Midrats

Latest Episodes:

Episode 375: Strategic Discipline & the Building of a New National Strategy Mar 12, 2017

Show notes

We are in the second month of a new President who is building a new national security team. He and his team come to their positions with a very different view of the world and America's place in it than their predecessors had.
What direction will they take our nation? What role should realism, alliances, and the requirement to anchor all to a strategic discipline focused on the long term interests of our nation have on the decisions they make?
What do his initial steps and the people so far on his team tell us about where we are going? How may we may have to rethink the basic organizing concepts for America’s role in the world?
Our guest for the full hour to discuss this an related issues will be Frank Hoffman.
Frank is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University.
He formerly directed the NDU Press operations which includes the journals Joint Force Quarterly and PRISM. From August of 2009 to June 2011, he served in the Department of the Navy as a senior executive as the Senior Director, Naval Capabilities and Readiness. He started at National Defense University in 2011 and became a Distinguished Research Fellow in December 2016.
He retired from the Marine Corps Reserve in the summer of 2001 at the grade of Lieutenant Colonel. He has authored one book (Decisive Force; The New American Way of War, Praeger, 1996), over 100 essays and articles, and frequently contributes to Orbis, Joint Force Quarterly, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, the Naval Institute Proceedings and Marine Corps Gazette.

Episode 374: The American Military in WWI, Best of Mar 05, 2017

Show notes

Well inside an officer's career arch, we saw the American Navy move from the Great White Fleet, The Spanish American War to the age of the Dreadnought. Our Army, from ad-hoc volunteer units to a professional army going head-to-head with the finest professional army on the planet.
How did our military and our Navy build up to WWI, and how did that experience inform the evolution of our national defense infrastructure?
Our guest for the full hour will be Dr. John T. Kuehn , the General William Stofft Chair for Historical Research at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College CGSC). He retired from the U.S. Navy 2004 at the rank of commander after 23 years of service as a naval flight officer flying both land-based and carrier-based aircraft. He has taught a variety of subjects, including military history, at CGSC since 2000. He authored Agents of Innovation (2008), A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century (2014), and co-authored Eyewitness Pacific Theater (2008) with D.M. Giangreco as well as numerous articles and editorials and was awarded a Moncado Prize from the Society for Military History in 2011. His latest book isNapoleonic Warfare: The Operational Art of the Great Campaigns.

Episode 373: End of February Free For All Feb 26, 2017

Show notes

Is your head swimming in the 2nd month of the Trump Administration? While we are distracted with intramural politics, the world keeps moving and other nations move forward.
How are the national security and international order reacting to the change in USA leadership? From NATO to China and Russia, what signals are coming from and going to the new American government?
No guests this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern, just our quarterly free-for-all with the show co-hosts, Sal from "CDR Salamander" and EagleOne from "Eagle Speak."
If you'd like to join the conversation, feel free to call the switchboard number at the top of the showpage, join the chatroom, or if you can't make the live show, you can send you questions via twitter to @cdrsalamander or @lawofsea.

Episode 372: Andrew Jackson’s Navy; Now More Than Ever? Feb 19, 2017

Show notes

Since his election in November, the administration and several articles have suggested Donald Trump is a new Andrew Jackson whose portrait now hangs in the Oval Office. What might that mean for the Navy? How did Andrew Jackson approach his Navy and what lessons can we draw from that?
Our guest for the full hour for a discussion of an understudied part of our naval history and what it could mean for the current administration is returning guest Claude Berube.
Claude is the Director of the Naval Academy Museum and has taught in both the Political Science and History Departments at the Naval Academy. He has worked in the U.S. Senate, as a maritime studies fellow at the Heritage Foundation, as the head of a terrorism analysis team for the Office of Naval Intelligence and as a defense contractor. An intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, he deployed with Expeditionary Strike Group Five in 2004-05. His articles have been published in Orbis, Vietnam Magazine, Naval History, The Washington Times, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Naval Institute Proceedings and others. He’s also written or co-authored five books. He’s completing his doctoral dissertation through the University of Leeds.

Episode 371: Rice Bowls, Silos, & Firewalls - the National Security Bureaucracy Feb 12, 2017

Show notes

For the first time in eight years, we are watching a new team take over the national security infrastructure. Now is a good time to review, "Who is who in the zoo" and what exactly they do.
In the alphabet soup of organizations, how do the NSC, NSA, CIA, DOD, DIA, DHS and DNI all work together - and in competition - to enhance national security? Though everyone likes to bash bureaucracies, they are important and are only as good as those who populate and lead them.
Our guest for the full hour to help us navigate the swamp the "blob" lives in will be Loren DeJonge Schulman.
Lauren is the Deputy Director of Studies and the Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. She most recently served as the Senior Advisor to National Security Advisor Susan Rice. Before returning to the White House in 2013, she was Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. She served as Director for Defense Policy on the National Security Council staff from 2011–2012 and prior to that as a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. She is a Texan (the obnoxious kind), mom to the most awesome pizza loving two year old ever, and spends too much time on twitter.

Episode 370: The SECNAV's In Basket With James Holmes Feb 05, 2017

Show notes

There will be no rest for the next Secretary of the Navy. He will need to lead his Navy and Marine Corps as they continue to engage in the Long War against expansionist Islamic extremism, while at the same time come up with the best way to respond to the new direction and guidance coming from President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis.
From China, to Russia, to Europe, the Islamic world to South America and India on one side of the house, to Congress, academia, and industry - what are those subjects that he needs to tackle first, which need to be put on a slow boil, and which ones need to be thrown over the transom?
We have for the full hour to discuss this and more, returning guest James Holmes, PhD.
Dr. Holmes is a professor of strategy and former visiting professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. A former U.S. Navy surface-warfare officer and combat veteran of the first Gulf War, he served as a weapons and engineering officer in the battleship Wisconsin, engineering and firefighting instructor at the Surface Warfare Officers School Command, and military professor of strategy at the Naval War College. He was the last gunnery officer to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger.
Jim is a Phi Beta Kappa received his BA from Vanderbilt University and completed graduate work at Salve Regina University , Providence College, and received his PhD at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
His most recent books (with long-time coauthor Toshi Yoshihara) are Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age and Red Star over the Pacific.
Jim has published over 25 book chapters and 200 scholarly essays, along with hundreds of opinion columns, think-tank analyses, and other works.

Episode 369: The Future of America's Military at Risk, with Bob Scales Jan 29, 2017

Show notes

To meet the national security requirements of our republic in the years to come, what direction and emphasis do we need for our military? What are the false horizons we need to watch out for, and what important areas do we seem to be either ignoring or forgetting?
For the full hour our guest to discuss this and more will be Bob Scales, Major General, US Army (Ret), discussing with him many of the issues he raises in his latest book from Naval Institute Press, Scales on War; The Future of America's Military at Risk.
Described by the Naval Institute Press as,
Scales on War is a collection of ideas, concepts, and observations about contemporary war taken from over thirty years of research, writing, and personal experience by retired Major General Bob Scales. Scales’ unique style of writing utilizes contemporary military history, current events, and his philosophy of ground warfare to create a very personal and expansive view of the future direction of American defense policies.
Each chapter in the book addresses a distinct topic facing the upcoming prospects of America’s military, including tactical ground warfare, future gazing, the draft, and the role of women in the infantry. Fusing all of these topics together is Scales’ belief that, throughout its history, the United States has favored a technological approach to fighting its wars and has neglected its ground forces.
MAJ. GEN. Scales commanded units in Korea and the United States and two units in Vietnam, and he is the recipient of the Silver Star for action during the Battle of Hamburger Hill. He completed his service as commandant of the Army War College.

Episode 368: Best of Barney Rubel on Small Ships, Flotillas & Naval Supremacy Jan 21, 2017

Show notes

For a maritime power with global requirements, what is the role of the small ship in times of peace and war?
What are the tradeoffs between quantity and capability, size and range, survivability and affordable?
Does the US Navy need a high-low mix; or a Strike Group-Flotilla mix?
Where do our national requirements influence how we build our Fleet vs. the process other nations build theirs?
Do we have a sustainable path towards a balanced Fleet, or are we sailing on based on outdated charts?
To discuss this and more for the full hour will be returning guest U.S. Naval War College Center for Naval Warfare Studies Dean, Captain Robert C. Rubel, USN (Ret.)
Podcast first aired in 2013.

Episode 367: Best of USMC Force RECON with Alexander Martin Jan 15, 2017

Show notes

From a show we did 5 years ago, time to bring it back.
Much of the conversation about the USMC over the last decade has been about its "Second Land Army" status .... well .... Marines are still second to none at their core skill set. In case someone forgot that - our next guest and his Marines reminded everyone of not just that - but the power of the Navy-Marine Corp team. Over a 48 hour period, the 15th MEU/PELARG team conducted offensive air operations in Afghanistan resulting in the deaths of 5 confirmed enemy fighters, provided disaster relief in Pakistan to 120 victims who had been without aid since July, and seized a pirated vessel, rescuing a crew of 11 hostages and detaining 9 suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Our guest is then Captain Alexander Martin, USMC - the leader of the team that took back The Magellan Star.

Episode 366: Is it Time for a General Staff? Jan 08, 2017

Show notes

The 1980s might be getting some of its foreign policy back - but why is our entire defense framework in the second-half of the second decade of the 21st Century based around ideas forged when the Chrysler K-car was still a young platform?
Is our present system creating the conditions for our uniformed senior leadership to forge the best path for our military to support national security requirements?
Our guest for the full hour is returning to Midrats to discuss this and more; M.L. Cavanaugh.
Matt and is a US Army Strategist with global experience in assignments ranging from the Pentagon to Korea and Iraq to his current post at US Army Space and Missile Defense Command. He’s a Non Resident Fellow with the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, where he provides regular commentary and analysis. He’s also a contributor to War on the Rocks, and Matt’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and at ForeignPolicy.com, among other publications. After graduating from West Point in 2002, he earned his Master’s degree at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, and is currently at work on a PhD dissertation on supreme command under Professor Emeritus Colin Gray at the University of Reading (UK). You can find more on Matt at MLCavanaugh.com and he can be reached via Twitter @MLCavanaugh.

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