Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve and today's bonus author interview. I'm going to sit down with Phillips, Pays and O'Brien, and I'm going to talk about the book that comes out today, War and Power, Who Wins Wars and Why. I would love to tell you that the topic of this book is totally irrelevant to our world today. Unfortunately,
quite the opposite is probably true. And while I hope that military power can prove a deterrence rather than anything that we actually need to use anytime soon, I become less and less confident by the moment that that is actually in fact going to be the case. Hence, we turn to our subject matter, how on Earth do nations acquire the power necessary to deter and prosecute wars to
their fullest and most successful conclusion. O'Brien breaks this down into a number of different chapters where we look at things like leadership, society, technology, economics. We're only going to have time to talk about a couple here today, but it's a very very readable first foray into the subject. If you're new into foreign policy, or if you're new
into this idea of nations and warfare. It also has enough detail that for those of you who are very experienced in this field, this is going to be a good book for you to pick up as well. It's one of those that really does have something for everyone. So without further ado, and as always, the link is in the show notes, so if you'd like to pick up a copy, you can just click the link. You can buy. You can buy wherever you want to. I always just pull one link in, but pick it up
wherever you want. You'll enjoy the book a lot. It clocks in it somewhere right around two hundred and thirty pages, so it's a reasonable read if you're getting on a plane or something like that, but it's also good to just pick up and put it back down. So without further ado, then, and after these quick messages, let's jump
into the interview. All right, and welcome back. As I mentioned before, I'm sitting down today with historian Phillips Payson O'Brien, and we are talking about his most recent book, which is War and Power, Who Wins Wars and Why. It's
an excellent, concise and really really readable. As I talked about in the introduction, overview of a concept and some ideas that are probably of a lot of relevance to the world right now unfortunately, which is what does one need to do to be success in combat and or maybe deterring that in the first place. I want to start out by asking about something that you bring up
right away in the start of the book. You talk about how power, both in times of peace and war depends very much on what you say, the ability to design, build, and manipulate. And you can't see this, but I'm doing air quotes stuff, and I was hoping it could start by explaining to the audience what you mean by that and why it's so important.
Well, one of the things I wanted to say to people is not to provide a theory which explains everything, but to provide a framework to understand what makes the state powerful and then how that power might interact in war, because I didn't like people having theory like these are great powers. These are not great powers, and that means something. I don't know what that means. People would say that Russia is a great power, ukrained not or I'm a realist.
I have this theory which explains how power works, and then none of these things ever seem to work. So I sort of say what makes a state powerful in terms of the interaction of power, particularly in war, And I came up with sort of what you might say, a basic what you need to do, and then how does that shaped. The basic thing you need is economic and technological power. If you're not an economic and technological power, you're never going to be a great military power or
win war. So just you know that's not going to work in state to state wars. That's different from SAT counterinsurgencies, but in state to state wars you need the ability to make stuff, as I said, because when you go into a war, what you have at the start of the war is going to go. It's going to be eaten up amazingly quickly and shockingly short time periods, far far quicker than people think. So it's your ability than to make new stuff which will determine the course of
the war and well you can fight. So that's the foundation. Now, not everybody who can make stuff is going to be a great power, the powerful state, because then you need the other factors to work with that, and that's your leadership, your society, your political structure, your allies, these different elements all need to work together. But if you can't make stuff. You're not even going to get to that point.
Yeah, And I suppose just for reference in for those who don't have the book in front of them, and since it came out today you probably don't. But these are all topics when we're talking about economic, technological strength, leadership, society, and structure. These are components of the book that you walk through one at a time, and I think that that's what really gives it its kind of overall structure. One of the topics that I wanted to ask about that's kind of early on in the book as well.
You start to talk about population and land, which I have you know, our audience, you know, we love, we love ourselves some classical realm in this podcast, and we love some of those things. And I think so a lot of times when we focus on societies of the past, you think about population and land as extremely important when it comes to fighting and prosecuting a war successfully. You argue, in especially in the modern context, that population and land
play limited roles in determining actually a country's power. Why is that and how recent of a phenomenon is that?
Yeah, I mean the book itself, I mean it is from nineteenth century today you might say, I make references back to the Napoleonic era, so I'm not trying to say throughout all of human history, but it is worth noting the United States has never been the most popular country in the world, and in fact nowhere close to being the most populous country in the world. Nowadays it's you know, it's one fifth the size of China, or
you know, significantly smaller than India. So the idea that you know, just being large is what makes you powerful seems to me a little bit off in terms of population and even in greater counterput, Russia geographically is the largest country in the world, but it's certainly not the most powerful. So you know, if if you can translate your large population into your ability to make things and be economically and technologically productive, then you can be a
great power. But just saying your big inn and of itself is not not that useful. That you know, who are the biggest countries in the world today, Well, you have you have India now, which is the biggest, then China, then the US, but then countries like Indonesia or Pakistan are incredibly large countries for hundreds of millions of people, and in and of itself, that doesn't make them the powers that you would think for those populations.
So and I am actually kind of I've always wondered about this in the context of modern warfare, and I don't even know if this is something that you could potentially speak on, But to me, there are times that I look the war in Ukraine, for example, and just the efficacy of drones and you know, non personnel occupied military operations, and I do start to wonder, is there is there a point where a large population in particular actually starts to become more of a liability in certain circumstances,
because if you have a large population, you you first of all have to defend it, right and second of all, that population is going to consume resources, which then you know, you kind of think of like almost like a siege mentality. I suppose, you know, going back to the classical world where it's like you have a lot of non combatants in the city that's under siege, and that's they're going to consume resources at the same rate as the people
who are defending it. You know, is there any way that we can make similar analogies today or is that just is that too far of an extrapolation.
It's not too far. Mean, there are examples of that. I think China in the Second World War incredibly. I think might have still been the most populous country in the world China and the Second World War, and yet its population is in some ways a hindrance as much as a help, because it's got to try and feed it and keep it going, and it's not producing a lot in the way of military equipment. So that is
an example. We're having a very large population. I mean, we were talking about Rome earlier, and I don't want to claim I'm a classicist, but Rome's shape became very difficult to defend the size of the Roman Empire, with this enormous land border that stretched all the way from Holland to North Africa. Yeah, and it was actually now it was incredibly difficult to defend that when you started
having the incursions all the way around it. So the size that you have, if it's not matched with a population that can make things well led and well motivated, is a real problem because you're being pushed and pulled in many directions to try and hold onto it. You could say that's also with European empires. The European empire just became the most impossible to defend because they were being pushed and pulled throughout their many different constituent parts.
So I mean, a nice, unitary state with defensible borders. It's flipped on its head. Actually, it's an interesting point. I'm thinking about it. The United States great advantage, great advantage for the past one hundred and sixty years has been it's not had a threat on its borders. The United States has been this place where there were Canada was not a threat in any reasonable way. After the Mexican American more, Mexico was not really a threat in
any way. And because the United States didn't have threats on its borders, it was sort of quite contained. It had massive strategic advantages. So you could say, your borders matter greatly if they're cohesive and defensible and non threatening versus large and threatening.
Yeah, it's interesting. It's almost kind of like, if you want to go back to the old board game risk, It's right, it's like, where are your borders and who are your borders with? You know, who are your borders with matters a lot. You know, we have the United States has borders with Canada and Mexico, which you point out you since the Mexican American War, those borders have.
By large been quiet.
You know, you could talk about maybe a little insurgency around World War One, but you know that's that's strange, I know, what.
A risk wanted to go for Asia because it was impossible to defend right everyone when you start with going something like Australasia or South America because it's only got one or two borders, and that becomes you a better place to start building up.
Yeah, you kind of think about those choke points. And then Rome is a great example here where yeah, it has this enormous territory, but it doesn't particularly have defensible borders in a lot of ways.
And it's I've.
Always kind of wondered about it, you know, in the context of the First World War two, because you think about you know, you think about like a country like the British Empire. You know, it has on paper these incredible vast reserves of and power, right because the Commonwealth stretches, you know, to to India and Australia. There's all these areas that you would you would think the British are able to draw from, but that doesn't ever seem to really happen to a large extent in the war.
You know, First World War happens. You know, you can said the British Empire gets at the British got a lot of support from their empire in the First and Second World War. It's just the empire decides it doesn't want to stay, uh, and the British can't fight to keep it. So it's a real sort of interesting question on that that they certainly do tap the empire quite successfully in the First and Second World War for resources.
Right right, right, you know, And but I also think that there's to an extent, like a war on paper is different than a war in real life. Right, you know, you have your your Ledger sheet and that tells you who you think should win. But that's not always the case, right And then I suppose even the American Revolution is
a pretty decent example of that. But I you know, I want to turn to this question that of economic So if we're going to say, well, population doesn't play a major direct role in determining a country's power, well what about GDP and economic power in that case?
Yeah, I mean it's a combination of economic power, productivity plus technological advancement. I mean that if you're a country that's making is most of your money from a resource extraction, you might be very rich in a per capita GDP way. Yeah, if you're just pumping oil out of the ground or extracting minerals and selling them overseas. But that's going to also limit your power in certain ways too, because you can't make things out of that money. You have to
buy everything. And by the way, the end of that, if you have to end up buying everything, you're going to run into problems because if you can't make it yourself, you'll run through it, and then you'll have to just buy more, buy more, and you're going to be held hostage. You're not going to have any strategic autonomy, which by a lot of states are realizing that now and trying
to actually set up big cocted supply lines. So I just think in terms of looking at what you have in terms of people and what you can do in terms of your economy. It's not just being rich, it's being technologically advanced and having the ability to make material out of that technological advancement, which, by the way, if you look and the book talks about it, if you look at the possibility of, say a US China war. Now, the problem in the US is going to have is
that it can't make a lot. The manufacturing base of the United States is much less than that of China, and the Chinese are making eighty percent of the world's drones much more, has a much greater manufacturing capacity of military equipment than the United States right now in terms of shipbuildings, say, and so the US will have to try and find some way to make up for that inability to match the Chinese and manufacturing.
Well, just kind of taking that example, then let's just imagine a scenario and maybe not it doesn't have to be a direct war between America and China. But how could a country like the United States make up that difference, like in different ways? Like what would you have to would you would it be? I mean, let's just assume. I mean, obviously, a manufacturing base is difficult to conjure
out of thin air. You know, it's not somethings that they can do overnight, right, But so what our other way is that a country then can compensate for one of those deficiencies.
Well, I mean you could start now, I mean, if you end up starting a war and you don't have a manufacturing base, there's very little you can do in the short term. So it's a question of what you can do to start preparing your manufacturing base or strategic you're protecting your strategic industries. Now, for instance, one of the most shocking things is how the United States has
basically not become a shipbuilding nation. Yeah, the Second World War, the United States just produce more shipping than the rest of the world combined, just produced massive amounts of shipping, and the United States remained a major shipbuilding nation after the Second World War. Now, the United States hardly makes a ship. I mean really, it's you could count on a hand the number of non military ships the United States makes in a year. The Chinese make half the
world shipping. So the United States, if it doesn't have a shipbuilding industry, it's going to be very hard pressed to do it. Now, what could the United States do well? Actually, the two things that it does have are its allies are the second and third largest shipbuilding states in the world, and that's the Japanese and the South Koreans, So they
do have allies with that. Now that means the United States actually has to understand the value of allies, and right now I'm not sure the United States does understand the value of allies and how it could tap them. But without allies, the United States basically would go into a war without much of a shipbuilding industry, and it's hard to see how they would make one off in the course of the war if they don't start preparing ahead of time.
Well what about technology? What if the United States instead were to say, well, instead of putting our eggs in the in the basket of we're going to develop our our essentially our manufacturing base, let's just try to get to generative AI first. And is there can you get to a point? Of course? The other thing that's in the back of my mind as you're talking is does any of this matter because the United States has nuclear weapons? You know? And so does any of it matter at all?
Because you know, you're in a scenario where the United States could and no one has, of course since the Second World War, But the United States could in theory simply say we're just gonna We're just gonna deploy our nuclear weapons. And that's essentially the great balancing Like, is there a fair argument there us?
I mean, I just can't imagine the US would ever use nuclear weapons of war against China. To begin with, one, there is a far greater disincentive to use nuclear weapons than say, war gamers and nuclear theorists have understood that use it the nuclear weapon is a catastrophic decision. We
have all these war games which end up in nuclear exchanges. Well, if you were looking at what should Russia should have done, according to a lot of wargames, Russia should have gone nuclear by now, all right, Once the Ukrainians attacked Crimea, they should have gone nuclear. Once the Ukrainians fought back, they should have gone attacked Crymea with nuclear weapons, because
Russia has nuclear weapons and Ukraine doesn't. But what's interesting is Russia hasn't used nuclear weapons because the decision to do that is far more, far more difficult than people understood before. You are really changing so many things and
probably destroying the international system as constructed. So if there's say a war between the US and China, and what's it most likely to be about, say Taiwan or the South China Sea, well sor it's not going to use nuclear weapons on Taiwan wants to take Taiwan, doesn't want to like radiate Taiwan because it's actually close to China
and the whole point is to force reunification. So the Chinese and the Chinese, by the way, have a relatively low priority for nuclear weapons and their strategic arsenal that they do have nuclear weapons, but compared to say, what they could have built over the past thirty years, they've been on the whole going at a modest pace in
building nuclear weapons. So it's hard to look at the Chinese and say they're going to use nuclear weapons, and that means the United States would have to use nuclear weapons about a war in Taiwan and a war in the South China Sea. I find that very difficult. I just can't see why they would do that. I mean, it's not an existential war for the USA. It's not US territory that's being attacked. The US using nuclear weapons for Taiwan right now, the US government isn't even pledged
to fight for Taiwan. I think that's very important. The Taiwan is not a formal US ally that the US has promised to defend Taiwanese territorial aegrity. So I don't think the nuclear it's more that the US would just not fight. That's more likely than the use of nuclear weapons that the US just decides Heck, it's not really our area of concern, it's a long way away. China is much closer, China is more powerful in this area, so it's not worth it for us to go to war.
That's a far more likely scenario than the use of nuclear weapons.
I'm kind of curious, then, what the value of possessing nuclear weapons is. You know, if if they're simply not going to be used, then then what's the purpose of continuing to produce them at all? I mean, is there is it a technology that, because it is simply so powerful from a practical standpoint, is not usable in a conflict? And then why does why do we not talk about AI or artificial generative artificial intelligence the same way because
we don't know the power yet? I mean, like, what what is like, what's the distinction there?
Well, in nuclear weapons, they do play, I mean they have given Russian massive advantages in this war. By the Russians threatening the use of nuclear weapons for the first few years regularly. That led to much slower delivery of weapons to Ukraine and much less advanced systems so that Ukraine supporters were definitely deterred against giving Ukraine a lot of advanced weaponry, a lot of ranged weaponry because they
were worried about a Russian nuclear response. So in fact, nuclear weapons played a great deal of advantage and have helped shape the war in Russia's interest far more than Ukraine's. And we can see that, we can see how that that really mattered that that because Ukraine didn't have nuclear weapons, in some ways it was treated like a second class citizen. So there's there's that they have the threatened ability, which is real. And the second thing is they are the
ultimate you might say, territorial integrity weapon. That you there's a difference between a war in the South China Sea for the US than a war if California is attacked. Now, if California is attack then you might want to say, Okay, we need nuclear weapons. Is a deterrent to that. So I don't think nuclear weapons are are right. In fact, I think we're actually going to be going into, unfortunately
now nuclear proliferation period. I think that's where we're heading because people have seen the advantages that Russia accrued through having nuclear weapons, and so many states are going to be considering that themselves in certain advanced to israel Is are crude through having nuclear weapons, and so I think there will be more a greater incentive for states to develop nuclear weapons in the coming years, and that's more likely. The situation is sort of the spread of nuclear weapons.
Now AI. The interesting thing for AI, I mean I prefer in this case autonomous systems over AI when it comes to nuclear weapon or weapons as a whole. The next sort of real leap forward for autonomous systems is fully autonomous systems that you can just send out a mass and they will decide what to attack. If anyone can get to that stage, that is a massive advantage
no one. The Ukrainians and Russians are by the way working on these systems, but they're still very difficult, almost impossible to program efficiently because you have to have the ability of the system to identify a target, make sure it's not being spoofed, to make sure it's an actual enemy target, and then actually decide to attack on its own.
All right, But a lot of people working on this, and if different sides could actually come up with you know, and no one has, but if some side could come up with a fully autonomous weapon that they can make up in mass you know, the Ukraine's going to make aiming for eight million drones visit next year or something. You know, if you could make a million drones that are autonomously directed, that's a really empowerful weapon. You won't lose any soldiers. You'll just send these things up and
they'll actually kill massive amounts of the other side. So I think that's the AI advantage of someone can take over, you know, real autonomy and make that in mass We're not there yet. There's issues of power and computing capability, but who knows if there won't be a breakthrough going forward.
It's interesting. I'm still wondering about the difference though, because I'm imagining a scenario where a country is able to develop autonomous weapons systems and send it out and that'll kill a million people. Now, but now it comes down to okay, well, now, what's the difference between executing that and executing a nuclear strike, which we've all sort of decided apparently as a civilization, as a human civilization is off limits, like.
Because it's all radioactive, Okay, that's different, Yeah, you know, I mean, it's a horrible the nuclear weapons have the long term poisoning that you can send out a million drones in Ukraine and you'll destroy one hundred thousand soldiers and many tanks and the vehicles and people do not react the same as nuclear weapons because it doesn't have radiotivity. Uh, and that seems to be the different I mean, what what what the difference is? Nuclear weapons is the opposite.
It's not like targeting one specific thing, it's the destruction of a massive area and within that massive area now the really scary thing. And if you gave new made nuclear weapons autonomous, which was actually the the plot of the Matthew Broderick and Ali Sheety film War Games from when I was very young, was actually about autonomous nuclear weapons, and they set up a system where, you know, an autonomous an AI had the ability to decide when to launch or not, and that AI seemed to get spoofed
and almost launched. Now. I don't know if anyone's going to go to that, hopefully not in my lifetime. And I would be desperately worried if we did go to autonomous nuclear weapons. But that's not to say it won't happen.
Yeah, to an extent. It's also the one of the plots of you know, the Second Terminator film. So like there's there's a lot, there's a lot of science fiction that's play today. But what's sad is how close to reality some of the science fiction is coming. You talk about when it comes to the creation of technological strength and military power. This idea of relative power balances that I actually think is very very important for UNF and it's something I talk about a lot as I'm teaching
as well. I wonder if you could explain what you mean by that and why that matters so much.
Well, I mean, let's start with it. One of the things that I wanted to write the book is I just didn't like this idea of the great powers. Right, let's start with that as a concept. I didn't know what that meant, what it meant to be a great power versus not a great power. It seemed to me that actually calling someone a great power wasn't an actual judgment. It was a prophecy. We just believe you are really powerful,
so we're going to call you a great power. And we believe someone else is not so powerful, so we're going to say you're not a great power. So as a prophecy, but it was a prophecy that was imbued with sort of advantage. You were considered as people Realists would say, oh, well, Russia's are great power, and great powers therefore get an interest in what goes on in their borders, whereas non great powers while they just sort of have to suck it up and see. So I
didn't like that classification all powers, of course relative. There's no absolute power. It's a question of what relative strengths different people did. So you have to look at ones and say, look at power as something that's constructed from these different variables, and different states will have relative strengths relative weaknesses within those different variables, I mean, and they
can change. One of the things that, of course is no longer necessarily true, or might not be necessarily true, is for you might have argued for many decades being a democracy provided certain relative advantages and power when it came to war. They were committed, they saw it through, they had societal cohesion in doing that. Though now I don't know if you'd say democracies are that united. Democracies seem to be very divided now, and that is one
area where people might take advantage of them. So you just have to look at power as relative and different elements mattering at different times. So I said, I don't
have a theory to explain all powers. What I can do, though, in the book, and I hope I do, is provide a framework to say, if you want to see how states would interact, take a look at these variables in terms of production, leadership, society, political structure, and allies and sort of judge those in relative balance with each other. And then you get a very different view of who is powerful and who is not powerful if you take
that kind of framework and the relative way. So I don't want to have too long an answer here, but say, the alliance question is fascinating because the great power idea seems to stress individual powers. Well, you know, I don't think there is such a thing as a great power. There are great alliances. The wars have been won in the nineteenth and twentieth century and the twenty first century by alliances, not individual powers. And the stronger alliances and
these are cold wars and hot wars. Individual powers, be they Napoleon, France, Hitler's Germany, powers that act very much as individualistic powers and treat their allies with sort of disdain and don't cooperate with their allies. What's interesting is how poorly they actually perform. And so if we start trashing alliances, you're really weakening yourself in a way that I think people don't fully understand alliances matter. Well.
I completely agree with you on that. I mean, it's just hard to find an example from history where alliances didn't play, especially especially nineteenth century on Okay, i'll concede. You know that years ago, Okay, things may have been difficult and more difficult. The shifting sands of the Crusades I don't think are particularly apt contemporary example for us
to look at today. But I completely agree with you that alliances are very important, and I wish the United States understood that a little bit more, but that's not the world that we live in right now.
I just don't get why the US seems to be moving away from the alliances that constructed over eighty years and really supported US power. These alliances nat out of the alliances with the Pacific States have been huge elements of US power, but the United States just doesn't seem to value them presently in the way that they used to. I think this is something the US will regret. But as you say, that just seems to be the reality of where we are.
Well, I agree too. You know, I think of sometimes sometimes I think of an alliance like an insurance policy. Yeah, you do have to pay for it every month, but you are happy when you have it.
Well comes absolutely, I think it usually. I mean, what an alliance gives you is so much more than just the military forces of your ally. It tends to give you better supply lines, international political support, raw materials, so many things can come out of allies, and it gives you an ability for to have longevity that it's not. You know, the United States didn't win the Cold War. NATO won the Cold War. It could be said it wasn't the United States just acting on its own. But
we don't tend to often give alliances their due. And if the United States ends up losing its alliances, it will I think regret the day.
Well, I think we agree on that. But let's talk about one of the technological examples from the book. When you're talking about the evolution of technological power, I want to talk about dreadnoughts for a while. I find this always really really interesting because the British by pursuing this essentially undercut the advantage to some extent that they have. The moment that that first or not hits the water,
it makes everything else obsolete. So can you extrapolate, First of all, it's everybody what it is I'm talking about, because some people aren't don't know. And then on top of it, like why is this such a great example of how technological strength really changes the battlefield instantaneously?
Well, the dreadnont I mean in before the First World War, naval power, which by the way, was widely recognized as I don't want to say the dominant thing, but certainly one of you one of the few areas of that would strategically determine the next war, was seen primarily in terms of the largest warships have flowed, which are battleships. Now, Battleships are different from aircraft carriers which come along later.
Battleships have guns themselves, and they engage by hiring with their guns against other battleships or other warships at the time within miles, so you know they were within visual contact. Is how a battleship operated. The British, who are the world's leading battleship nation in nineteen oh five decide to actually build the most radical warship that they can, which
is called the Dreadnought HMS Dreadnought. And what Dreadnought is is that takes the concept of a battleship which had a bunch of different guns, say four big guns and eight small guns or ten small guns, and the British saying, now I forget all that, we just want big guns. It's all about the heavy broadsides, and they create HMS Dreadnought, which basically has a four Dreadnought, eight large guns on each side garage capability, and what they've done is created
a whole new classic warships. Some would say that the power of the Dreadnought is so extreme that and it can fire so many more heavy shells than any other ship afloat that it basically makes earlier vessels seem a bit tinker toy, like how are they going to stand up to Dreadnoughts. And it sets the stage for the Anglo German naval race before the First World War. Because what the British have slightly done is by creating this new generation of warship has said Okay, in the coming years,
everyone's going to measure their naval strength by dreadnoughts. But they're not going to care about ear leaderships. They're going to care just about these dreadnoughts. So it's what you make from this point onwards that will decide it. So what they had actually done is gotten rid of their old advantage and older warships and basically given themselves a year and a half construction start. So they traded that earlier advantage of mass in vessels for the ability to
make the first Dreadnought. And what they find, of course, when the Dreadnought happens, is that it reveals you might say, it separates the men from the boys when it comes to industrial technological power, because the Dreadnought is the most complex warship, and you could argue it's the most complex thing in the world that naval ships. Naval warships were the most advanced constructions in the world before the First World War. They had the most high tech they cost
the most. I mean, I give an example that they cost something like the dread The Dreadnought class battleships cost a hell of a lot more than the Titanic. You know that these big cruise liners often seen as the most beautiful, largest thing, they were nothing in price compared to an actual warship. They cost. These warships cost as much as skyscrapers.
One dreadnought class battleship by the end of the First World War cost as much as the Woolworth Building, which would have been the largest building in the world at the time. And what happened, very few states can actually make them, so it becomes that real test and it transforms the whole world naval balance. Really only three states can make them in terms of making them in numbers and with the industrial ability, and they are not surprisingly
the three largest industrial technological states in the world. They are the British, the Germans, and the Americans. They're the only ones that can really engage in a dreadnought naval race. Before the First World War, once the dread dot comes out, earlier naval powers that were holding on the French, the Russians, you might say, the Austro Hungarians, they just can't compete in it, so they make a very small number of dreadnoughts.
They're sort of being left in the dust by the others. Now, the United States chooses not to build dreadnoughts the way it could. The United States could have competed in the dreadnoughts maybe teeth Theodore Roosevelt wanted to, but he doesn't. But the British and the Germans then engage in a naval race about building dreadnoughts, and it is the intense
naval competition going into the First World War. The British know if they lose that race, they've really lost the First World War, or before it's fought, if the Germans gained dreadnought advantage the British, the British have no strategic future because the Germans can then cut them off from the sea lanes if they destroy British dreadnoughts, and Britain will starve. So it's fascinating to see just the intensity
that goes into that. But it just shows also the cost, as I said, to engage in the upper echelon technological industrial competition before the First World War, only a very small number of states can do that.
Yeah, and we could talk about how that idea persists today. And I think that that that truly is one of the most important takeaways, especially from the first chapter of this book, is to understand that when we talk about great power status, if we want to use that term, we're talking about who can really produce the elite technology in this case, because it's not everyone. As you point out, you know, this is not something that everyone is going to be able to do over and over again. And
just get the exact quote. By the way, it's that you're right about how the construction of the cost of building the Queen Elizabeth the Dreadnaught is thirteen point five million dollars and that's equivalent to the sixty story Woolworth building which is on there. So it just kind of puts it in context for you that obviously not everyone's
going to do it. I was kind of curious as I was reading this and listening to talk about what did the British know as they were constructing this first Dreadnaught that okay, this is going to change everything and that we are going to give up one advantage for another head start advantage or was that something that they only realized after the fact.
Well, first of all, it was done so quickly by the British and done by one really driven by one Admiral Sir John Jackie Fisher that I'm not sure they fully understood what they were doing. I mean, I think he saw this as an opportunity to do something spectacular. I think they also thought that they were so ahead in shipbuilding that what this might do is simply cement
their advantages. The real shock for the British comes a few years after the dreadnought when they actually look at what the Germans can make and they're like, oh my gosh, we hadn't realized just what German industrial capacity was when it came to shipbuilding, and that Germany was able to
build more dreadnoughts more quickly than they expected. So I think what it did is it isolated the focus on Germany, and the Germans actually are shown to be, because of their industrial technological light, a different kind of threat than say, the French and Russians had been, and that, by the way, the French and Russians before nineteen oh five were the great threat for the British. The Germans weren't the big enemy before in nineteen oh five, the French and the
Russians were the great naval enemy of the British. But the dreadnot. Sort of makes the French and the Russians not look that threatening because they can't keep up, but it makes the Germans look uber threatening because the Germans can keep up. In fact, in some areas where the Germans are really excelling, which is high quality engineering in industrial machinery, the Germans could out the British were worried
the Germans could outbuild them. I mean, I don't want to know how technical we want to get, but it's about actually the gun mountings that the turrets on these battleships were extraordinarily common. The most highest and the highest and the pinnacle of engineering before the First World War was probably a battleship turret because you had to turn something that weighed tons and tons and tons precisely quickly
raise guns up and down. It had to have so many working parts, so building the turret itself was the most complex part of the warship. But the Germans could actually make turrets, maybe even a little more fast, a little more quickly than the British. So that's a real stunning thing for them to understand. So they didn't know what they were doing, but they quickly fed out. By nineteen o eight nine what they had done.
Well, let's talk about aircraft carriers then, because I think most most military thinkers that I talk to now aday now will tell me, all right, the most the most technologically advanced piece of equipment in the world today from the military standpoint is the aircraft carrier. It's it is still the gold standard. And my question, you write in the book this US carrier dominance remains today. The United States is dominant in aircraft carriers, like, but I wonder,
like is that a relative term? Are we still dominant in all cases? Or is it? Should we consider it visa v the sphere of conflict. So let's take Taiwan for example. Taiwan's a lot closer to China than it is to us, right, so that's going to give them an advantage in that extent. And also, you know, when I think about carriers, are they still dominant?
Is the question I asked today. The thing about the dreadnoughts is they couldn't be sunk by anything but dreadnoughts. You're right, the submarines at the time hadn't reached the ability to really sink them. So you could look at dreadnought to Dreadnot competition and say, that's the problem that we would have with aircraft and air carriers now is large worships are vulnerable to much cheaper systems. So personally I am a real skeptic on the long term value
of the aircraft carrier. I mean I wrote an article on the Atlantic which got a lot of stick not long after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in twenty twenty two saying things like tanks and large warships are heading towards obsolescence because they can be destroyed by much cheaper systems. So it's a balance of what can or can't destroy it. So that's why it's different than the Dreadnot, because the Dreadnot at that point couldn't be destroyed by anything cheaply.
The problem that say, the US aircraft carriers would have fighting the Chinese is the Chinese can pump out anti ship missiles which are much I mean a fraction of the cost of aircraft carriers. You could have hundreds and hundreds of anti ship missiles not that expensive to build in relative terms, and the Chinese have anti ship missiles
that can you know, they say now reach Guam. So where actually would the US aircraft carriers be survivable in that modern battle area unless you believe you can shoot them all down, you know, provide perfect air defense to your carrier battle groups. Then actually that carrier battle group turns from being an asset to a target. And I would have to say the carrier to me, You'd have to convince me that a carrier is survivable in the
modern battle area to have that advantage. I am not convinced, say, in fighting China, that it is survivable personally, you know, I think we've we've partly seen it being used against people who couldn't fire back for the past forty years. So it's been used in the Middle East, it's been here, that's been used in the War on Terror. Well, that's against states that can't or or sort of organizations that
can't damage the carrier, so that it seems useful. I would be very wary to make the judgment that the carrier still will be an effective engine of war in the next war.
I'm not going to argue with you, by the way, because I agree with you. I agree with you very very much. I mean, if you're concerned at all in the US military that maybe the hooties can shoot something down, You're definitely gonna have those concerned about the Chinese. So we're on the same page.
Ask you know, it's a good question, ask the if you have a US carrier battle Boombourg British British carriers say, Okay, how many incoming missiles can you shoot down? Can the other side fire more than that? If the other side can fire more than you can absolutely shoot down, Well, those carriers are probably going to be sunk or you know, a lot of them, and the Chinese can certainly fire a heck of a lot of missauce. So I just think it's it's something that we just have to you know.
But it's militaries love to keep what they have, and they don't love to give up big. They love to keep big, big, powerful ships, and so there'll be a real lobbying to try and keep these ships for as long as possible.
Yeah, but that's very very true. I mean, the old ada is that the generals are always fighting the last War. I don't know how well it holds up, but I think of it from time to time. But we've talked so much about the tech chapter. I do want to move on and ask one last question I want to
ask it about the leadership chapter. If you would give me one prime example from the book as to this is why leadership is critical when it comes to war and power, I think it would go a long way to explaining to the audience the value of this really crucial aspect.
Well, Bick, I mean, every conversation eventually gets to Hitler. The Germans didn't have to go to war in nineteen thirty nine. Adolf Hitler wanted to go to war in nineteen thirty nine. States do not behave the same This is the thing that drives me crazy say about realism and offense of realism is so many theories of state
behavior that states sort of are the same. You know that all states are trying to maximize their power in an unstable world, so all states are trying to expand, where all states are trying to make themselves more powerful, but actually states pay very differently. Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in twenty twenty two. There was no Russian consensus to invade Ukraine. In fact, a lot of Putin's advisors clearly
didn't want to do it. There's that very famous TV scene where he publicly humiliates his advisors who were skeptical about the invasion, some very nervous about it. But he wants to do it, so he for the forces it. He forces the issue to be done, so that the idea that somehow leaders don't matter. It matters in the United States, whether for Ukraine, whether Joe Biden is president
or Donald Trump in these matter. And so we have to get a bit away from our theories which assume states are quite similar to say, actually, individual personalities matter. A lot of people don't like that because they don't like they call it, oh, with a great man idea of history. Well, by the way, it's not great. These guys are not great, and I think that's important. But if you don't look at the leadership of a country,
you will miss out one of the fundamental areas. But I say, when it will go to war, how it will fight the war, and what is driving it strategically? These are people making decisions.
Yeah, I echo that thought process back. I understand the desire to get away from the quote unquote great man theory of history. I get it to a large extent. But you can't ignore the power that someone like of Vladimir Putin or ajijingpaning exercises over their political system, and to ignore that, I think is absurd. Quite frankly, I'm not trying to be mean about it, but I do think it's that ridiculous.
I mean, you would think any I mean a new any Russian leader would probably want to get out of this ridiculous more. But Putin can't. Here it's Putin who's invested this war in his own leadership, So you know this war is not in Russian interest, It's in Putin's interest, and so I think you have to understand his personal role in US.
Yeah, I think that's very true. And I talk about the war. I always talk about, well, you have to talk When you tell me who is this good for? I say, well, is this good or bad? I say, well, good for who? Because that's a huge difference whether the continuing conflict in Gaza is good for Israel or good for bb Net and Yahoo, I think are two different questions.
Or even whether there is national interest. That's one of the things if we use this phrase national interest and said, well, what the heck is that? I don't see a nation's interest in many of these decisions. I see individual leaders interests. I see in many ways nations doing incredibly stupid things that I would say are against their interests. So we use the phrase national interest as if that is clear, but in many cases I would argue it's not, it's leadership interest.
I think it's a great point, and I also think, because we're out of time, I think it's a great book. I hope that everybody picks up a copy of it. I really enjoyed it. I loved at the setup of it. I loved every chapter. I thought it was very easy to digest and understand whether this is your first foray into foreign policy, war and so on and so forth, or you're an old hand at the till you know, either way you're going to enjoy it. And so thank you so much for coming on. It was a great conversation.
Thanks so much for having me.