Talking Strategy

Professor Olivier Schmitt describes the systemic challenges of military transformation, given rapidly evolving technology and NATO's distinct strategic cultures.
Modern defence and security reviews highlight the deteriorating security environment and the need to prepare forces. But, as we hear from Lord King (Season 6, Episode 3), the ability to adapt will be essential; we need a mindset that allows for continuous change.
This is both enabled by, and made harder within, an alliance context where members' different strategic cultures – with different civil-military relations, defence procurement and operations – present systemic dilemmas. Professor Olivier Schmitt is the Head of Research at the Institute of Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College. He completed his doctorate at the Department of War Studies, King's College London. His most recent book, Preparing for War: Strategy, Power and Military Change, was published by Hurst/Oxford University Press in 2026.
 
Further Reading:
Schmitt, Olivier: Preparing for War. Strategy, Power and Military Change. (London, Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2026).
Schmitt, Olivier, Sten Rynning and Amelie Theussen (eds): War Time: Temporality and the Decline of Western Military Power (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2021)
Barno, David and Bensahel, Nora: Adaptation Under Fire. How Militaries change in Wartime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Finkel, Meir: On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Fox, Aimee: Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Goya, Michel: Flesh and Steel during the Great War: The Transformation of the French Army and the Invention of Modern Warfare (London: Pen and Sword, 2018).
Hoffman, Frank: Mars Adapting: Military Change During War (Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 2021).

We look at how Russia's armed forces are learning lessons from combat and examine Moscow's ambitions in its war against Ukraine.
The full-scale invasion of Ukraine is part of a long-term, much larger project of turning Russia into a regional hegemon with influence on other continents, while it builds relationships with China and others who may help its goals.
In this episode, Dr Andrew Monaghan, RUSI Senior Associate Fellow, unravels the threat and the depth of Russian long-term preparation for war.
Dr Monaghan is a senior British expert on Russia with extensive publications. He has directed research on Russia at NATO's Research Division in Rome, at Oxford University's Changing Character War Centre, and has worked at the UK's Defence Academy and Chatham House. He holds his PhD from the Department of War Studies, King's College London.

The Centre for Economic Security's Dr Rebecca Harding argues for the importance of financial markets as the fourth pillar in supporting effective mobilisation.
Conversations about industrial mobilisation often focus on the triumvirate of government, armed forces and industry. In this episode we add a fourth pillar, that of finance, and the need for governments to consider how the economic system can be co-opted to the task of providing defence and security for their nations. Something that the US government recognised during the Civil War when, in 1861-1862, it issued the emergency paper current – the Greenback – to finance the war effort. The vital role of finance in recapitalising armed forces, and in building resilience, reinforces the need for comprehensive thinking about security discussed in earlier episodes and takes the task of mobilisation beyond defence ministries into all aspects of modern societies.
Dr Rebecca Harding is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and an independent trade economist. Her strategic advisory business, Rebeccanomics provides analytical services in international trade, trade finance and sustainability. She has also acted as a specialist advisor to the UK Treasury Select Committee. She published The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy (London Publishing Partnership, 2025) and has co-authored numerous other publications, including The Weaponization of Trade: The Great Unbalancing of Politics and Economics, in 2017. She appears regularly as a commentator on BBC, Bloomberg, Sky News and CNBC.

Despite an increasing focus on SMEs, effective industrial mobilisation must also better harness the power of traditional defence firms. Andrea Thompson from BAE Systems explains how.
The excitement in defence ministries about improving how they engage with dynamic and innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is understandable but represents only a partial element of what is needed for industrial mobilisation. As Christian Broze explained in the previous episode, the traditional defence primes remain crucial actors and often have the capacity for mass that SMEs lack.
Effectively engaging industry in the plans for growth of defence capacity that have been touted in defence reviews has to be multi-faceted, acknowledging the heterogenous nature of industry as a whole and responsive enough to accommodate the differences between distinct parts of the same enterprise.
Andrea Thompson offers the perspective of a large defence prime, drawing on her experience as Group Managing Director for BAE Systems' Digital Intelligence. With a career spanning the UK and US, she has worked at Rockwell International, Rolls Royce and BAE Systems, including in BAE's F-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon programmes, and as the Chair of the Eurofighter Supervisory Board for the Eurofighter GmbH consortium. She was named in the Financial Times' UK Top 100 list of Most Influential Women in the Engineering Sector in 2019.

The preparedness of Western armed forces for conflict is something that has featured prominently in many defence reviews.
Christian Brose, Anduril's President & Chief Strategy Officer, describes how governments can build effective relationships with innovative, disruptive small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the defence industrial ecosystem, and how they can develop new strategies for achieving greater military capability to meet preparedness requirements.
It is clear there is no one-size-fits-all approach; Christian argues that today, government and the defence industry need to follow traditional approaches where that makes sense, and more modern, adaptive approaches for equipment that is designed to be scaled and mass produced without imposing huge investment and talent costs on suppliers.
Christian is the President and Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril Industries, prior to which he was Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Further Reading
Christian Brose, The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, Hachette, 2020.
Anduril Industries, Rebuild the Arsenal, PT-00/05, accessible at https://www.anduril.com/rebuild-the-arsenal.
Sidharth Kaushal and Paul O'Neill eds., Whitehall Paper 102, The Role of Dissimilar Rearmament, RUSI, 2025.