You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans.

I'm the founder of War on the Rocks, and in this episode I spoke with General

Eric Smith, the commandant of the Marine Corps, about a whole bunch of things.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it.

Thank you so much for doing this. Now that you are in the chair no longer

acting but actual commandant, everyone is expecting, anticipating your

commandant's planning guidance. What can we expect there, I guess starting with continuity versus change with the last

commandant's planning guidance and then enforced design?

Well the commandant's planning guidance, it'll reflect me, my style, the way I operate, the way I communicate with my

Marines, with my commanders. I'd like to have it done by the birthday ball, I think I will, and

it'll have three big themes in there.

It'll talk about Marines, how we find them, how we recruit them, how we train them, and how we retain them, quality life, caring for them, which is retention.

It'll talk about

lethality. That's what we do. I mean we are

America's crisis response force. We are a lethal fighting force, a

marine airground task force. So it'll talk about

lethality and it'll talk about

and it'll talk about mobility.

Because unless you can get to the fight,

it doesn't matter what you bring to the fight.

You have to be present to win.

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