General, why did you introduce yourself? Let's get going.

Yeah, and I'm General Mark Hurtling, also on the bulwark,

and you've come into our space again for command post,

where we talk military stuff and national strategy.

And we have a special guest today.

Ben, you want to introduce him?

Sure thing.

Tom Nichols, our very special guest today,

is a professor emeritus of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years.

He is now a staff writer at the Atlantic author, contributor to the Atlantic Daily Newsletter, and a former Jeopardy Champion.

So we are very, very lucky to be joined by Tom today. Tom, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks very much. Good to be with.

And if I can, if I can chime in, too, Tom is not only all those things Ben just said, but he's a

very good friend of mine. He taught strategy at the war college, taught a bunch of other things.

He's a Russian expert, speaks the language well. As a young man, he spent an awful lot of time

in the Russian Federation.

And I wanted to get Tom on here, and Ben helped me do that because he has been talking a lot on

the net about strategy, what's going on, the Department of Defense. And we're going to speak to a few

of those things today, Tom. But before we do, you do, they've asked me to do a quick glossary of tactical, operational, and strategic.

Tactical is the battle fights, the things where you see an airplane dropping a bomb, a soldier shooting at another person.

Operational art or operations

is when you link a bunch of battles together in a campaign to reach a certain strategy.

...