This is a special episode of the Strategy Matters Podcast. Host Brendan Neagle talks with historian Dr. John Ferling to explore the strategic lessons of the American Revolution. This special episode reaches back to provide additional perspective on the third Strategy and War case study at the U.S. Naval War College. Although the timing of this episode does not align directly with the American Revolution case study, Dr. Ferling’s insights illuminate many of the course themes that cut across the entire course. Drawing on his books Whirlwind and his new work Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling assesses the Revolution’s strategic environment and international context and the central choices both sides faced at the outset of the conflict. Dr. Ferling dives into the challenges of forging a cohesive strategy from competing colonial interests, George Washington’s strengths and weaknesses as a strategic leader, and how diplomacy combined with military operations to shape the war’s trajectory. He also provides perspective on some of the strengths of British military decision-making, particularly by General Henry Clinton. The conversation closes with reflections on the Revolution’s most important strategic principles and why they still matter for today’s strategists.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Dr. John Ferling is a leading historian of the American Revolution who spent most of his four-decade academic career at the University of West Georgia, where he taught courses on Colonial America, U.S. military history, and the Revolution. The author of numerous works, including Whirlwind and Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling has long combined scholarship with a passion for writing accessible history. His career began with two years teaching high school in Texas before moving into higher education in Texas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and ultimately Georgia. In 2013, he received the Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities in recognition of his lifetime contributions to history and civic culture. A lifelong baseball fan, the first major league game he saw was between Pittsburgh and the Brooklyn Dodgers, a game in which Jackie Robinson scored the winning run. For twenty years he timed his research trips to Boston so that the Red Sox were in town. He has a picture of Fenway Park proudly displayed in his office.

In episode seven, Admiral (ret.) Lars Saunes and Dr. Michelle Paranzino discuss how the outcome of the Second World War shaped the politics and security in Europe. This episode complements the Second World War case study within the Strategy and War course. It also addresses one of the primary themes in the study of war: the strategic implications of military operations. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union fought as allies, but they also had different visions for the world after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Their leaders, the so-called ‘Big Three,’ Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, also had to consider operational and logistical challenges when seeking to fulfill them. Admiral Saunes and Dr Paranzino consider alternative scenarios for military operations on the continent and why they were not taken. Finally, the guests highlight that although understanding the agreement the Allies achieved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 can help us grasp Vladimir Putin’s logic, it is not a good guide for achieving peace in Ukraine or navigating current security challenges.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Rear Admiral (ret.) Lars Saunes was born in Alesund, Norway. He retired from the Navy from the position as Chief of Royal Norwegian Navy August 2017 and is now CNO Distinguished international fellow at the USNWC. He is a Submariner by trade and has held different command position on Kobben and Ula class submarines. He has been the commander of the Norwegian task group, Chief Naval operations at joint HQ, Commander submarine operating authority, Commandant and commander of the Norwegian Coast guard as well as Chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He has served as the head naval section of the Norwegian defense high command/join and the Norwegian defense research Institute.

Michelle Paranzino, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied U.S. foreign policy, Soviet history and Cold War Latin America. She has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the author of "The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War: A Short History with Documents" (Cambridge: Hackett, 2018). She grew up in Los Angeles, earning her B.A. in history at UC Santa Cruz and an M.A. in history at Cal State Northridge. She has held fellowships at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and is currently working on a book about the war on drugs.

In Episode 6, Dr. Burak Kadercan and Dr. Jesse Tumblin explore the current case study in Strategy and War Course, World War I, from a different angle: the strategic challenges the Ottoman Empire faced. At its height, the Ottoman Empire ruled on three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. However, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it lost much of its European domains and struggled to modernize. The possession of one of its former provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina, led to the clash between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, which snowballed into World War I. Throughout the war the Allies targeted the Ottoman Empire with a series of peripheral campaigns in the Balkans and the Middle East. Dr. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger and her guests explore valuable strategic lessons these campaigns offer. At the end of the war, Great Britain and France divided the Ottoman domains in the Middle East among themselves, leading to many of the issues continuing to plague the region through the current era. Also, the guests discuss how the modern Turkish Republic emerged from the ashes of World War I largely due to the vision and leadership of one of the heroes from the Dardanelles/Gallipoli Campaign, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Burak Kadercan is an Associate Professor who holds a PhD and MA in political science from the University of Chicago and a BA in politics and international relations from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Kadercan specializes in the intersection of international relations theory, international security, military-diplomatic history, and political geography. Prior to joining the Naval War College, he was Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading (United Kingdom) and Assistant Professor in International Relations and Programme Coordinator for the MA in international security at Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Dr. Kadercan’s scholarly contributions have appeared in International Security, Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, International Theory, and Middle East Policy. Dr. Kadercan is the author of Shifting Grounds: The Social Origins of Territorial Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Jesse Tumblin is an assistant professor of strategy and policy specializing in political and military history, ideas of security, and the current and former British world. He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from Boston College and a B.A. from the University of Tennessee. He is a past fellow in international security studies at Yale University. He is the author of “The Quest for Security: Sovereignty, Race, and the Defense of the British Empire, 1898-1931” (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and an article on Britain’s attempts to secure its Indo-Pacific empire, which won the Saki Ruth Dockrill Memorial Prize for international history from the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.