistics perspective, but it's figuring out how our culture would accept that and the political-military connection—what we would be willing to absorb as a nation?The next one goes with that and it's just really understanding our IRR (individual ready reserve), our regular ready reserve and our retired reserve and how we can ensure that it is a more robust system that we have access to. Everyone hears about the recruiting challenges that the US Army faces right now. It's much broader than recruiting and retention. It's if we did go into this fight, we would need to replace casualties at a rapid rate, and our system is just not built for that.And then, finally, is there's been a fundamental change in the character of war overall. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have changed the way that every military is fighting. It changes the way that we operate as humans in society. Our kids. Us. It's changed everything. And that is especially true in combat. So, we need to embrace that.That's a big part of our article is that we are at a strategic inflection point because of that. We're not going to stop this evolution. It's coming. And so, we need to rapidly figure out how to incorporate these technologies into our combat and our battle formations and make the best use of them. Akin to that is really understanding the defense industrial base, and also the commercial sector and figuring out how we link better up with them knowing that Elon (Musk) can put a satellite up whenever he wants. And so, it's how do we leverage that for our good and make sure that the adversary does not use it for theirs?HostJohn, what lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine should the American Navy and Air Force be learning?NaglWe started off planning to do just an Army study, but we had a Navy civilian who wanted to join the project. And I was interested in the naval implications, and retired Navy Captain Al Lord was working on the project with me. So, he took that young man under his wing. And, really, we see a lot of applications. What Katie was just talking about with artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, we're seeing that playing out very quickly, very dramatically, in the seas around Ukraine. In fact, while we've been talking, I just received a note from Al pointing out that the world's first specialized explosive naval drone unit has just been formed in Ukraine. So, we're literally seeing this all happen in real time, as we talk. I think there's an awful lot that the Navy can learn from that.If we had the Navy, I felt bad and thought we probably needed to include airpower, as well, and reached out to Maxwell to the Air War College, where a State Department officer, actually, was doing some really interesting work and wrote what may be one of the best papers in the entire project—a paper called “Potemkin on the Dnieper: The Failure of Russian Airpower in the Ukraine War.” The big surprises of this war, for me, have been Russian failure to establish and maintain air superiority and Russian failure to use cyber in a way that really brought Ukraine to its knees. Neither of those things have happened. And Sean examines why in that Small Wars and Insurgencies journal article already published. And I think the implications of what we've seen there in the air and the sea have huge implications not just for the Russo-Ukrainian War but also for any possible future conflict with China.HostKatie, do you have any concluding thoughts you'd like to share?CrombeWhat Dr. Nagl just brought up about the air and the sea is so important. There are some lessons on not only sustainment and logistics, sea lines of communication, but the things that we're learning that the Russians have attempted to do in the Black Sea and have maybe not been as successful as they imagine are lessons that we can take forward for the China fight. If the supply lines are interrupted on the Black Sea, there's land to go across to supply. That's not going to be true in the Pacific. So, these kinds of lessons are even more important.How do we attack ships from land? It’s kind of an old-school thought. And I think people are thinking more about it now—shore-based artillery that can get after some of these moving targets. Can the Army use HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)? How can we be creative so that we're not so reliant on single services to approach the adversary in certain ways? So, I think that's a big thing.The other big lesson air-wise, I think, is air superiority was a given or a guarantee for us for the better part of 20 years, and no one has air superiority right now between Russia and Ukraine. And I think that's why the conflict is in the state that it's in right now after two years. No one can gain air superiority. And I think if the Russians had gained that early on, if the Ukrainians hadn’t been so creative and gotten after them with Stingers, we would be in a much different place than we are right now. So, it's making sure that our allies and partners in the future have those kinds of weapons (and) know how to employ them to ensure that no enemy can gain your superiority like that because that's the kind of fight that we're going to have.(My) final conclusion is just, you know, rapid learning is the way of the future. That's how people are approaching learning right now. It's the more knowledge, the better. I think that TRADOC really needs to embrace that and not wait to have a perfect body of work that comes out of the Russo-Ukraine conflict, but really take the lessons as they come and immediately transfer them into national training centers, into field manuals, and into doctrine that can be updated later and when necessary. But don't let perfect be the enemy of good.HostJohn, concluding thoughts?NaglThis study has just been an extraordinary gift. I got to work with Katie and 17 of her very talented classmates. We presented at the Army War College's Strategic Land Power Conference in May. I was invited to present our work at a joint NATO-Ukrainian conference in Poland in July, and that work is continuing to build and grow. And I'm just delighted that we're continuing the work this coming year. I am recruiting students from the Army War College class of 2024 to look at this current war. We had to knock off most of our research toward the end of 2022, and so we've got another full year of data, of history, of experience to learn from, to take advantage of the contacts I've made now, as this study has spread out across a number of armies and militaries around the globe.And my hope is that the Army War College can continue to take advantage of the talent we have in the faculty, in the student body, our friends, and our contacts, literally around the globe, to learn as much as we can from the courage of the Ukrainians, who are fighting a force that is absolutely evil, and help them find ways (to the extent that we can) to help them succeed in their efforts. But also, from their courage and from their experience, find ways to save American blood and treasure from the future wars that are inevitably going to occur.HostListeners, you can read the article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 53, issue 3.Katie John, thank you so much for making time to speak with me today.CrombeThanks, Stephanie.NaglThank you, Stephanie.HostIf you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

This podcast analyzes the US Army’s successive recruiting crises, identifying their consistent patterns and the efforts to resolve them, and makes three provocative arguments. First, there is a long-standing institutional tension between recruiting personnel for the combat arms and technical and administrative specialists. Second, many of today’s talent management problems were first identified in a 1907 General Staff report and reiterated in subsequent studies. Third, the Army has pursued innovative recruitment strategies, but much of their success depended on factors outside the service’s control. The podcast concludes with four history-based recruiting lessons and an affirmation that the 2019 Army People Strategy recognizes the need for the Army to revise its talent management approach.Read here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/9/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341318/-1/-1/0/DP-4-18-podcast-transcript-Linn_HistoricalPerspectiveRecruitingCrisis.PDFKeywords: recruitment, US Army history, personnel policy, talent management, Army People Strategy

This podcast offers a preview of the latest Parameters demi-issue and full issue. Read the issue here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss3/7/Download the full episode transcript here: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/15/2003341251/-1/-1/0/DP-4-17-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-CRANE_2023-AUTUMNPREVIEW.PDFKeywords: recruiting, Ukraine, Taiwan, Antarctica, Russia, Chechen Kadyrovtsy

This episode showcases the understudied institutional Army, the generating force, as a critical prerequisite for overall strategic success. Competition, crisis, and conflict require more than the manned, trained, and equipped units that deploy. This podcast analyzes six case studies of institutional Army reforms over 160 years to examine adaptation in peace and war. The conclusions provide historical insights to inform current practices and fulfill the Army’s articulated 2022 Institutional Strategy.Read the source article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/14/Download the transcript: https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/10/2003316777/-1/-1/0/DP-PODCAST-TRANSCRIPT-BONIN-SCUDIERI-FINAL.PDFKeywords: institutional Army, generating force, Department of the Army staff, Army Futures Command, adaptation, innovationCriderYou’re listening to Decisive Point (https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/mod/67423/details/582).The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.Today, I'm talking with Dr. John A. Bonin and Dr. James D. Scudieri, authors of “Change and Innovation in the Institutional Army from 1860–2020,” (https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/13/) which was published in the summer of 2023, issued of Parameters.Bonin is a consultant and distinguished fellow at the US Army War College, and Scudieri is the senior research historian at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.Welcome to Decisive Point.BoninThank you.ScudieriThank you for hosting us today, Stephanie.CriderLet's jump right in. Your article offers 6 case studies examining the institutional army from 1860 to 2020. Your examples review the keys to successful institutional reform and the pitfalls and setbacks that impede progress. Let's walk briefly through the case studies. What do we need to know about the Cavalry Bureau in the American Civil War?BoninI'm the one that picked that one, and it's an interesting case study, for me, because it's one of the earliest we can point to that the Army was trying to actually innovate. They even used that word. Secretary of War (Edwin McMasters) Stanton was very concerned with the abuse of cavalry and the lack of Union success. The Confederates had gained calvary superiority early in the war with a better structural focus of their cavalry units. The Union was behind, so Stanton, Secretary of War, tried to take some bureaucratic innovations to solve the problem. He came up with the idea of the Cavalry Bureau, which combined pieces of the Quartermaster Bureau and the Ordnance Bureau in order to create a synergistic effect. This is very similar to our cross-functional teams today, which is what resonated with me as a useful case study.After several false starts, Stanton appointed James H. Wilson, a brigadier general, to head the Bureau in January of ‘64. Within about four months, Wilson was able to reform the procurement of horses, acquire seven-shot repeating carbines for all cavalry forces, and reform the institutional training for calvary troops before they joined their horses. And in short order, the Union armies were able to gain cavalry superiority over the Confederates and ultimately led to success. Unfortunately, shortly after 1865, Calvary Bureau was disestablished, which is one of the lessons we've learned in our case studies.CriderWhat impact did the US Army circa 1898 to 1920 have on institutional reform?ScudieriI found that a fascinating case study. First, it covers almost a quarter century, so those years are trying to learn post-war lessons after the Spanish-American War. It's trying to identify what changes are necessary in peacetime based on all of the changes going on in terms of the characteristics of warfare, through western warfare. The Europeans are trying to figure this out, as well. And then specifically for the US Army, there's major wartime adaptation as America becomes involved in the First World War.There are lots of personalities involved here, but there's also a lot of personnel turmoil because there are several chiefs of staff who go through the leadership of the Army during this particular period, and also on the civilian leadership, two secretaries of war. Especially well-known would be Elihu Root, and then less well-known is Newton Baker, who wound up becoming a wartime secretary, which I don't think was originally his plan.We also have the same issue as John talked about, wartime reform after the Spanish-American War, peacetime changes, which affect in many ways the front-office access on how many different entities in the Army could walk directly in to see the chief, and then wartime adaptation to get through the First World War. And get through the First World War, in this case, means not just forming the divisions that go to France under Pershing but the Army that's back home, this institutional army, especially the general staff. Unfortunately, one of those areas that did not resolve itself too well was the contest between Pershing and his headquarters in France and the institutional army, especially the general staff back home. And then, after the war, there's this major demobilization followed by, again, as John pointed out, some of the lessons are not learned permanently.CriderYour subsequent case study is General Marshall and an army headquarters for World War II. What is most important from this study?ScudieriWell, one could look at this case study almost as a sequel to the one I just discussed in the sense that in both cases, especially the end of the first one and now pretty much for most of this one, the Army has to adapt institutionally to what we would now call large-scale combat operations.And World War II will be even bigger than America's involvement in the First World War, but this is also an analysis of the institution. That Marshall, before the war starts, he's got too many hats to wear, too many people that he has to help, assist, monitor, manage. And so, part of that reorganization is what Icall the triple hat of he can now delegate and deal directly with Army Ground Forces, Army Service Forces, and the Army Air Forces instead of the multitude he had before. These are the entities that will wind up providing the 89 divisions the Army has in the Second World War.CriderSecretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and U.S. Army Combat developments. What are the takeaways from this example?BoninFollowing on what we were just discussing, these other reforms, the Army had reverted back to essentially a Bureau and a technical service system that had been existent since 1860. McNamara comes in as Secretary of Defense and wants to reform DoD, so he's the really first activist Secretary of Defense. We hadn't had that before. So, he does a couple of things. He creates defense entities: Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Logistics Agency, but he looks inside the Army and doesn't like what he sees. And so, he wants to see more focus on combat developments, is the term, and so he forces the Army to create a Combat Developments Command and an Army Material Command.[He] takes the power away from these bureaus that had been contested in 1860, puts it under Army material command. And it keeps a combat developments command to focus on developing new techniques, new procedures, new doctrine, new concepts rather than leaving those back under the individual branches and uncoordinated. That immediately leads to the Army's focus on Army aviation, which I did my dissertation on, so I think this is a very interesting case of which the external SecDef (Secretary of Defense) had to force the Army to embrace Army aviation.It did not come necessarily from within without his forcing function. So, he creates a test division, resources it, that test division then becomes the First Cav Division which is then deployed almost immediately to Vietnam. McNamara believed Army aviation was the key to success in Vietnam. I'm not so sure he was right, but he did force the Army to embrace aviation. And that's one of the lessons of this is that sometimes it takes an external civilian leader to force the changing function inside the US military.CriderTell me about General Creighton William Abrams Jr's 1973 reorganization.BoninWell, this comes at the end of the Vietnam War, so this is not a war-time adaptation and, as I mentioned, McNamara is prewar, but he was anticipating a war. So now we're through the Vietnam War and now we have a new strategic environment. The draft is over, the volunteer Army is in place, the army is shrinking by over 50 percent, and Creighton Abrams is concerned that we entered the Vietnam War poorly trained. So, he's got a training concept and he's aided by General Depuy. Depuy was an advocate for training. So Depuy is the key subordinate that helps him guide this reorganization, and he's going to take the Continental Army Command, which had become huge—too many missions, too many focuses—and he wants to split it into the Forces Command that handles forces and the Training and Doctrine Command, which handles training and doctrine.But a casualty of this reorganization was the combat developments command that had previously been created by the Secretary McNamara, Combat Development Command then gets subsumed under TRADOC, and ultimately, we’ll find that the future focused mission of the Combat Developments Command is lost, which leads us to another innovation.CriderArmy Futures Command, what do we need to know?ScudieriIn a sense, the Army Futures Command case study is the hardest of all because we're living it now. I'm not sure people appreciate the sheer boldness of this initiative in our lifetime to establish a new headquarters with a new Army four star and to understand the sheer scope and breadth of what Army Futures Command is trying to accomplish.There's a lot of focus on its technical aspects; there's a lot of focus on its attempts to help the material acquisition arena, but their missions go well beyond those particular arenas. They are involved in a mindset change of culture, for the adaptation and innovation has to cut across more than just the technical. So, to coin the old term and the adage, the jury is still out, but we should appreciate the sheer boldness of that move to establish that command in 2018.CriderWe really covered a lot here. Could you pull it together for us? What conclusions can we draw from these case studies?ScudieriFirst, I'd like to point out is the role of history to gain insights—I prefer the word insights versus lessons learned. History informs the present, which will influence the future, and these case studies highlight the balance between continuity and change. A particular aspect of continuity and change are the personalities involved. These case studies highlight the involvement of Army senior leaders, civilian and military, but also how they worked with the executive branch, the president, and also with Congress to accomplish that change. There are success stories; there are not success stories. As John has pointed out, still having to deal with the Bureau system is an example of a very persistent, entrenched bureaucracy. But I think it also highlights that in many ways, you have different visions of how the Army should progress and what the Army's vision and future is.BoninInnovation is hard. It takes a lot of leadership. It takes a lot of vision, and it also takes some continuity, as Jim alluded to. Some of the leaders had to remain in position for a number of years in order to ensure some of this innovation and change occurred. When some of the leaders left, some of that impetus, some of that enthusiasm could decline. So, the other lesson—if you will, insight—that you can get from these six case studies is the Army does innovate, but it's hard, and it takes key leaders and a lot of buy-in by subordinates to ultimately succeed.Crider Thank you. Listeners, you can read the entire article at press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters. Look for volume 53, issue 2. Thank you so much; this was a real pleasure.BoninThank you, Steph.CriderIf you enjoyed this episode of Decisive Point and would like to hear more, you can find us on any major podcast platform.

In 1944, Third US Army created a cohesive and flexible system for managing information and denying it to the enemy that aligned operational concepts with technological capabilities. The organization’s success in the European Theater highlights its effective combined arms integration. An examination of the historical record shows the creative design of the Signal Intelligence and Army Information Services enabled Third Army to deliver information effects consistently and provides a useful model for considering the dynamics at play in fielding new and experimental multidomain effects formations.Read the article: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol53/iss2/14/Keywords: World War II, Third United States Army, military effectiveness, force design, information advantageAbout the author: Major Spencer L. French, US Army, is a military intelligence officer currently assigned as the operations officer for the 704th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Meade, Maryland. His research interests focus on historical military innovation and force design.