S5E2: Radical Reform of the US Marine Corps: General Alfred Mason Gray
Release Date: 10/22/2024
S5E19: Thucydides: A Revolution in Strategic Thinking
Talking Strategy
Thucydides set the 'gold standard' for a strategic analysis of war with his history of the Peloponnesian War: Dr Roel Konijnendijk explains how. Thucydides, who lived almost two-and-a-half millennia ago, revolutionised strategic analysis by asserting the place of human agency rather than attributing events as being shaped by Gods or fate. This is something that Machiavelli repeats centuries later in The Prince. Thucydides claimed to have identified patterns of strategic behaviour that he thought would be enacted 'as long as human nature is the same'. A fascinating question, however, is whether...
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S5E18: George C Marshall: Strategic Planning for War and Peace
Talking Strategy
General Marshall planned brilliantly for the US Army’s rapid wartime growth and a 'Just Peace' for post-war Europe. Professor Bill Johnsen explains how. General George C Marshall's (1880-1959) career as a strategist and strategic leader was impressive. As the Chief of Staff for the US Army, he oversaw a forty-fold increase in the size of the Army. Quick to spot talent and advance it out of turn, his appointments included Generals Omar Bradley, Lesley J McNair, George S Patton, and perhaps most crucially, Dwight D Eisenhower. Winston Churchill described Marshall as 'the organiser of victory'...
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S5E17: Giuseppe Garibaldi: ‘The Only Hero the World Needs’
Talking Strategy
Professor Lucy Riall explains Garibaldi's mastery of revolutionary war by harnessing military, political and populist levers of power to become a father of modern Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was one of the world's greatest revolutionaries, leading resistance movements with irregular armies such as the Ragamuffins and the Red Shirts in Latin America and Europe. A crucial figure of 19th century liberalism and nationalism, he inspired millions. Che Guevara claimed that he was the only hero the world needs. As one of the fathers of modern Italy, Garibaldi was the Risorgimento's Sword, to...
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S5E16: Cyrus the Great: Inventing Empire and Universal Monarchy
Talking Strategy
Cyrus’ exemplary leadership forged a patchwork of ethnicities into an empire that founded Persian rule in the Middle East, Professor Lynette Mitchell explains. Cyrus the Great (or the Elder) is known to many through the Cyrus Cylinder exhibit preserved in the British Museum, which tells us that he was chosen by God for his special virtues to become ‘king of the four corners of the world’. Indeed, he created a Persian empire that extended from the Greek communities of Asia Minor to the marches of India. Ever since, virtues of a great strategic leader have been attributed to...
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S5E15: And then what? Thinking Strategy, with Baroness Ashton of Upholland
Talking Strategy
Baroness Catherine Ashton, formerly the European Union’s lead for foreign and security strategy, discusses challenges, opportunities and tips for collaborative strategy-making. As the EU’s first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton was at the heart of international strategy making between 2009 and 2014 working on some of the world’s most intractable problems. She was appointed by the UN Security Council to lead the P5+1 negotiations for a nuclear deal with Iran and was in post when Russia first invaded Ukraine, seizing Crimea and parts of the...
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S5E14: Abdul Haris Nasution: Insurgent Founder of the Indonesian Army
Talking Strategy
General Nasution's journey from insurgent to Army commander and strategist fighting against communist insurgents in Indonesia is described by Colonel Dr Almuchalif Suryo. Trained by the Dutch as part of the Netherlands East Indies Army, General Abdel Haris Nasution (1918-2000) fought with them against the Japanese during the Second World War and then against them for Indonesian independence. Having become an expert guerilla commander, he was then charged with creating Indonesia's state army, a force that had to unite elements trained by the Dutch and the Japanese, as well as citizen soldiers....
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S5E13: Modernising the Royal Navy: Admiral Lord Fisher RN
Talking Strategy
Admiral John (Jacky) Fisher radically transformed the Royal Navy in terms of its people, doctrine, equipment and structures. Dr Richard Dunley explains how. Few service chiefs have had such a profound effect on their service as Admiral of the Fleet, Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, Chief of the British Royal Navy in 1904-1910, and again in 1914-1915, before resigning in frustration over Churchill's Gallipoli campaign. Joining a wooden-hulled, sail-powered Royal Navy at the age of 13, by the time he retired aged 74, his Service was operating steel-hulled, oil-powered and technologically advanced...
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S5E12: Toussaint Louverture and the Strategy of Dynamic Adaptation with Professor Charles Forsdick
Talking Strategy
Professor Charles Forsdick tells the story of Toussaint Louverture, who led Haiti’s successful and highly adaptive slave revolt against the 18th century’s great powers. Toussaint Loverture was a force of nature. A former slave, he led the revolt in Saint Domingue between 1791– 1802 that resulted in Haitian independence. As a self-taught military commander, he was ever present in the fight, adapting his tactics, employing psychological warfare techniques and harnessing the island’s tropical diseases to degrade the French occupying forces. A man of contradictions, he was variously...
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S5E11: Jean Monnet and the Strategy of International Defence Cooperation
Talking Strategy
Jean-Marc Lieberherr examines Jean Monnet’s vital role in securing US arms for Britain and France during the Second World War and in driving international cooperation. A committed internationalist, long before becoming one of the founding fathers of the EU, Jean Monnet played a crucial role in enabling cooperation between countries in two world wars. As a member of the Executive Committee of the Allied Maritime Transport Council during the First World War, he helped coordinate shipping between the Allied powers of France, Great Britain, Italy and, from 1918, the US, before becoming the...
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S5E10: Creating Destruction: US Industrial Mobilisation in the Second World War
Talking Strategy
Professor Mark Wilson explains how governments, industry and the military collaborated to forge the US’s ‘arsenal of democracy’ during the Second World War. The prevailing myth is that the miracle of US industrial production was achieved by individual business leaders who were freed from the dead hand of government. The truth is more nuanced. The impressive efforts of business leaders relied on their workforce, government and the military. It was also a truly international effort. French and British orders started before the European war and long before Pearl Harbor, thereby expanding US...
info_outlineLieutenant General George Flynn describes how his friend and former boss General Gray, the 29th Commandant, transformed the US Marine Corps’ warfighting, ethos and capabilities.
General Alfred Mason Gray Jnr (1928–2024) was not the most obvious choice to lead the US Marine Corps when he became its 29th Commandant in 1987, but he succeeded in transforming the Corps into one of the world’s premier fighting forces. He moved the Corps’ culture and ethos towards one that prioritised manoeuvre warfare, in which all Marines became warfighters first and foremost. His changes included new processes and equipment, but were primarily focused on the human – a conceptual transformation as much as it was a transformation of capabilities. He embraced the indirect approach from Basil Liddell Hart (Season 2 Episode 10) and John Boyd (Season 1 Episode 7), as well as William Lind’s thinking on dislocating adversary decision-making that was so effective in the 1991 Gulf War, yet he situated these inside the Marine Corps’ traditions and values.
Lieutenant General George Flynn (retd) served in the US Marine Corps for 38 years, including as General Gray’s aide in 1989–1991, as Chief of Staff at Special Operations Command and as Deputy Commander Multinational Corps Iraq, and created the Joint Force Development Directorate at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now on the Board of Regents at the Potomac Institute, he is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.