Phillips Payson O'Brien, "War and Power: Who Wins Wars--And Why" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network — Phillips Payson O'Brien, "War and Power: Who Wins Wars--And Why" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
Host: Leo Bader
Guest: Phillips Payson O'Brien (Professor of Strategic Studies, University of St. Andrews)
Date: November 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Leo Bader interviews Phillips Payson O'Brien about his new book, War and Power: Who Wins Wars--And Why. O'Brien challenges conventional metrics of state power, such as the traditional concept of "great powers," and advocates for a more nuanced framework—"full spectrum power"—to understand why states win or lose wars. They dissect the economic, technological, political, and social dimensions behind military effectiveness, drawing on both historical precedents (notably World War II, the Cold War, and Vietnam) and the ongoing war in Ukraine. The conversation intertwines scholarly critique, memorable anecdotes, and timely analysis of current global conflicts, offering a comprehensive reevaluation of what it means to be powerful in war.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Flawed Concept of "Great Power"

• “Great power” is a term with “no criterion...that makes any sense” (04:01), O’Brien argues. He finds definitions arbitrary and laments how the label confers an undue legitimacy to states’ interests.
  • Quote: “It’s a great phrase because it’s meaningless, but people fill it with meaning...just because you've called them a great power, their interests are therefore greater.” (02:35–04:19)
• The misuse of the term led to skewed perceptions before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, such as prioritizing Russia’s interests above Ukraine’s.

2. The "Full Spectrum Power" Framework

• O'Brien proposes assessing state power across several domains:
  • Economic and technological might (the most vital foundations)
  • Leadership
  • Societal structure and morale
  • Alliance systems
• This approach avoids simplistic rankings and instead illuminates where states possess true advantages.
  • Quote: “You can be powerful in one element and not powerful in another, and that will let you down.” (04:28)
  • Quote: “This is not a theory that will tell you that...State X is 98% powerful versus State Y, which is 62% powerful...But it will tell you where the power might be or might not be.” (05:27)

3. The Primacy of Economics and Technology

• O'Brien is emphatic: “You cannot be an international power without economic, technological might. That doesn’t mean if you have it, you will be, but you cannot be if you don’t.” (06:54)
  • States often overestimate their power due to misleading metrics (e.g., Russia’s “great power” status despite modest GDP).
  • Population and land mass matter far less than the “ability to equip and regenerate” military forces.

4. Misplaced Faith in Military Metrics

• Counting tanks and aircraft, O’Brien argues, is misleading: “Most of that military equipment will be destroyed relatively soon. So it’s the ability to replace equipment.” (15:37)
  • Societal health (e.g., corruption) and technological sophistication are often ignored but crucial.
  • Ukraine’s resistance in 2022: Corruption within the Russian army hampered performance far more than numbers on paper suggested.

5. The Myth of Decisive Battles vs. Realities of Logistics and Production

• Battles are overrated: “Battles reveal the situation that exists...at a time. But a battle very rarely decides anything.” (17:03)
  • Historic example: Germany’s victory over France (1940) did not seal WWII.
  • Vietnam and the “we never lost a battle” fallacy: Victory in engagements proved “irrelevant” to the outcome. (19:44)
  • Wars, especially today, depend on the “ability to make and adapt during the war.”

6. Leadership and Domestic Politics

• O’Brien insists on including leadership in analyses, despite its intangibility.
  • Quote: “It’s impossible to quantify. But if you do not look at a country's leadership, you will not have an idea really about how its power will be used.” (11:29)
  • He uses regime decisions in WWII and the US power transition (Biden to Trump) as examples of leadership’s outsized impact.

7. The Centrality of Alliances

• Alliances matter more than “great powers.” The Cold War was won due to the US’s robust alliance network, in contrast to the Soviet bloc of “forced allies.”
  • Quote: “There are no great powers, I would say, but you could say they're great alliances.” (11:38)
  • The endurance and utility of alliances are decisive—“the end of the Cold War occurs when the Soviet Union realizes it doesn’t have the economic resources to keep its allies in line.” (13:28)

8. Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War

• Many analysts overestimated Russia’s isolation; in reality, China, North Korea, and Iran have provided substantial support, sometimes outstripping aid to Ukraine (14:00–15:15).
• Ukraine’s situation illustrates the importance of not just aid quantity, but also its effectiveness and restrictions.

9. European Security and Structural Challenges

• Europe has the economic and technological foundation for self-reliant defense, but suffers from weak structural and leadership capacity (23:30–24:46).
  • The US is no longer seen as a reliable defense partner, prompting a reawakening to direct defense investment.
  • The lack of coherent European structures undermines effective support for Ukraine and broader security ambitions.

10. US-China: A Full-Spectrum Assessment

• In a potential conflict, the US would “fight the opening battles...perhaps very effectively,” but lacks the industrial base to sustain a prolonged war against China, which “can just make so much more.” (28:06–29:28)
  • The US's focus on counterinsurgency has left it underprepared for large-scale industrial conflict.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the irrelevance of "great power" status:
  • “The supposedly great powers that might have actually been great powers like the United States lose wars regularly. The United States lost the Vietnam War, lost the war on terror...I thought we should stop using it because it was an assumption that had no real criteria.” — Phillips O'Brien (03:30–04:19)
• On military metrics:
  • “Counting up equipment and using military metrics seems to me a really poor way of doing it...having corruption in the society had a massive difference in the ability of the Russians to get use out of their forces.” (15:37)
• On battles:
  • “Battles reveal the situation that exists between the militaries at a time. But a battle very rarely decides anything.” (17:03)
  • “We never lost a battle to you,” [said the American]. And Giap was reputedly to say, “That might be true, but it’s also irrelevant.” (19:44)
• On alliances:
  • “Alliances actually determine the course of international affairs in peace and war more than individual states.” (11:38)
• On leadership:
  • “If you do not look at a country’s leadership, you will not have an idea really about how its power will be used.” (11:29)
• On war’s unpredictability:
  • “The big thing I want people to take away from it is that you have no idea what you’re doing when you’re starting a war. So in many ways, don’t do it.” (31:17)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:35] — Why the "great power" concept is meaningless and harmful
• [04:28] — Introduction of "full spectrum power" framework
• [06:54] — Economics and technology as the foundation of power
• [09:10] — Human resources as a misleading metric; the Ukraine example
• [11:29] — The unpredictable impact of leadership
• [13:28] — Alliances in history (Cold War/Soviet collapse)
• [15:37] — Counting military equipment vs. real effectiveness
• [17:03] — The myth of decisive battles
• [19:44] — General Giap’s “irrelevant” remark on battle victories
• [21:09] — Ukraine war: current strengths and weaknesses
• [23:30] — Europe’s structural military shortcomings
• [28:06] — US vs. China: opening battles vs. industrial capacity
• [31:17] — The unpredictable, self-destructive nature of war

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Conclusion: Core Takeaway

Phillips O’Brien’s core message resounds throughout: the realities of war and power are far messier than headline numbers or abstract status labels suggest. Economics, technology, leadership, alliances, and national willpower converge in unpredictable ways. States—and especially their leaders—regularly misjudge what it takes to prevail in war, with catastrophic costs. His warning is clear: “You have no idea what you’re doing when you’re starting a war. So in many ways, don’t do it.” (31:17)

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For further reading and updates, O'Brien maintains a regular Substack covering ongoing developments, especially in Ukraine.

Transcript

[A]

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[C]

Welcome to the New Books Network. My name is Leo Bader and today I'm talking to Phillips o', Brien, professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews. Phillips new book, War and who Wins wars and why looks to move beyond narrow observations of states military capabilities when assessing their prospects in war and instead understand what produces these capabilities, the economies, technological bases and domestic politics that underlie them. In doing so, we should abandon the inadequate term of great powers and ambiguous definitions of what makes power for a more comprehensive view of what makes states powerful. Phillips, thanks for joining me.

[D]

Thanks for having me.

[C]

So you start your book by talking about this term, great power, that has been persistent throughout the past centuries and talking about how states might perform in wars and argue that it sits both inadequate and doesn't tell us all that much. So why is this and why should we get rid of that term?

[D]

Well, first of all, it's a great phrase because it's meaningless, but people fill it with meaning. So there is no criterion for a great power that I've seen that makes any sense, that there have been different attempts to define it, which are very different over time from having the ability to stand against all other powers. If that was the case, you might not have a single great power in history to a power that is powerful in 50 different variables. So there's no idea what a great power is. Is. However, if you do name a power a great power, that alone seems to imbue it with a certain authority. So we're told great powers have interests and those interests must be respected. Well, why? Just because you've called them a great power. Their interests are therefore greater. And this was the kind of thing that drove me crazy in the run up to the Russian full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia was called a great power. And therefore we were told that Russia had an interest in Ukraine that had to be respected, whereas Ukraine wasn't a great power. And therefore it was almost like a plaything of the other. And that seemed to me such a bizarre way of looking at international relations. Subject object. The supposedly great powers that might have actually been great powers like the United States lose wars regularly. The United States lost the Vietnam War, lost the war on terror. And just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States had had to pull out of Afghanistan in sort of ignominious defeat. So it just seemed a meaningless prophecy kind of phrase. And I thought we should stop using it because it was an assumption that had no real criteria.

[C]

You propose replacing that with this idea of full spectrum power. So how does this differ? What exactly is that and how might it.

[D]

Well, full spectrum, just by the words. What I'm trying to say is think across what makes a country powerful. So you could think, do they have strengths in a number of the key areas, not just all wrapped together in great, which is meaningless. But does it have strengths across the board? Because you can be powerful in one element and not powerful in another, and that will let you down. So what I tried to say, what are the, across the spectrum, the elements that make a state powerful? And I start with economic and technological might, which are absolutely vital. You cannot be a powerful state in the international system system without economic, technological, Might. But then you have to add these, I think, more unstable variables, such as leadership, such as society and structure, such as alliance structures, alliance systems. And if you throw all of these into the mix to have an idea of really how powerful state can be.

[C]

And as I understand it, the idea is not that we can have some sort of definitive understanding of which states are more powerful than others, but that this sort of helps us dissect where states might have advantages and where they might have disadvantages.

[D]

I mean, this is not a theory that will tell you that. You add it together and State X is 98% powerful versus State Y, which is 62% powerful. I don't like that kind of quantification. It never seems to work for me in a meaningful way. But it will tell you where the power might be or might not be. So if you're not an economic, technological power, for instance, you're not going to really have a lot of global influence. You can't be a China or the USA Today if you don't have economic, technological might. However, even having that doesn't mean you will be power. Japan and Germany after the Second World War were both economic technological powerhouses. I mean, really, Japan was the second economy in the world by the 1980s, but it didn't have the kind of global footprint because of issues like society and structure and leadership that didn't want to play those roles. So it's just, I think it makes you think about the elements that create power.

[C]

So as you mentioned, the economic and technological foundations of states are, you say, the most core factor in determining how much power they have. Why is this?

[D]

Absolutely. You cannot be, you would say, an international power without economic, technological might. That doesn't mean if you have it, you will be, but you cannot be if you don't. And the states that tend to get into trouble are states that think they're economically more powerful than they are, and then they run up into reality when they go to war or get involved in international crises. You could say that certainly happened to Vladimir Putin's Russia, which people were talking about as a great power. But that made no sense, that Russia's economy was the size of Canada or Spain or something along those orders. It was not a great power economy. And what has happened is the Russians have struggled because they haven't had the economic might that they thought they had.

[C]

You compare this against ideas of population and land mass as being decisive factors. I'm curious about why economics and technology ultimately wins out. Thinking back to World War II, I feel like I've heard often that the US supplied the tanks and the jeeps, but it was the Soviets and the Chinese that supplied the troops that ultimately were decisive. Is this not quite accurate or.

[D]

Have the war was one air, sea power and Allied victory in World War II. So I mean, I find the argument of soldier numbers being a determining factor in the Second World War to be unrealistic. That what happened the Second World War is about equipment, that if your soldiers died it was a sign you didn't have enough equipment. So if soldiers dying being used as a metric, as effort in the war seems to be more an effort, a metric to show who didn't equip their forces well or who didn't supply their forces well. I mean the United States and Great Britain had tiny casualties in the Second World War. That wasn't because they didn't have heifer. That's because they actually equipped their armies really, really well. So I would look at equipment. I mean wars are not won by masses of people. I think that's actually a very. That's a false view where you get into trouble. Wars are won by the side with the best, the best and the most advanced and best equipped forces that are constantly being regenerated. If it's just numbers of soldiers, that's not, I would believe, a a good metric.

[C]

And I would imagine the current war in Ukraine underscores that point that Russia has the Russians.

[D]

They've advanced hardly at all in the last two years and suffered almost a million casualties. The ability to waste your own resources seems to me not the best way of understanding what's happening.

[C]

So how do domestic political factors like public opinion, like leadership, which are harder to measure, maybe harder to put into connection with military strength, impossible to measure.

[D]

In some way, but still important. Something like leadership is impossible to measure. Which is why I don't think we've studied it the way that we should because we often like theories that express behavior, behavioral patterns. So say if you're an offensive realist, the school of international relations thinking you believe all states behave the same, are close to the same. So all states are trying to maximize their power in an unstable world. And so all states in some ways are trying to expand or trying to become more powerful and therefore the ruler in this kind of model doesn't work. The only issue I've seen is I don't see that not all states do try to maximize their power in international system. Some are more restrained, some are too aggressive and end up destroying that power. And one of the key differences in that is leadership. Not every state will make the same decision based on who is leading it. Not every German leader would have gone to war against Poland in 1939. Not every Russian leader would have invaded Ukraine in 2022. It just seemed to me that we have to look at leadership and the role of leaders, which isn't what might Runway is not modern thinking, which often tries to stress impersonal factors. But I think that's a mistake. And if I would say there's one thing that we've seen recently, the switch from Joe Biden to Donald Trump shows how important the change in leader can be. Leaders can make a massive difference in what a country does. Since we are now threatening war with Venezuela and Nigeria, that would not have happened otherwise. So I just think leadership is an area it's impossible to quantify. But if you do not look at a country's leadership, you will not have an idea really about how its power will be used.

[C]

You also mention alliances as a key factor in all of this. How do they relate to leaders? How do they relate to economics and technology?

[D]

Oh, yeah. I mean, this is one of the things where also I hate the great power idea. There are no great powers, I would say, but you could say they're great alliances, that alliances actually determine the course of international affairs in peace and war more than individual states. So let's even talk about peace. The Cold War is not the United States against the Soviet Union mano a mano, like some kind of cage match where they batter each other. Actually, it's two alliance structures. And Europe itself is divided by alliance structure. And you could say the biggest difference is not the US USSR power balance. The big difference is the US Has a really vibrant and powerful alliance system behind it. And the Soviet Union has a really weak alliance system of that do not wish to be its allies, they're forced to be its allies. And then that in and of itself is not positive. So the United States, yes, it might have political trouble with countries like West Germany, with France, with Britain, but these are states of real wealth and real technological advance and real military capabilities. Whereas the Soviet Union's allies, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, were really more prisoners. They did actually try to get rid of Soviet rule at every time, and they had to be stopped down. And in the end, in some ways, it's keeping its alliance in the Warsaw Pact that ends up draining the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War occurs when the Soviet Union realizes it doesn't have the economic resources to keep its allies in line. And that is the beginning of the end So I don't like to look at individual states. I'd like to look at groupings and allies. And that will tell you a much better idea of the reality of the international balance of power.

[C]

Was this also maybe a mistake made by observers of Russia before 2022 that they assumed it would immediately become a pariah, enter complete isolation, but ultimately has found quite a lot of support from.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, Russia's had great support from. Arguably, Russia's had greater support from its allies than Ukraine has had from it. So that you have had some. China has been a huge economic benefit to Russia in this war. It's been buying a lot of Russian oil. It's been providing Russia with a massive amount of components. Other allies have been very useful. The North Koreans have given Russia so much ammunition, more ammunition than the United States in terms of artillery shells than the United States has given to Ukraine. And the North Koreans are continuing to provide a huge amount of ammunition. The Iranians provided the Russians with a Shaheed drone, which has been the most now numerous weapon in their strategic air war against Ukraine. And North Korea ultimately even provided troops to fight in Russia. So Russia's had a huge amount of aid from its allies. Now, Ukraine has been aided by its allies in many useful ways. It's never had the troops. And it is interesting to see that Russia's allies have been willing to send troops to fight for it, and Ukraine's allies have not been willing to do that. But Ukraine's allies also, until recently, have been trying to restrain the Ukrainians. So the Iranians handed over the shaheeds and said to the Russians, you do what you want to do with them. Whereas we were trying to. Those countries backing Ukraine were actually trying to limit Ukraine. So the comparison between the two and their allies shows, I think, just how important alliances are for both helping and restraining.

[C]

Absolutely. In your book, you talk about how we shouldn't regard military metrics on paper, say, in isolation, because all of these things, alliances, leadership, economies, et cetera, ultimately determine how well those military metrics can actually function. So how exactly are these fundamental?

[D]

The worst argument I can say is how strong is a country? Well, we know count up its military at the beginning of a war and you'll have some idea. Oh, Russia's really powerful. It has 2,000, 3,000 tanks, 800 aircraft. That's strength. And Ukraine has 1,000 tanks and 4, 300 aircraft. It's got no chance. But actually, just counting up military equipment tells you very little, because one, by the way, most of that military equipment will be destroyed relatively soon. So it's the ability to replace equipment. But it's not so much having the equipment, it's what you can do with it. And that's governed by a lot of things like society structure and technology that you have to be able to use your equipment in advanced and sort of systemic ways to gain something from it. So counting up equipment and using military metrics seems to me a really poor way of doing it. It there's just one instance when you look at Ukraine and Russia before the Russian full scale invasion, no one was talking about the impact of corruption on the Russian military. This was, it doesn't matter if there's corruption in the society because they have a lot of tanks. Well, actually, from what we can see, having corruption in the society had a massive difference in the ability of the Russians to get use out of their forces. So you have to look at these other elements to really see how a military will behave.

[C]

You also talk about an overemphasis on battles over logistics. How does this play out?

[D]

Well, this is the thing. Battles are great drama. We like battles because they make for great movies, good books. They provide an air of dry and they provide an air of uncertainty and drama. You win this battle, Gettysburg, last day. Oh, if Lee had only won in the battle of Gettysburg, then the war would be over or the war would be different. Really battles on the whole make very little difference in the sense of determining what they do is they reveal battles reveal the situation that exists between the militaries at a time. But a battle very rarely decides anything. In fact, it's very hard in a modern war to think of any battle deciding in terms of strategically changing the course of the war. And what we do tend to do is think, okay, when a war starts where there's army A and there's Army B and army A and Army B are going to fight a battle and then we'll know who wins the war. That is almost entirely roth that wars tend to go on for far longer than people think, that the original armies get consumed and replaced by new armies, and then often those armies get consumed and replaced by new armies. So it's not what you have at the beginning of a war that will determine how that war results. It's what you can make during the war and how you can adapt during the war. And by this focus on battles, I think we're missing the real thing. Look not what you can do when a war starts, look what you can do and produce after it starts. And that will tell you more.

[C]

Are there Any historical examples that stand out in your mind of this, where battles maybe are lost, but ultimately they.

[D]

Germany, Second World War, Germany conquers France in May 1940. Everyone thinks the war is over. They win the great battle. The battle of France is considered cataclysmic and earth shattering. Well, actually Germany surrenders five years later, four and a half years later. So, yeah, it's the kind of thing that there are many examples where battles do not end up sort of causing the war to end in a certain way, particularly early battles. The United States, did it lose a battle in the Vietnam War? Probably not. Didn't win the war. Did the United States lose a battle in the War on Terror? Probably not. Didn't win the war. So by looking at war as engagements, operations as opposed to processes, I think we really do get the wrong idea.

[C]

Yeah. In Vietnam, there's always the telling of the nightly announcements of so many North Vietnamese soldiers killed versus so many fewer U.S. soldiers killed. That ultimately was kind of fallacious.

[D]

It was General Giap who had the great comet when after the war, he was speaking to an American who said, we never lost a battle to you. And Jap was reputedly to say, that might be true, but it's also irrelevant. And I think that's probably the best way to reply to it.

[C]

What about this human element in war fighting that you mentioned? How does it that effect?

[D]

Well, again, morale. This is one of the elements which are very hard to measure, perhaps impossible to measure. But if you look at an army from its equipment and doctrine point of view, you'll miss basic things. How well are its troops trained? Are they motivated to fight? And that was one area where, say, the Ukrainians were absolutely counted out in 2022 that they were not unmotivated to fight. They really did want to. Motive. They really did want to fight. So the human element of Ukrainian resistance that provided a huge advantage to them in 2022 in resisting, and you might say that could be determinant against the largest power, the Afghanistan people. Afghanis are probably the poorest people in the world or amongst the poorest people in the world. And yet the Afghanis have outlasted both the Soviet Union and the United States in wars. So you have to look at are your people willing to fight? And if they are willing to fight, then that will make a big difference.

[C]

I'm curious if we look at the state of the war in Ukraine right now, where you see the greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses, both on the Russian and on the Ukrainian side when we. I mean that.

[D]

Yeah, I Mean, it's a great question. I think in all cases, we are three and a half years into this war. We're getting closer to four years now. The armies are entirely different than the armies of 2022. This war will be won partly by production. Which side can make the newer and better equip equipment that can take advantage of weaknesses on the other side? This winter, assuming the war goes on this winter, a lot of that will be seen in the strategic air war. So you're going to have a long range bombardment war on both sides. The Russians are going to attack Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian power generation. The Ukrainians have been attacking Russian oil and Russian energy production. So the war is, I would say, poised. And it's poised to be terrible. And what we are going to see is this long range economic warfare. And if one side can gain the upper hand in that and start shutting down systems on the other side, that will be a massive advantage.

[C]

Do you get any hope or optimism from the reinvestment in defense that we're seeing across Europe that that might.

[D]

Well, I think Europeans have to do it. I mean, the real. The Europeans have learned two things, that war has not disappeared. I think there was a sort of assumption that war had left Europe and that Europeans didn't have to plan for a major war. Now they have woken up from that. And the other thing that they realize is the United States is not a reliable defense partner anymore. They cannot trust the United States to fight for it. That certainly if you're on a frontline state, if you're like the Baltics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, you cannot assume the United States will defend you and be part of NATO. So European states have to adjust to the fact that war is now a reality. And secondly, they cannot trust the US and they therefore have to rely on their own resources. They are adjusting to these realities. They haven't fully adjusted. I think that there's a debate going on about the reliability of the usa. But regardless, the Europeans are going to have to look after themselves more and they're going to spend money on the military to do that.

[C]

Thinking about their full spectrum, I suppose in the past they had a very, very strong alliance, but just about nothing else. Maybe.

[D]

Well, what they, I mean, this is the problem with Europe today is structural economically. Europe absolutely has the capacity to look after itself. If you add the European Union with the British, with the Norwegians, you're getting close to 20% of world production. They have half a billion people, more than half a billion people. You are that altogether with that economic and technological might. That number of people with a military tradition and industrial base, they should absolutely be able to create a military force capable of looking after themselves without the usa. The reason they haven't is a combination of leadership and structure. There is no structure for Europe to operate. The European Union, for instance, both is structurally weak. So you can have countries like Hungary and Slovakia subvert plans, but it also structurally doesn't cover all of Europe. So structurally, they're weak. And in leadership terms, there's not a leader, there hasn't been a leadership that can really rally Europe together. So the problem with Europe isn't the basic fundamentals of economic technological strength. It's that they don't have leadership and they don't have structure.

[C]

So do you have any optimism that this reorientation might in the short term prove helpful at all for Ukraine? Or that.

[D]

And it is proving helpful. It's not that Europeans are beginning to replace the usa, and in fact, the USA is giving Ukraine nothing now, and they're not really selling that much anyway. So the Europeans are filling that void. More, though the Europeans still don't have the ability to do certain things that the Americans can do, such as with advanced air defense systems, so they are helping. I think the real issue Europe faces is it doesn't have a body to act as Europe. And therefore the aid to Ukraine and the vision of how Ukraine can be helped is not as coherent as it should be. And there could be a real moment where the United States says, we want Ukraine to give up territory and accept this peace deal where Europe will split into two.

[C]

So it's arguably a much more fundamental problem. What about on the Russian side? Where do we see across their spectrum strengths?

[D]

Russia is not economically a great power. I mean, it had received a great deal of aid from the Chinese. But economically, Russia is on the weaker side, and they would struggle on their own resources fighting this war. In fact, they couldn't fight this war probably on their own resources. So it's only through the aid of China, North Korea and Iran to this point, and India, which has bought a lot of Russian oil, that the Russians have been kept going in terms of leadership. They have a leadership that is absolutely determined to fight the war. It's fighting it in a way that seems to me bizarrely bloody. But they're going to stick with it. Putin's going to stick with this war. So you can assume that he's going to do whatever he can to keep fighting the war. So far, Russian society, those who have been opposed to the war, have either stayed quiet or left. So there hasn't been a strong anti war feeling in Russian society that that kind of breakdown has not occurred. But Russia is not a fundamentally strong power. It is getting by because of the help of others. Had Ukraine been helped more efficiently in ways that I would have liked earlier, Russia could have been defeated. But it hasn't.

[C]

And I guess this goes back to the importance of leadership that at the beginning of the war was ultimately decisiveness and not the sort of of capacities.

[D]

Early in the war, say the United States, when it came to Ukraine's aid, it didn't want Ukraine to win. The American position is they wanted Ukraine to survive, but they certainly didn't want Ukraine to win and they didn't want to lead to a collapse in Russia. So Ukraine was aided to fight the war in a very limited way. And even until really Ukraine, Ukraine has had no U.S. weapons to fire long range into Russia, whereas Russia has had lots of Iranian weapons to fire long range into Ukraine. So there's been attempts to limit Ukraine throughout.

[C]

Or the famous case of Germany originally sending 5,000 helmets and nothing else.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, there was a fanciful notion about what this war would be in 2022, which would be a short war, limited range, determined on the battlefield. It was hopeful and it was foolish, but it's creative. The situation we're in now, you end.

[C]

Your book by talking about the Indo Pacific and what a potential cataclysmic conflict between the US and China would look like. Obviously this is its own full podcast episode or book, but briefly, sort of, how do they compare?

[D]

Well, I mean, this is the issue that I say is the US Is set up to fight the opening battles of that war and fight them perhaps very effectively. The United States has the more battle tested and the military some of the greatest systems in the world. It certainly has more experience fighting wars than the Chinese. However, what the United States doesn't have is the ability to rebuild force like the Chinese. It's allowed certain strategic industries to wither. So if the war is not decided in those opening battles, and wars often are not decided in those opening battles, any war between the US and China will turn in China's favor because China can just make so much more than the United States can in terms of war equipment and vital logistical equipment. United States doesn't build a ship outside of some warships, there's not a single civilian shipyard pumping out major vessels Right now in the United States. China builds half the ships in the world. China builds 90% of the world's commercial Drones. They can repurpose massive amounts of their industry to make military drones. So the United States would end up fighting an equipment war that it would probably lose.

[C]

So what kind of change does this call for? Do you think the US at all has the capacity to sort of regain that?

[D]

It certainly could have the capacity, but it might not want to do it. I mean, it's sort of saying the US has to ask hard questions of what kind of power it wishes to be. It might be that it actually doesn't wish to be a power in the Western Pacific anymore, in which case it should probably be honest with itself about what it's doing. But it cannot act as a sort of great global power if it cannot actually fight a sustained war. It's used to fighting things like the War on Terror, which are short wars in terms of equipment usage and don't require massive replenishment. It is not suited now to fight a large scale industrial war.

[C]

It's interesting that in the years after World War II, World War II was kind of the paradigm for the US military and that ultimately was fatal in Vietnam and in other conflicts. And then after that, Vietnam sort of became the paradigm and it was all about speed and decisiveness. But now it is sort of turning around back to the possibility.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, and for 20 years all the United States seemed to be interested in was counterinsurgency, which is bonkers anyway, because winning a counterinsurgency seems to me almost impossible. So the United States was obsessed with something that really shouldn't have been that central to its war fighting efforts. But it was. And in that focus on counterinsurgency, it seemed to lose just focus entirely on large state to state wars, which are now the more likely ones.

[C]

Well, to wrap up, I'm curious about how you would hope your book reshapes discussions about war fighting and about international relations, because you quite strongly criticize a lot of prevailing notions of how to think about states.

[D]

The big thing I want people to take away from it is that you have no idea what you're doing when you're starting a war. So in many ways don't do it. Because often people start wars thinking they'll be over soon, thinking they'll be decided in battles, that it will be yuu Kyiv will fall in a week and we'll have a parade or we'll reach to Baghdad and declare a mission accomplished and the war will be over. But really what the book is trying to say is power is messy and war is messier and they can go and metastasize in ways you cannot expect. You lose control over them once you start them, and they will end up just sucking up more resources than you can imagine. So going to war is usually a very, very dangerous and bad decision. And if the book can get that point across to people, I'll be very happy with it.

[C]

All right, well, let's end it there. Phillips book War and who Wins wars and why can be purchased through the link on the new book's network webpage. If you're interested in more, Philips has a series of other books on military history and writes a regular substack with updates on the war in Ukraine and related subject. Philips, thanks for joining me.

[D]

Thanks for having me, Leo.