Nov 29, 2022
Dr Élie Tenenbaum joins Beatrice and Paul to discuss two French strategists who focused strongly on the political and psychological warfare element of both insurgencies and counterinsurgency operations (COIN).
Roger Trinquier (1908–1986) and David Galula (1919–1967) had ample personal experience of insurgencies and...
Nov 22, 2022
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) had a rocky career, with great ups when he had influential administrative positions in his city and great downs when he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured. He published his Art of War to great acclaim, yet he had to publish his The Prince under a pseudonym. In this episode, we...
Nov 15, 2022
Aleksandr Andreevich Svechin was an ethnic Russian born in Odessa in 1878. He became an officer of the imperial Russian army and then of the Red Army, where he rose to the rank of general and wrote a definitive manual on strategy.
A ‘Clausewitzian’ in approach, stressing the uniqueness of each war and rejecting...
Nov 8, 2022
Professor Malik Mufti, a specialist on the politics and international relations of the Middle East, discusses two medieval Muslim works of exemplary scholarship and erudition.
Like many other Muslim works of the Middle Ages, the two works were greatly influenced by Greek and Roman literature that had become available in...
Nov 1, 2022
Following World War I, air power promised a revolutionary transformation of war, and Italian General Giulio Douhet (1869-1930) was its first prophet.
After the carnage of the First World War, strategists throughout Europe sought to devise new strategies and technologies that would prevent a repetition of the drawn-out...