Sea Power

Guests Mike Dahm and Lonnie Henley join host Isaac Kardon to discuss their China Maritime reports and forthcoming chapters in a China Maritime Studies Institute volume of open-source analysis on China's cross-strait amphibious capability, doctrine, and planning.

China Maritime Report No. 26: Beyond the First Battle: Overcoming a Protracted Blockade of Taiwan - Lonnie D. Henley

China Maritime Report No. 28: Bitterness Ends, Sweetness Begins: Organizational Changes to the PLAN Submarine Force Since 2015 - J. Michael Dahm and Alison Zhao

Guests:

Mike Dahm is a retired Naval Intelligence Officer who has focused on China since 2006 when he served as Chief of Intelligence Plans for China at U.S Indo-Pacific Command and stood up the commander’s China Strategic Focus Group. He went on to serve as the Assistant Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China before retiring from the Office of Naval Intelligence as the Senior Naval Intelligence Officer for China.

Lonnie Henley retired from federal service in 2019 after more than 40 years as an intelligence officer and East Asia expert. He served 22 years as a U.S. Army China foreign area officer and military intelligence officer in Korea, at Defense Intelligence Agency, on Army Staff, and in the History Department at West Point. He retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2000 and joined the senior civil service, first as Defense Intelligence Officer for East Asia and later as Senior Intelligence Expert for Strategic Warning at DIA. He worked two years as a senior analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc. before returning to government service as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for East Asia. He rejoined DIA in 2008, serving for six years as the agency’s senior China analyst, then National Intelligence Collection Officer for East Asia, and culminating with a second term as DIO for East Asia. Mr. Henley holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering and Chinese from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and master’s degrees in Chinese language from Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar; in Chinese history from Columbia University; and in strategic intelligence from the Defense Intelligence College (now National Intelligence University).

Guest host Tom Mangold and guest Adm. Nirmal Verma discuss Indo-Pacific security, the Quad, and the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.

Guests:

Admiral Nirmal Verma (Indian Navy, ret.) is a CNO Distinguished International Fellow at the U.S. Naval War College. He previously served as Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, and later as India’s High Commissioner to Canada.

Captain Tom Mangold (USN, ret.) was educated at Harvard University (BA, MPA), and commissioned through Officer Candidate School. Most of his thirty-year naval career was spent at sea as a Surface Warfare Officer, serving onboard various small combatants, ultimately commanding USS RODNEY M. DAVIS (FFG-60). Ashore, he worked in a wide variety of staff billets in the Pentagon, and served as Naval Attaché to the People’s Republic of China.

Guest Peter Dutton discusses a paper delivered in Australia in November 2022, considering AUKUS, the Quad, and the naval capabilities that the PRC brings to bear in the Indo-Pacific theater.

Guest:

Peter A. Dutton, PhD, JD is Professor at the US Naval War College, Stockton Center for International Law. He was formerly interim dean, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, and director of the China Maritime Studies Institute, professor of strategic research and professor of law. His research focuses on China’s maritime expansion, Chinese views of sovereignty and international law and factors shaping China’s rise. A retired Navy judge advocate and former naval flight officer, he holds a Ph.D. from King’s College London, a J.D. from the College of William & Mary and an M.A. from NWC. He is an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law, a faculty advisor to NYU’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute and an associate in research at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies.

A discussion with guest Dr. Ayumi Teraoka concerning Japanese threat perceptions relating to Taiwan, the U.S.-Taiwan alliance, and the U.S. "hub-and-spokes" model in East Asia.

Guest:

Ayumi Teraoka, PhD, is an America in the World Consortium postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on international security, alliance politics, and Japanese foreign policy. She earned her doctorate from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

Guests Kamal-Deen Ali and Naunihal Singh discuss and analyze China's interests and activities in African Waters.

Guests:

Dr. CAPT Kamal-Deen Ali (Ghana Navy, ret.)

Bio: Kamal-Deen Ali, PhD is founding member and Executive Director/Team Lead of the Centre for Maritime Law and Security and a senior lecturer at the University of Professional Studdies – Accrah. He was formerly the Director of Research at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College. He served in the Ghana Navy for twenty years as a military legal and operations officer.

Dr. Naunihal Singh

Bio: Naunihal Singh, PhD, is associate professor in the National Security Affairs Department at NWC. He is a scholar of African politics, civil-military relations, and author of Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups (Johns Hopkins Press, 2014), a book on the dynamics and outcomes of military coups.

Guests Rachel Tecott and Jacquelyn Schneider discuss wargaming as a research method, specifically how it can help the United States better compete in the maritime domain.

Guests:

Rachel Tecott, PhD, is assistant professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at NWC. Her research focuses on U.S. military strategy and operations, alliance and partnership dynamics, and civil-military relations.

Jacquelyn Schneider, PhD, is Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, national security, and political psychology with a special interest in cybersecurity, autonomous technologies, wargames, and Northeast Asia. She is a non-resident fellow at the Naval War College's Cyber and Innovation Policy Institute and was previously a senior policy advisor to the Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Guests Lindsay Cohn and Jessica Blankshain discuss how relationships between armed forces and civilian leadership shape the U.S. recruitment and mobilization of a naval force. This leads into a detailed discussion of the recent Russian mobilization/draft and its implications.

Guests:

Jessica Blankshain, PhD, is associate professor in the National Security Affairs Department at NWC. She specializes in civil-military relations, bureaucratic politics, and organizational economics. She is the Chair of the Faculty Advisory Council at NWC.

Lindsay Cohn, PhD, is associate professor in the National Security Affairs Department at NWC. Her research and publications focus on military organizations, civil-military relations, international law of war, and foreign policy/public opinion.

A discussion with guest John Maurer on The Road to Pearl Harbor: Great Power War and the Pacific (USNI Press, 2022).

Hosted by Isaac Kardon

Guest: 

John Maurer, PhD, serves as the Alfred Thayer Mahan Distinguished University Professor of Sea Power and Grand Strategy at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. As Chair of the Strategy and Policy Department, he led a major reform of the College’s curriculum on strategy.

A discussion with guest Emilly Holland on Russia’s energy coercion and the maritime security implications.

Hosted by Isaac Kardon

Guest:

Emily Holland, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Russia Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research (Berlin) and the European Council on Foreign Relations (Berlin).

Admiral Jamie Foggo (USN, ret) discusses Russian sea power in the Black Sea and Arctic regions with Dr. Michael Petersen, Director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute"

Hosted by Isaac Kardon

Guest:

Admiral James G. Foggo III, USN (Ret.), is dean of the Navy League of the United States Center for Maritime Strategy. A submarine officer, he is a former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa and Allied Joint Force Command, Naples. He commanded BALTOPS in 2015 and 2016 and Exercise TRIDENT JUNCTURE in 2018.

Co-Host: 

Michael B. Petersen, PhD, is the director of the Russia Maritime Studies Institute and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, Center for Naval Warfare Studies. Prior to his appointment at NWC, he served at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council.