Talking Strategy

What is realpolitik, and why is the world said to be returning to it? Professor John Bew CMG traces the idea back to its origins.

The world may well be entering a new age of realpolitik, but the harder question is defining which kind. The term is usually associated with an unsentimental use of power to further national interests, often seen as a rejection of a more idealistic, values-based approach to international relations. But that's not where it came from. Realpolitik was first coined in 1853 by Ludwig von Rochau, a German liberal, who used it to describe something different: the ability to understand and adapt to the realities of power, and to pursue enlightened goals in a world that doesn't follow enlightened rules. For von Rochau, Realpolitik wasn't just about foreign policy – the strongest states, he argued, were those that could harness social forces at home and manage internal division effectively.

Professor John Bew is a historian at King's College London and a leading figure at the Centre for Statecraft and National Security. He has advised four British Prime Ministers and authored three UK National Security Strategies. His book, Realpolitk: a History is a definitive work on the subject, just as are his biographies on Castlereagh and Attlee.

Further reading:

John Bew, Realpolitik: A History (Hurst, 2026).

Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999).

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.

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.

Rear Admiral Archer M Macy Jr describes today's military, organisational, human and cultural risks and opportunities in integrating forces for air and missile defence.

Many modern defence reviews focus on the need for integration. Arguably, nowhere is the need more important today than in providing air and missile defence. State and non-state adversaries have shown varying abilities to combine their attacks in ways that pose multiple dilemmas.

Using small, slow-moving and low flying drones intended to swamp defences, coordinated with aircraft and cruise, hypersonic and ballistic missiles, these packages present huge challenges across a wide span of heights, speeds and trajectories. As well as being a problem for fielded forces, it is an industrial challenge in making sure there are enough interceptors at the right price point to sustain the defences.

In this episode, RAdm Macy USN (Retd) offers his unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities based on his time in the Aegis Program Office and most recently as the Director of the Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense Organization in the US Joint Staff.

Further Reading

Sidharth Kaushal, Archer Macy, and Alexandra Stickings. The future of NATO's air and missile defence. RUSI Occasional Paper, Royal United Services Institute, 2021, available at https://static.rusi.org/NATOMissileDefence2021.pdf.

Brian R. Green, Offense-Defense Integration for Missile Defeat: the Scope of the Challenge, Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2020, available at https://www.csis.org/analysis/offense-defense-integration-missile-defeat.

David C. Gompert, Preparing Military Forces for Integrated Operations in the Face of Uncertainty, RAND 2003, available at: https://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP250.html.

Luke Harding, 'Judges with machine guns: the part-time drone hunters defending Kyiv', The Guardian, 9 May 2024.

Talking Strategy, Season 6, Episode 14, Force Integration in 1940 – Dowding's Air Defence System, RUSI Podcast, 2026, available at https://www.rusi.org/podcasts/talking-strategy/episode-14-force-integration-1940-dowdings-air-defence-system.