SSI Live Podcast – Ep 121 – The National Defense Strategy

MAJ Brennan Deveraux, COL Michael Long, and LTC Loris Lepri

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Army Strategists Colonel Michael Long and Lieutenant Colonel Loris Lepri to get their take on the recently released National Defense Strategy. The conversation explores the importance of the strategic document and is structured around its four lines of effort.

John Deni

Hello and welcome to SSI Live. You’ve long known the Strategic Studies Institute, or SSI, at the US Army War College, as the go-to location for issues related to national security and military strategy, with an emphasis on geostrategic analysis. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the US Army War College curricula; assist and inform Army, DoD, and US government leadership; and serve as a bridge to the wider strategic community. Now, we are bringing you access to SSI analyses, scholars, and guests, through this, the SSI Live podcast series. Thanks for joining us.

Brennan Deveraux

Welcome back to SSI live. I’m still your host, Major Brennan Devereaux. I’m joined today by Colonel Mike Long and Lieutenant Colonel Loris Lepri. Colonel Long is an army strategist. He is the director of the China Landpower Study Center (CLSC) and will soon take over as the director of the Strategic Research and Analysis Department (SRAD) over at SSI becoming officially my boss instead of just a mentor.

Lieutenant Colonel Lepri is also an army strategist. He’s the director of the US Army War College Distance program resident courses. All of us have backgrounds in the Western Hemisphere working at Army North. And figured it’d be a good time to bring the crew together to talk about some of the stuff that recently populated in the National Defense Strategy.

And that’s going to be the focus of the conversation today. We’re going to be discussing that document, its impact, its implications, kind of what it means. So, Colonel Long, I’m going to start with you. On top of just being a strategist for, you know, a long time, being in these positions, having to adjust to, strategy as it comes out.

You also spent some time where I first met you at Fort Leavenworth teaching young majors about strategy, particularly talking about these documents, kind of how they nest. And recently, you also did a podcast on the CLSC Dialogues on the National Security Strategy. Kind of the overarching document. Can you talk a little bit about the NDS, what it is, what it means for kind of the community?

Michael Long

Yeah, absolutely. First, Brennan, thank you so much for having me here today. And, Loris, I appreciate you being here as well. It’s great to be able to sit down and talk to three other, to three total Army strategists and, kind of go over sort of our key seminal documents. So I appreciate that. So, let’s talk about this document, the National Defense Strategy, the one just posted, in January of this year.

So what is this document? If we kind of look at it holistically, the first thing I’ll say is the unclassified version that we’re looking at is really, like I said, an unclassified summary. The real document is a classified version that’s much longer, much more comprehensive. So there will be elements that are not necessarily included here that are going to be part of that classified document.