On the Streets: Irregular Warfare in an Urban World

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How are demographic and economic shifts increasing the importance of urban centers around the globe? What does this mean for military forces? To what extent do the local politics of a city complicate military operations there—specifically irregular warfare activities? When conflict between an insurgency and government forces enters a city, does the terrain inherently favor one side over the other? This special episode addresses these questions as it brings together two of the Modern War Institute's core areas of focus: urban warfare and irregular warfare. Kyle Atwell and Ben Jebb host the episode. You can also hear this and many more insightful explorations of issues related to irregular warfare on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. And don't miss the exceptional written content produced by the Irregular Warfare Initiative. Their guests are Sergeant Major Charles Ritter, deputy commandant of the US Army's JFK Special Warfare Center and School, and John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute. A leading expert on urban warfare, John also leads the Urban Warfare Project and hosts the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, both of which are outstanding resources on urban warfare and its challenges. Intro music: "Unsilenced" by Ketsa Outro music: "Launch" by Ketsa CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is John Amble. Just a quick note about this episode. You'll hear some different voices
0:04.4	from the hosts on it and some different intro music. That's because it was recorded as an
0:08.5	episode of the Irregular Warfare podcast. Some of you might already be listeners to that podcast,
0:13.1	but for anybody who is not, it is a tremendous resource. It explores all sorts of really
0:17.7	important issues related to Irregular Warfare. It's hosted by a fantastic team and is produced by the Irregular Warfare Initiative,
0:24.3	which itself is a collaboration between MWI and the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project.
0:29.0	You can find the podcast wherever you subscribe to this podcast,
0:32.1	and you can check out all of the Irregular Warfare Initiative's other work on the MWI website.
0:36.8	What makes this episode really special for MWI, though, is that it sort of unites what are
0:40.8	really two of the subject areas that the broader MWI team focuses on.
0:44.9	One is irregular warfare, and the other is urban warfare.
0:48.0	In fact, one of the guests is John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at MWI.
0:52.3	He also leads our urban warfare project and hosts
0:54.5	the Urban Warfare Project podcast. These are also phenomenal resources. So the episode brings
1:00.4	together some of the really talented members of the MWI team and explores the intersection
1:04.5	of these two very important subject areas. I hope you enjoy it.
1:13.5	But it is the highest order of question is how was the second most powerful military defeated
1:18.8	by a few thousand military and tens of thousands civilians in a city of three million?
1:26.1	And it wasn't that they didn't know how to fight inside
1:28.1	buildings. It was that urban includes the buildings, the people, and the infrastructure.
1:33.0	And in Ukraine, the actual government turned the infrastructure into a weapon and then weaponize
1:39.3	the people. Man, this stuff has been written down forever. Like Tee Lawrence's old saying of, hey, don't
	...

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