Talking Strategy

NATO expert Dr Florence Gaub explains how strategic foresight helps NATO anticipate and avoid strategic surprise in an uncertain world.
Strategic surprise happens when new information fundamentally changes how we see the world. In an increasingly uncertain global landscape, predicting exact outcomes is nearly impossible – and that unpredictability heightens the risk of surprise. Yet as Lord Mervyn King explored in Season 6, genuine 'Black Swan' events – to quote Nicholas Taleb – are rarer than we think. Dr Florence Gaub describes how we can use strategic foresight to anticipate possible – even if unlikely – futures and avoid being caught off guard. She cautions, however, that it is not enough to 'think the unthinkable', futurologists also need to have their voice heard and acted on by those in power, so the work has to straddle both creative thinking and engaging with bureaucracies.
Dr Florence Gaub is the Director of the Research Division at the NATO Defence College having previously worked at the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Her PhD in international politics is from Humbolt University. She is the author of Future, a User's Guide, a graphic novel for NATO called NATO, 2099, and editor of What If…?: Ten Dragon King Scenarios for 2030, which was published at the NATO Defence College in 2025.
Further Reading
Florence Gaub, Future, a User's Guide, Hurst, 2026.
Florence Gaub, NATO, 2099: A Graphic Novel, NATO, 2024
Florence Gaub (ed.), What If…?: Ten Dragon King Scenarios for 2030, NATO Future Series, November 2025
Florence Gaub and Jonathan Heist, 'NATO's Permanent Crisis', Foreign Affairs, 16 June 2026.
Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Random House, 2015.
Related RUSI Talking Strategy Episodes
Talking Strategy, Season 3, Episode 6 – Net Assessment as a Tool of Strategy, with Andrew Marshall and Dr Thomas Mahnken. RUSI.
Talking Strategy, Season 4, Episode 14 – Evolving, Adopting and Adapting Alliance Strategy, with Lord Peach. RUSI.
Talking Strategy, Season 5, Episode 1 – Leading a Defence Start-up: NATO's First Secretary General, Lord Ismay, with Lt Gen Sir John Kiszely. RUSI.
Talking Strategy, Season 6, Episode 3 – Effective Strategy for Radical Uncertainty, with Lord Mervyn King. RUSI.

Former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Sir Mark Lyall Grant discusses the challenges facing delivery of Western security strategies.
In this season of Talking Strategy we have explored many of the key themes of today's security and defence strategies, but the test of a strategy is what changes as a result. A perfectly written strategy that makes the wrong assumptions, or that cannot be delivered, is meaningless at best, and often worse. In the final episode of this season, we examine the vital question of how defence strategy is delivered.
With so many Western strategies built on the assumption of a rules based international order, the fracturing of that system poses profound challenges for our defence strategies. Sir Mark, who chaired the UN Security Council four times, describes how the assumption was perhaps overblown – based on a 'Golden Age' that only lasted for 25 years – and how the world is moving in a disorderly manner towards a three-tier model in which interests are enforced through power.
In this new world, governments need to confront the reality that they cannot guarantee the safety of their citizens alone or without the help of their populations. This affects how governments operate – their structures and processes – and the conversations they need to have with their people and allies.
 
Further Reading
Mark Lyall Grant, 'The world order in crisis', Horizons: Journal of International Relations and Sustainable Development, vol.21 (2022): 124-133.
Peter Ricketts, Hard Choices: The Making and Unmaking of Global Britain, Atlantic Books, 2021.
Jack Watling, Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, Macmillan, 2026.

In our 100th episode, we talk to RUSI senior research fellow Dr Jack Watling about the transformation in Ukraine in response to Russia's War.
Against what many considered a materially superior adversary, Ukraine has not only withstood Russian aggression, but has fought back with courage, ingenuity and commitment from the whole of society. We discuss how it has achieved this, not just through the armed forces, but in mobilising its people and industry. We also consider what lessons there are for others facing the threat of modern war.
Dr Jack Watling is one of the UK's foremost commentators on Russia's war in Ukraine. The author of Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World and co-author of the RUSI paper Tactical Developments During the Third Year of the Russo-Ukrainian War, his analysis of the war is highly prized by many governments.
 
Further Reading
Jack Watling, Statecraft: The New Rules of Power in a Divided World, MacMillan, 2026.
Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds, Preliminary Lessons from Ukraine's Offensive Operations, 2022-2023, RUSI, 2024.
Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds, Tactical Developments During the Third Year of the Russo-Ukrainian War, RUSI, 2025.
Siddarth Kaushal & Paul O'Neill (eds.), The Role of Dissimilar Rearmament in Allied Deterrence, RUSI Whitehall Paper 102, 2025.

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.