NATO just wrapped up its 2026 summit in Ankara, Turkey. Over two days of meetings and other events, the leaders of the alliance's thirty-two member states discussed a range of issues and challenges facing the alliance. But what did we actually learn from the summit? In a period that has been marked by intra-alliance friction, were there signs of closing fissures or do divisions remain? And were there indicators of how much progress members have made toward meeting their defense spending commitments? More importantly, how much has boosted spending translated into improvements in defense capabilities? To explore those questions and more, John Amble is joined on this episode by Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow with the Observer Research Foundation’s Strategic Studies Programme.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.

For years of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, US Army forces, along with their joint and coalition counterparts, benefits from a logistics enterprise that ensured every supply need was met. That enterprise—extending from installations at home, through sea and air lines, and all the way to small units in contact—operated largely without disruption by enemy forces. A major war with a peer adversary, however, will present a very different scenario, in which logistics activities will be contested across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. To discuss the challenges that will entail and explore what can be done now to improve the resilience and reliability of US and allied logistics systems, John Amble is joined on this episode by Ron Ti. A retired Australian Army officer with extensive practical experience, he earned a PhD researching combat logistics on the modern battlefield and is the author of a forthcoming book on the subject.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.

In 1973, the US military took an enormously consequential step when it adopted an all-volunteer force model. That decision has produced the most professional, capable joint force in history. But it hasn’t come without costs—from the large budgets required to maintain it to a shrinking recruitment base that has serious implications for civil-military relations. So what does the all-volunteer force’s future look like? How much have the strategic, economic, and social conditions that drove the decision to adopt the model changed over the past fifty years? Would it hold up in a modern, large-scale war? And if strategic realities required it, how would a return to some form of conscription work? John Amble is joined on this episode by Jaron Wharton and Keith Carter, coeditors of Bend But Do Not Break: Shaping the Future of the All-Volunteer Force, to explore those questions and more.

The MWI Podcast is produced with the generous support of the West Point Class of 1974.