Kinetic War

Kinetic War

The Kinetic War Podcast aims to answer one very urgent question, why doesn’t American win its wars and what happened in Afghanistan? With the largest, most powerful military in the world, America spends billions if not trillions of dollars to continue these armed conflicts and what do they have to show for it? For a boots-on-the-ground, front-line explanation, the Kinetic War podcast presents David Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of two books. David has covered war in Africa, the Middle East and Europe for Time Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News Service, the Baltimore Sun, and for six years, he was the senior military correspondent for Huffington Post. He examines why America chooses Kinetic War and the ugly dynamics of armed conflict versus the alternative of soft powers like the American economy, the culture, or the genius of information technology, that could reshape the world for all human benefit. Hosted by Paul Wood, this 10-part series is a gripping and revealing exploration of military conflicts, with insights that change what we define and believe is winnable when wars go kinetic.

Episodes

Episode 10: Phase Zero

October 20, 2021 • 26 mins
Military planners call Phase Zero the critical period before a conflict slides into kinetic war. This is the key moment when strategic errors and blindness can be avoided with immediate, practical, and low-cost actions to intervene in conflicts before they explode in violence. In this final episode of our series, David depicts successes by the US Institute of Peace employing peacekeeping mediators in Iraq, and the big challenges wi...
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Episode 9: Prevail or Fail

October 13, 2021 • 13 mins
David shares his observations of what war is like for individuals in combat who fight on our behalf. The people who carry what they need on their backs, coming face to face with the enemy and whose lives haven’t changed much since the Roman legions. David learned their stories by being there to listen and hear their impressions of the first major conventional battle of the US war in Afghanistan at Landing Zone Ginger on the outset ...
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Episode 8: The Bloody Triangle Goes Quiet

September 28, 2021 • 18 mins
A glimmer of hope for an alternative to kinetic war comes in the story of an American warfighting officer in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq -- otherwise known as “the bloody triangle”. In 2007, in this most violent region, a frightening apocalyptic contagion of suicide attacks, kidnappings, and killings had created pressure for even more violence. Instead, a unique peace was built and it held. War didn’t break out again there, as it did elsewhe...
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Episode 7: My Son is Missing

September 23, 2021 • 24 mins
So far we’ve been talking about kinetic warfare in conflicts and battles, and in this episode we hear the very personal and individual stories of the human cost in graphic and heart wrenching accounts of being wounded in battle and coming home. The story of a soldier blown up by an IED in Iraq, suffering deep burns and an amputated leg, and his return to be tended by his family who are now his caretakers. Stories of the toll these ...
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Episode 6: Gumshoeing The Mopes - Uncle Sugar Goes To War

September 2, 2021 • 25 mins
With the U.S. military leaving Afghanistan, David takes a fresh look at what went wrong. Like the military’s after action reviews, this is a first take at what we must learn to avoid failing again. After decades of front-line reporting, David talks about the U.S. strategic goal set 20 years ago that was so broad it failed to guide our subsequent actions and set priorities (more important to strangle the narcotics traffic or send gi...
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Episode 5: The Zombie Fallacy

August 11, 2021 • 35 mins
2002, Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. Recently abandoned by U.S. forces, this sprawling former Soviet base is where David spent several months in early 2002 as the only journalist embedded inside the U.S. command. That’s when it all began to go wrong. He chronicled Operation Anaconda, the first U.S. effort to use conventional kinetic force against an enemy -- and in a country -- that was little understood. U.S. special forces and Ma...
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Episode 4: The False Logic Of Kinetic War

July 27, 2021 • 31 mins
What happens when we forget about the dangers of kinetic war? David relates trigger points for World War III in the Cold War, close calls of accidental nuclear war in the 1980s, and the constant readiness to be the first to strike. Having more kinetic weapons to strike first is seen as the “escalatory logic” that promotes the destructive notion that only the attacker has the advantage. This is the “false logic” risking millions of ...
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Episode 3: The Cost of Fear

July 8, 2021 • 37 mins
David describes the escalation of kinetic weapons back in the Cold War where fear drove a panic that no country dare be left behind or perceived as weak and vulnerable in the arms race. In his conversations with defense contractors, atomic war fighters, Pentagon policy guys, and Russian civilians, there’s a sense that despite the impending tragedy of a new world war, fear makes the most illogical choices appear sane and reasoned. W...
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Episode 2: Futility

June 22, 2021 • 49 mins
Caught in the horrible maelstrom of violence of Somalian and Ethiopian battles, David barely escapes becoming a victim, and wonders why anyone believed these attacks would resolve anything. The astonishing lesson from his story is that bigger kinetic weapons just increase casualties, and the urge to increase kinetic force stems from a desire to reach a point where one claim definitive victory, at a terrible cost.
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Episode 1: Americans Fought Well in Afghanistan. How Come We Didn’t Win?

June 9, 2021 • 30 mins
From childhood suburbia to the frontlines of major wars in Africa and Middle East, David Wood describes his family background and astonishing journey of reporting America’s wars from the midst of the worst protracted battles of the 21st century. He explores the allure of war that initially inspired his reporting, and how his experiences embedded with troops demonstrated a state of war as “going kinetic” as a catastrophic escalation...
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Kinetic War - Trailer: America's Kinetic Wars

May 31, 2021 • 4 mins
The Kinetic War Podcast aims to answer one very urgent question, why doesn’t American win its wars? With the largest, most powerful military in the world, America spends billions if not trillions of dollars to continue these armed conflicts and what do they have to show for it? For a boots-on-the-ground, front-line explanation, the Kinetic War podcast presents David Wood, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of two books....
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