Episode Notes The defeat of the USSR in Afghanistan was part of a broad tapestry of disasters that eventually brought the Russian communist state crashing down. The shattering of Soviet forces by the indigenous rebels aided by foreign fighters and sophisticated...
Episode Notes We examine the Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On by Leigh Neville and Matt Eversmann to discuss the book, the event and what led up to the event. References: Leigh Neville & Matt Eversmann Day of the Rangers: The Battle of...
Episode Notes We discuss the book, guerrilla and insurgency warfare during the American war in 1861-65, the atrocity cycle, guerrilla math and the hopelessness of occupation avoiding the injury of civilians. For those looking for a single author's treatment of the...
Episode Notes That is GEN Stanley McChrystal's dream image of the totality of the COIN problem in Afghanistan. What a mess. It appears the West just can't get counterinsurgency right. I talk about some of the framework ideas that would be good lessons learned for...
Episode Notes I discuss the complex adaptive system that is war that Clausewitz categorically identified as "friction" in the nineteenth century. We'll examine what chaos and complexity has to do with conflict, why it is inevitable and why wars are won by the least...
Episode Notes The April 1961 Generals’ Putsch of Algiers (Putsch des généraux), was a failed military action to press French President Charles de Gaulle to not abandon French Algeria, along with French people and pro-French Arabs living there. The putsch in French...
Episode Notes In this episode, I go through some of the more interesting emails and comments I have gotten since the podcast began in September 2022. My Substack Write me at cgpodcast@pm.me
Episode Notes One of the peak guerrilla fountainheads in the early twentieth century, TE Lawrence has been in both the popular imagination and a large part of the engine in the Middle East that signed the death knell for foreign colonial powers to leave the region,...
