This is the podcast of the Modern War Institute at West Point, an integrative look at war policy and leadership.

I'm Captain Jake Moraldi of the Modern War Institute.

Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and on the War Council blog at modern war institute.org.

Today on the podcast, we'll be talking to Dr. Roger Shanahan, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute.

Dr. Shanahan is a former Australian Army officer

who serves as a director of the Army's Land Warfare Center. Dr. Shanahan has also served in

multiple Australian embassies in the Middle East. Today we'll be looking at the city of Aleppo

as a case study and how elements of the fight around the city of Aleppo in recent weeks applied

to the larger war in Syria.

All right. Well, welcome to the podcast, Dr. Shanahan. I appreciate you taking the time to sit down with us. Syria as a topic is kind of a big thing to take on. So I thought it might be

useful to take a case, especially with Aleppo being in the news recently of Aleppo as a way to talk about

the larger conflict. What is sort of the situation going on in Aleppo right now?

The Syrian government and its allies both on the ground and in concert with Russian air support

have really been trying to cut off the northern supply lines into

Aleppo City.

They'd started prior to that in securing southern Lepro province, so to the south of

Aleppo City.

They had taken Quares, or broken the siege in the Quares airfield prior to Christmas,

and that was both at the time seen as a positive aspect of, you know,

what many thought might have just been an operation to restore morale,

but it appears they've used that as a firm base to push further

north and then hook around north of Aleppo City and then make forward the two main

...