In this episode of Strategy Matters, we explore the legacy of the forgotten World War II propaganda hero, Sefton Delmer, to uncover best practices for shaping the information domain. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger talks with the Ukrainian-born British journalist Peter Pomerantsev, the author of How to Win the Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler. In the episode, Pomerantsev disavows common misunderstandings about propaganda and misinformation. He explains how and why the Industrial Revolution and advanced technology made people more susceptible to them. Pomerantsev also summarizes some of Delmer's provocative yet effective ideas for understanding the role of propaganda in modern war. Finally, the guest explains why the information warfare feels so new and overwhelming, and how strategists can navigate it.

Guest Peter Pomerantsev is a Ukrainian-born British journalist, author, and TV producer. Pomerantsev has written two books about Russian disinformation and propaganda—Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014), and This Is Not Propaganda (2019). His most recent book, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (2024), discusses the life and legacy of Sefton Delmer, a British propagandist during World War II.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guest:

Peter Pomerantsev is a Ukrainian-born British journalist, author, and TV producer. Pomerantsev has written two books about Russian disinformation and propaganda—Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014), and This Is Not Propaganda (2019). His most recent book, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (2024), discusses the life and legacy of Sefton Delmer, a British propagandist during World War II.

This episode of Strategy Matters aligns with the Interwar Case 5 of the Strategy and Policy Course: The Interwar World. Co-host Brendan Neagle interviews Trent Hone, the author of Learning War and Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific. The interview focuses on U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps adaptation in the interwar period between World War I and World War II. The discussion includes a description of complex adaptive systems, the influence of constraints on effective efforts at adaptation, aligning incentive systems with the desired outcomes, and the importance of communicating a clear objective. The interview closes with Mr. Hone proposing some key takeaways for the modern strategist from the U.S. Navy’s experience in the interwar period.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The U.S. Navy, or U.S. Naval War College.

Guests:

Trent Hone is a Vice President with ICF and an award-winning naval historian. He works with organizations to improve their art of practice, increase effectiveness, and accelerate learning. He is the author of Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898-1945, Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific, as well as books on Leyte Gulf, Guadalcanal, and the Navies of World War I.

In this episode of Strategy Matters, we explore the strategic logic behind the formation of NATO in the aftermath of World War II. The discussion examines the post-World War world from Western and Soviet perspectives and highlights how economic challenges, political instability, and ideological competition shaped early Cold War security decisions. Guests Dr. David Stone and Dr. Timothy Hoyt emphasize the alliance as a solution to European post-war challenges and contrast NATO with earlier failed efforts at collective security. The episode closes by exploring enduring lessons about alliance credibility and the importance of aligning all instruments of national power in coalitions.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Dr. Timothy Hoyt, Ph.D. is the John Nicholas Brown Chair of Counterterrorism and, since 2019, has also served as the Director of the Advanced Strategy Program at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of numerous publications on irregular warfare, COIN and counterterrorism, and South Asia. Dr Hoyt also serves as the Deputy Editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.

Dr. David Stone, Ph.D., the William E. Odom Professor of Russian Studies, joined the Strategy and Policy Department in 2015. He received a B.A. from Wabash College and a Ph.D. in history from Yale. He previously taught at Kansas State University. His book “Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union” (2000) won the Shulman Prize and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society. He has also published “A Military History of Russia” (2006) and “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (2015). He edited “The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945” (2010). He is the author of several dozen articles on Russian military history and foreign policy.

Episode ten of Strategy Matters aligns with the fourth case study in the Strategy and Policy Course at the Naval War at the U.S. Naval War College. Much of the case study focuses on the European theaters of World War I, but in the podcast, we are exploring the extra-European or colonial theaters of the conflict. Although distinct, they were seldom decisive. Nonetheless, the colonial theaters in WWI hold many lessons for today’s strategists, including the complexities of peripheral theaters and irregular warfare, the role of seapower in a global conflict, and recruitment and motivation to fight. The host, Dr. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, is joined by two professors from the Strategy and Policy Department: Dr. Tim Hoyt and Dr. Jesse Tumblin. A renowned expert on irregular warfare, Dr. Hoyt examines why, despite much action in the colonial theaters, they failed to break the stalemate or shift the balance between the belligerents. A historian of the British Empire, Dr. Tumblin discusses how the dominions provided it with manpower and enormous resources, but also challenged the empire’s institutions and war strategy.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Dr. Timothy Hoyt, Ph.D. is the John Nicholas Brown Chair of Counterterrorism and, since 2019, has also served as the Director of the Advanced Strategy Program at the U.S. Naval War College. He is the author of numerous publications on irregular warfare, COIN and counterterrorism, and South Asia. Dr Hoyt also serves as the Deputy Editor of The Journal of Strategic Studies.

Dr. Jesse Tumblin, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of strategy and policy specializing in political and military history, ideas of security, and the current and former British world. He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from Boston College and a B.A. from the University of Tennessee. He is a past fellow in international security studies at Yale University. He is the author of “The Quest for Security: Sovereignty, Race, and the Defense of the British Empire, 1898-1931” (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and an article on Britain’s attempts to secure its Indo-Pacific empire, which won the Saki Ruth Dockrill Memorial Prize for international history from the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.

Episode Nine of Strategy Matters aligns with the third case study in the Strategy and Policy Course at the Naval War at the U.S. Naval War College. In this episode, we shift our focus on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars to explore how the military and political upheavals of 1793–1815 shaped strategic thinking in the early American republic. Although the United States stayed largely out of the European conflicts, American leaders watched them closely, and the era profoundly influenced how they understood war, strategy, and national power. Host Brendan Neagle is joined by three guests from the Strategy and Policy Department: Dr. George Satterfield, an expert on European military history, Dr. Jon Romaneski, a military historian focused on early U.S. military history, and Dr. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, scholar of Clausewitz and co-host of Strategy Matters. The episode closes with key takeaways from each guest on Napoleon’s enduring relevance for contemporary strategic thought.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent theviews of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Dr. George Satterfield, Ph.D. holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Illinois (2001) and an M.A. in history from Illinois State University. Before joining the Strategy and Policy Department, he taught history at the post-secondary level in New York and New Jersey. In 2006, he was a faculty member at Hawaii Pacific University, and at the same time, he won a distinguished book award for his book “Princes, Posts, and Partisans: The Army of Louis XIV and Partisan Warfare in the Spanish Netherlands, 1673-1678 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).” Professor Satterfield has expanded his interests to include modern European history, general military and naval history, counterinsurgency and NATO.

Lieutenant Colonel Jon Romaneski, U.S. Army, is a military professor in the US Naval War College’s Strategy and Policy Department. He is a U.S. Army Aviation officer whose previous command and staff positions include extensive time in Europe, the U.S. Military Academy, Fort Carson, Colorado, and Fort Cavazos, Texas. His most recent assignment was his battalion command tour in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He has a BA in history from James Madison University and a PhD in military history from the Ohio State University.

Dr. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, Ph.D. earned a Ph.D. in history at King’s College, London. Bellinger is the author of “Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War” (Oxford University Press USA, 2015). She is the winner of the 2016 Society for Military History Moncado Prize for her article, “The Other Clausewitz: Findings from the Newly Discovered Correspondence between Marie and Carl von Clausewitz.” She is the first scholar to work with the newly discovered correspondence between the Clausewitz couple. Before transitioning to academia, Bellinger worked as a journalist and international correspondent for various European outlets.

This is a special episode of the Strategy Matters Podcast. Host Brendan Neagle talks with historian Dr. John Ferling to explore the strategic lessons of the American Revolution. This special episode reaches back to provide additional perspective on the third Strategy and War case study at the U.S. Naval War College. Although the timing of this episode does not align directly with the American Revolution case study, Dr. Ferling’s insights illuminate many of the course themes that cut across the entire course. Drawing on his books Whirlwind and his new work Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling assesses the Revolution’s strategic environment and international context and the central choices both sides faced at the outset of the conflict. Dr. Ferling dives into the challenges of forging a cohesive strategy from competing colonial interests, George Washington’s strengths and weaknesses as a strategic leader, and how diplomacy combined with military operations to shape the war’s trajectory. He also provides perspective on some of the strengths of British military decision-making, particularly by General Henry Clinton. The conversation closes with reflections on the Revolution’s most important strategic principles and why they still matter for today’s strategists.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of War, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Dr. John Ferling is a leading historian of the American Revolution who spent most of his four-decade academic career at the University of West Georgia, where he taught courses on Colonial America, U.S. military history, and the Revolution. The author of numerous works, including Whirlwind and Shots Heard Round the World, Ferling has long combined scholarship with a passion for writing accessible history. His career began with two years teaching high school in Texas before moving into higher education in Texas, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and ultimately Georgia. In 2013, he received the Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities in recognition of his lifetime contributions to history and civic culture. A lifelong baseball fan, the first major league game he saw was between Pittsburgh and the Brooklyn Dodgers, a game in which Jackie Robinson scored the winning run. For twenty years he timed his research trips to Boston so that the Red Sox were in town. He has a picture of Fenway Park proudly displayed in his office.

In episode seven, Admiral (ret.) Lars Saunes and Dr. Michelle Paranzino discuss how the outcome of the Second World War shaped the politics and security in Europe. This episode complements the Second World War case study within the Strategy and War course. It also addresses one of the primary themes in the study of war: the strategic implications of military operations. The United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union fought as allies, but they also had different visions for the world after the defeat of Nazi Germany. Their leaders, the so-called ‘Big Three,’ Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, also had to consider operational and logistical challenges when seeking to fulfill them. Admiral Saunes and Dr Paranzino consider alternative scenarios for military operations on the continent and why they were not taken. Finally, the guests highlight that although understanding the agreement the Allies achieved at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 can help us grasp Vladimir Putin’s logic, it is not a good guide for achieving peace in Ukraine or navigating current security challenges.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Rear Admiral (ret.) Lars Saunes was born in Alesund, Norway. He retired from the Navy from the position as Chief of Royal Norwegian Navy August 2017 and is now CNO Distinguished international fellow at the USNWC. He is a Submariner by trade and has held different command position on Kobben and Ula class submarines. He has been the commander of the Norwegian task group, Chief Naval operations at joint HQ, Commander submarine operating authority, Commandant and commander of the Norwegian Coast guard as well as Chief of the Royal Norwegian Navy. He has served as the head naval section of the Norwegian defense high command/join and the Norwegian defense research Institute.

Michelle Paranzino, earned her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied U.S. foreign policy, Soviet history and Cold War Latin America. She has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the author of "The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War: A Short History with Documents" (Cambridge: Hackett, 2018). She grew up in Los Angeles, earning her B.A. in history at UC Santa Cruz and an M.A. in history at Cal State Northridge. She has held fellowships at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and is currently working on a book about the war on drugs.

In Episode 6, Dr. Burak Kadercan and Dr. Jesse Tumblin explore the current case study in Strategy and War Course, World War I, from a different angle: the strategic challenges the Ottoman Empire faced. At its height, the Ottoman Empire ruled on three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. However, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it lost much of its European domains and struggled to modernize. The possession of one of its former provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina, led to the clash between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, which snowballed into World War I. Throughout the war the Allies targeted the Ottoman Empire with a series of peripheral campaigns in the Balkans and the Middle East. Dr. Vanya Eftimova Bellinger and her guests explore valuable strategic lessons these campaigns offer. At the end of the war, Great Britain and France divided the Ottoman domains in the Middle East among themselves, leading to many of the issues continuing to plague the region through the current era. Also, the guests discuss how the modern Turkish Republic emerged from the ashes of World War I largely due to the vision and leadership of one of the heroes from the Dardanelles/Gallipoli Campaign, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Burak Kadercan is an Associate Professor who holds a PhD and MA in political science from the University of Chicago and a BA in politics and international relations from Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey. Dr. Kadercan specializes in the intersection of international relations theory, international security, military-diplomatic history, and political geography. Prior to joining the Naval War College, he was Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Reading (United Kingdom) and Assistant Professor in International Relations and Programme Coordinator for the MA in international security at Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Dr. Kadercan’s scholarly contributions have appeared in International Security, Review of International Studies, International Studies Review, International Theory, and Middle East Policy. Dr. Kadercan is the author of Shifting Grounds: The Social Origins of Territorial Conflict (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Jesse Tumblin is an assistant professor of strategy and policy specializing in political and military history, ideas of security, and the current and former British world. He earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from Boston College and a B.A. from the University of Tennessee. He is a past fellow in international security studies at Yale University. He is the author of “The Quest for Security: Sovereignty, Race, and the Defense of the British Empire, 1898-1931” (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and an article on Britain’s attempts to secure its Indo-Pacific empire, which won the Saki Ruth Dockrill Memorial Prize for international history from the Institute for Historical Research, University of London.

Episode five features Dr. David Stone and Dr. Kenneth Swope from the U.S. Naval War College, who examine how two pivotal conflicts between 1894 and 1905 reshaped China’s place in East Asia. This episode compliments the Russo-Japanese War case study within the Strategy and War Course. While examining the period between the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the guests trace China’s struggle to modernize its military, the heavy costs of defeat by Japan, and the growing shadow of Russian ambitions in the region. Dr. Stone and Dr. Swope first explore how the Sino-Japanese War sets the stage for the Russo-Japanese War and then how both conflicts influenced Chinese and Russian strategic thought. The episode closes by drawing connections between these two wars and power dynamics in East Asia today.

Cover art:

Frederick W. Rose and Kisaburō Ohara, "Kokkei Ō-A Gaikō Chizu: A humorous diplomatic atlas of Europe and Asia" (1904). Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests:

Professor David R. Stone, the William E. Odom Professor of Russian Studies, joined the Strategy and Policy Department in 2015. He received a B.A. from Wabash College and a Ph.D. in history from Yale. He previously taught at Kansas State University. His book “Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union” (2000) won the Shulman Prize of ASEEES and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society. He has also published “A Military History of Russia” (2006) and “The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917” (2015). He edited “The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945” (2010). He is the author of several dozen articles on Russian military history and foreign policy.

Kenneth M. Swope is a Professor of Strategy and Policy who graduated with a B.A. from the College of Wooster (OH) in 1992. He earned his M.A. (Chinese Studies, 1995) and Ph.D (History, 2001) at the University of Michigan. Professor Swope previously taught at Marist College, Ball State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. He served as the Dr. Leo A. Shifrin Chair at The United States Naval Academy in 2019-20. A specialist on the military history of Ming-Qing China (1368-1911), Dr. Swope has published numerous books and articles including Struggle for Empire: The Battles of General Zuo Zongtang (Naval Institute Press, 2024), which received the "Book of the Year" prize from The Samuel B. Griffith Foundation for the Study of Chinese Military History, and a Distinguished Book Award from The Society for Military History.

Guests Katrina Ponti and Jonathan Romaneski join host Brendan Neagle to unpack the historical significance and strategic effects of operations at Fort Ticonderoga during the American War of Independence.  The discussion complements the course materials for American War of Independence case study in the Strategy and War Course at the U.S. Naval War College. The guests explore how the fort’s capture by irregular colonial forces in 1775 revealed the outsized psychological impact of seemingly small operations and the advantages of decentralized execution for insurgents. The discussion then turns to British strategic adjustments and the difficulty of distinguishing between a military objective’s perceived symbolic importance and its true strategic value. Finally, the conversation draws broader lessons on irregular and hybrid warfare, connecting Ticonderoga’s story to modern dilemmas such as gray zone conflicts and the enduring need for adaptability in military planning.

The opinions expressed on this podcast represent the views of the presenters and do not reflect the official position of the Department of Defense, The US Navy, or US Naval War College.

Guests: Katrina Ponti, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow in the Strategy and Policy Department. She earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester in 2022. Before joining the Strategy and Policy Department, she was an Ernest May Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Ponti has published on topics related to the diplomatic and maritime history of the early United States. In addition to her interests in history and policy, she is a trained historical archaeologist. She is an award-winning poet for her fifth grade work about Fort Ticonderoga: Rainy Day at the Mountain Lake

Rainy day at the mountain lake

What should we do today?

Should we go to a fort 

From that long ago day?

Where cannons were brought from one state to the next

Over mountains that nearly touch the sky 

LTC Jonathan Romaneski, U.S. Army, is a military professor in the US Naval War College’s Strategy and Policy Department. He is a U.S. Army Aviation officer whose previous command and staff positions include extensive time in Europe, the U.S. Military Academy, Fort Carson, Colorado, and Fort Cavazos, Texas. His most recent assignment was his battalion command tour in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. He has a BA in history from James Madison University and a PhD in military history from the Ohio State University.