A Chat with the Commandant: Gen. David H. Berger on the Marine Corps' New Direction
War on the Rocks
War on the Rocks
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2020
⏱️ 37 minutes
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Summary
As listeners of this podcast know, the Marine Corps is taking a new direction. The latest document to lay out this vision is Force Design 2030. The commandant, Gen. David H. Berger, aims to cut the size of the Marine Corps and let go of some legacy systems (most notably tanks) in order to -- in the words of a recent article in the Economist --- turn the Corps into "a commando-like infantry force with nimbler weapons: drone squadrons will double in number and rocket batteries will triple." In Berger's view, the Marine Corps must make these changes in order to work with the other armed services to deter the People's Republic of China, if necessary, or win a war against it.
Ryan spoke with Berger to get the inside story of these reforms, which he describes as being in their earliest phase. "This is not the end of the journey" he said, "but rather the beginning." And he calls upon more voices to chime in with criticism to ensure the Marine Corps is ready for the future of war.
Further reading and listening:
- Force Design 2030
- David H. Berger, "Notes on Designing the Marine Corps of the Future," War on the Rocks
- "Send the Marines" The Economist
- David Barno and Nora Bensahel, "A Striking New Vision for the Marines, and a Wakeup Call for the Other Services," War on the Rocks
- Chris Brose and Ryan Evans, "Your Ideas Matter: The Making of Marine Strategic Planning and the Future of War," War on the Rocks podcast
- Chris Brose, Rep. Mike Gallagher, and Ryan Evans, "The Fleet, the Fight, and the Future," War on the Rocks podcast
- Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig, Humility Is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age(Berrett-Koehler Publishers)
- Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy(Portfolio)
Transcript
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| 0:16.0 | You are listening to the War in Iraq's podcast on Strategy, Defense and Foreign Affairs. My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the CEO of Warren the rocks. |
| 0:18.6 | In this episode I talked with General David H. Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, on the new direction his service is taking. |
| 0:24.8 | Those of you who listen to this podcast and read War on the Rocks are not new to the issue, |
| 0:27.9 | but now you get to hear from the man himself, how and why the Marine Corps is changing, |
| 0:31.6 | identifying more closely with its naval routes, and focusing on |
| 0:34.4 | on deterring and if necessary fighting the People's Republic of China in such a way |
| 0:38.2 | that will rely less on tanks and more on distributed units armed the teeth |
| 0:41.5 | with drones and other advanced technologies. |
| 0:44.3 | A lot of this is laid out in the new document, Force Design 2030 that the Marine Corps just released |
| 0:49.2 | late last month. |
| 0:50.2 | Enjoy the show. |
| 0:58.0 | General Krulack famously said that the nation doesn't need a Marine Corps at once one. Did that inform how you thought about this journey to reform the Marine Corps? I don't know about it. I don't know how you'd |
| 1:06.4 | frame in form. I mean, General Koollex been a great advisor to me from |
| 1:12.1 | before when I went to Quantico. In fact, I spoke with him yesterday |
| 1:15.2 | evening. As far as the quote, I don't know if there's a direct linkage or not, but |
| 1:21.6 | without a doubt our sense was, not intuitively, but more analytically |
| 1:28.6 | based on war games. |
| 1:30.8 | The Marine Corps had to change or else we would reach a point sometime in the future when we would be in an overmatched situation and we were not going to allow that. |
| 1:42.0 | So I don't know about America's view of the Marine Corps, |
| 1:46.2 | but certainly the Marine Corps in terms of what we need to do for the nation, |
| 1:51.0 | we had to change. |
| 1:51.9 | And we couldn't wait any longer. We couldn't postpone that change. |
... |
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