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Sebastian Bae joins the Strategy Bridge Podcast to talk about wargaming education and design and his new game “Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific.” Bae is the editor of the book “Forging Wargamers: A Framework for Professional Military Education.” He works as a research analyst and game designer in the defense industry and serves as an adjunct assistant professor at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, where he teaches a graduate course on designing educational wargames.  

During the Vietnam War, a joint Army and Navy unit known as the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF) was established to operate in the maritime environment of the Mekong Delta. In the episode we talk about the Mobile Riverine Force with Erik Villard, the digital military historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History and a historian of the Vietnam War. Villard is the author of “Combat Operations: Staying the Course, October 1967 to September 1968.”

National Park Service Ranger Troy Harman joins the Strategy Bridge Podcast to talk about the role of the location of water, roads, and rail in the decision making during the Gettysburg campaign. We also talk about how symbolism built into the design of the park shapes views of the battle. Harman has served as a ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park since 1989 and he is the author of “All Roads Led to Gettysburg: A New Look at the Civil War’s Pivotal Campaign.”  

Elizabeth Samet joins the Strategy Bridge Podcast to talk about the mythology surrounding World War II, the literature and film that emerged following the war, and the mythology’s effect on our beliefs about the use of American military force. Samet is the author of “Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness” and a professor of English at West Point.

Trent Hone returns to the Strategy Bridge Podcast to talk about his new book “Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific.” We talk about how Nimitz organized and reorganized his staff as the war unfolded, his relationship with the Army, the effort to integrate the British Pacific Fleet into American operations and more. Trent Hone is a Vice President with ICF and an award-winning naval historian.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Matt Kriner and Jon Lewis about the history, ideology, and organization of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Matt Kriner is a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at Middlebury Institue of International Studies. He is an intelligence analyst with almost a decade of experience researching and analyzing US domestic violent extremism, transnational far-right extremism, and radicalization.  Jon Lewis is a Research Fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, where he studies domestic violent extremism and homegrown violent extremism, with a specialization in the evolution of white supremacist and anti-government movements in the United States and federal responses to the threat.  They are the authors of the articles “Pride & Prejudice: The Violent Evolution of the Proud Boys” and “The Oath Keepers and their Role in the January 6 Insurrection,” published in the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point’s CTC Sentinel.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Ali Wyne about the concept of great-power competition and what it means for American foreign policy. Wyne is a senior analyst at the Eurasia Group and is the author of “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition.”

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Matthew Kruer about the Susquehannock wars of the 1670s and 1680s in the mid-Atlantic and Bacon’s Rebellion in colonial Virginia. Kruer is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago and author of “Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America.” 

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, Dr. John McManus returns to talk about “Island Infernos: The U.S. Army’s Pacific War Odyssey, 1944” the second book in his series on the Army in the Pacific during World War Two. McManus is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. Military History at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. 

In this episode we talk with Dr. James Holmes about his book “Habits of Highly Effective Maritime Strategists.” Holmes is a former Navy surface warfare officer and the J.C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College.

In this episode we talk with Chad Pillai about combatant command campaign planning. Pillai is a U.S. Army strategist and the author of “Developing a Combatant Command Campaign Plan: Lessons Learned at US Central Command” published by the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Since gaining independence in 1947, the relations between India’s civilian leaders and the military has changed over time as the country fought wars with China and Pakistan, developed nuclear weapons, and used the military for internal counterinsurgency operations. In this episode we talk with Dr. Ayesha Ray about Indian Civil-Military Relations. Ray is an Associate Professor of Political Science at King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and the author of “The Soldier and the State in India: Nuclear Weapons, Counterinsurgency, and the Transformation of Indian Civil-Military Relations.”

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. Claude Berube about his book "On Wide Seas: The U.S. Navy in the Jacksonian Era." Berube is the museum director at the US Naval Academy Museum, an assistant professor of history at the Naval Academy, and a Naval Reserve officer.

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Jeremy Black about his book “Strategy and the Second World War: How the War Was Won and Lost.” Black is a emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter.

In the years following the First World War, the Italian fascist movement appropriated the symbol of the veteran as a new revolutionary political force. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about the fascist myth of the veteran with Dr. Angel Alcalde. Alcalde is the author of “War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe” and is a lecturer in Twentieth Century European History at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

By the summer of 1945, 1.8 million American soldiers were serving in the war against Japan in the Pacific and Asia. This included 21 U.S. Army infantry and airborne divisions plus independent regimental combat teams and tank battalions. In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Dr. John McManus about the role the Army played in the Pacific during the first two years of the war. McManus is the author of “Fire and Fortitude: The U.S. Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943” and is the Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Military History at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. 

In this episode of Strategy Bridge Podcast, we talk with Dr. Teasel Muir-Harmony about how the Apollo program to put men on the moon was created and run as an instrument of foreign policy. Muir-Harmony is the curator of the Project Apollo collection at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and is the author of the book “Operation Moonglow: A Political History of Project Apollo.”

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Elizabeth Shackelford about her book “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.” In the book Shackelford writes about her time in South Sudan as a Foreign Service Officer and what she experienced when the new country descended into war. 

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk about strategic culture, ideology, and military strategy with Jeremy Black. He is an emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and the author of “Military Strategy: A Global History.”

In this episode of the Strategy Bridge Podcast we talk with Prof. Beatrice Heuser from the University of Glasgow about whether strategic thinking as we have come to understand it existed in the centuries before the word “strategy” was introduced into the Western European languages. Heuser is the author of the book “Strategy Before Clausewitz: Linking Warfare and Statecraft, 1400-1830.”