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.