OPEN Echoes - EP011 - Dr. Fotios Moustakis

OPEN Echoes

OPEN ECHOES Episode #11 An interview with Dr. Fotios Moustakis — Dr. Fotios Moustakis is an accomplished Associate Professor in Strategic and Security Studies with over two decades of experience. He specializes in designing and delivering courses on international and maritime security, strategy, and transnational security threats, notably terrorism. During his five-year tenure as a Visiting Professor in Terrorism at the NATO School in Oberammergau, he contributed significantly to the field. Additionally, Dr. Moustakis served as a Senior Associate Member at St Antony's College, Oxford University. In 2009, he established the pioneering blended learning International MA program in Applied Strategy and International Security, tailored for command-level staff at the Hellenic National Defence College, equivalent to the Royal College of Defence Studies. Dr. Moustakis has supervised over two hundred MA dissertations and mentored numerous Doctoral students on strategic and security matters. He is a prolific author with three monographs and multiple publications in esteemed refereed and policy practitioner journals, making substantial contributions to academia. As the Director of the Dartmouth Centre for Sea Power and Strategy, he has built strong professional and educational networks in maritime security and strategy, fostering collaborations with influential institutions and organizations worldwide. Dr. Moustakis has played a pivotal role in organizing several national-level conferences on critical topics, contributing significantly to security education and knowledge. — This OPEN Echoes interview explores: - Influence of Thucydides' "The History of the Peloponnesian War" on understanding leadership and strategy. - Exploration of leadership in war, nature of power, strategic thinking, and military technologies. - The crucial role of effective military leadership in managing security challenges like terrorism and the role of disruptive technologies on modern warfare. - Whether leaders are born or can be developed. - Involving feedback from military leaders and recognizing different viewpoints. - A timeline for change influenced by factors like geopolitics and technology advances. - The evolving nature of military leadership in a rapidly changing world. — Welcome to OPEN Echoes. OPEN stands for “Other Perspectives Exchange Network.” Our mission is to explore diverse, insightful, and sometimes disruptive viewpoints on matters crucial to NATO. OPEN Echoes reflects the original thoughts, analyses, and viewpoints shared by academics, thought leaders and non-military experts — spreading ideas, perspectives, and insights across the globe. It’s our hope that the insights shared in these episodes will help to impact and influence thinking and conversations long after you take off your headphones. OPEN Echoes alternates episodes between compelling interviews with non-NATO subject matter experts, and readings from OPEN's wide range of publications. In this episode, we interview Dr. Fotios Moustakis. Dr. Moustakis article, “Future Military Leadership" is available on the OPEN Publications website here. The lightly-edited transcript of this episode’s interview with Dr. Moustakis follows: Dave Summers: Fotios, welcome to the Open Echoes Podcast program. So nice to meet you. Dr. Fotios Moustakis: Thank you very much for the invitation. Dave: To get started. I'm going to ask you to please just do a short introduction, introduce yourself to our audience. And let them know who you are and what path you took to get to where you are right now. Dr. Moustakis: Well, first of all, I'm an associate professor in Strategic Studies at the University of Plymouth in the UK, and also at the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, which is part of the British Ministry of Defense. Actually, I've been in the military education and the university sector, but mainly the military education for over 20 years now because my job actually at 2002, some time a