Narrative War: The fourth grammar of war -- with Dr. Brian Steed

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Hosts Major Carlen Vician and Major Evelyn Payne sit down with Brian Steed—historian, retired Army foreign area officer, and author of Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict—about how narrative shapes modern conflict and planning in the information domain. Steed explains four “grammars” of war (positional, maneuver, firepower, and narrative), tracing shifts from defeating army wings to armies, states, and attempts to paralyze systems, arguing narrative is dominant in 2025 while other philosophies still appear (e.g., positional warfare in Ukraine). He describes narrative as an organizing framework for identity and interpretation, emphasizes aligning “words, deeds, and images,” and…