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Description
This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras.The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps.
131 Episodes
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Frank Gavin, the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World, joins the show to talk about nuclear strategy and the war in Ukraine.
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• 01:36 Introduction
• 01:53 What are nuclear weapons for?
• 04:15 Pervasive but not used
• 09:53 Invasion insurance
• 17:58 Better to be near-nuclear
• 22:26 How might Putin use nuclear weapons?
• 26:04 Learning by doing
• 33:48 “It’s all happening at once”
• 41:31 Rattling the saber works
• 48:04 “We will get them back”
• 50:07 History and Strategy
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Stephen Kotkin, Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World, joins the show to talk about the war in Ukraine and what the endgame might look like.
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• 02:24 Introduction
• 05:09 Four victories
• 11:48 “Winning only on Twitter”
• 22:36 10/7 and Ukraine
• 28:27 Regime change in Russia
• 37:03 Keeping allies
• 45:24 Renting land armies
• 55:01 “European culturally but not Western”
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Robert Blackwill & Richard Fontaine, authors of Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, join the show to talk about America’s failed pivot to Asia and why they think it still needs to happen.
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• 01:59 Introduction
• 03:10 Was the pivot serious?
• 07:40 Absent compulsion
• 13:25 War in Europe?
• 22:46 Changes to the plan
• 28:28 A bigger budget
• 32:23 Domestic resistance to TPP
• 38:25 The ultimate goal
• 44:36 Why not regime change in China?
• 51:08 Henry Kissinger
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Michel Paradis—litigator, national security law scholar, and author of The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower—joins the show to talk about D-Day and the man behind the invasion, Dwight Eisenhower.
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• 01:49 Introduction
• 01:56 “Wildly under appreciated”
• 05:17 Upbringing
• 11:40 Seeing the world as it is
• 15:01 Not that long ago
• 22:14 British vs American plans
• 32:50 Using strategic advantages
• 36:03 Designing D-Day
• 46:58 Planning for failure
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1Nick Bunker, journalist and author of In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950, joins the show to talk about the first decade of the Cold War.
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• 01:36 Introduction
• 02:26 Countdown to war
• 05:17 Biden and Truman
• 09:05 A failure of American policy?
• 13:09 Present at the Creation
• 21:16 Stalin’s view of the world
• 25:50 Stalin and China
• 30:44 Developing nuclear thinking
• 32:39 Robert Taft
• 38:01 No choice but to defend Korea
• 46:44 NSC-68
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Shane Brennan, Associate Professor of History and Classics at the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh and author of Xenophon's Anabasis: A Socratic History, joins the show to talk about why the Anabasis remains an important part of the Western canon of military writing.
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• 01:30 Introduction
• 02:05 Dubai to Bangladesh
• 05:37 Xenophon’s start
• 09:25 Several levels of failure
• 12:37 “An exemplary Socratic student”
• 14:40 Fighting for the Persians
• 17:18 Cyrus the Younger
• 20:46 A leader emerges
• 29:41 “How was he so right?”
• 36:43 Matterhorn
• 38:33 Exile
• 42:01 An instruction on leadership
• 44:16 “There is always something there…”
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Sergey Radchenko, Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power, joins the show to talk about the strategic aims of the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War and how the Soviets attempted to run the world.
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• 01:17 Introduction
• 02:32 A novel argument
• 08:36 Power and recognition
• 11:51 Who started the Cold War?
• 14:55 The American dilemma
• 17:09 Fukuyama
• 21:21 Nuclear guarantees
• 25:16 The shadow of WWII
• 29:44 Flippancy and boredom
• 32:06 Détente
• 32:12 Backstabbing
• 37:52 American lecturing
• 45:39 Sources of Soviet collapse
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Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger join the show to discuss their recent Foreign Affairs essay on the need for a victory strategy in America’s cold war with China.
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• 01:53 Introduction
• 03:25 Meeting in Iraq
• 07:43 “There are bad guys…”
• 13:15 Why detente isn’t working
• 23:45 Real statesmanship?
• 32:12 Rearm/Reduce/Recruit
• 35:20 TikTok
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Read the Foreign Affairs piece here No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed
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Andy Lowery, CEO of EPIRUS and a retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, joins the show to talk about directed energy weapons on the modern battlefield.
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• 01:45 Introduction
• 02:02 Before EPIRUS
• 06:29 Drones on the battlefield
• 13:30 Current countermeasures
• 19:40 An answer for autonomy
• 21:32 How does it all work?
• 29:54 Beam specs
• 33:45 Sci-fi but familiar
• 38:11 Gallium nitride
• 40:31 Cat and mouse game
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Iskander Rehman, Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Kissinger Center and author of Iron Imperator: Roman Grand Strategy Under Tiberius, joins the show to talk about the military career and statecraft of Tiberius and what his career has to teach us today.
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Times
• 02:32 Introduction
• 03:29 The Pentagon and Rome
• 07:29 Why Tiberius?
• 15:04 Parallels
• 18:26 Germania
• 22:38 Roman criticism
• 28:03 Auxiliaries and proxies
• 32:09 Diplomacy and a recruitment crisis
• 34:00 A brilliant military career
• 37:17 Force structure
• 41:18 Parthian Cold War
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Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign-affairs correspondent at The Wall Street Journal and author of Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence, joins the show to talk about the early days of Russia’s war in Ukraine, how the battlefield has evolved, and where the war may be headed.
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• 01:48 Introduction
• 02:06 Growing up Ukranian
• 05:03 The collapse of Kabul
• 07:40 Leadership counts
• 10:14 Zelensky
• 16:20 How did Putin get Ukraine so wrong?
• 19:49 Touch and go
• 22:45 Draft confusion
• 26:09 Battlefield evolution
• 30:42 Countermeasures
• 34:33 Washington’s tepid support
• 38:11 Possible futures
• 40:26 Trump
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Michael Doran, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and co-host of the podcast Counterbalance, joins the show to talk about the Israel-Hamas war and the broader regional competition with Iran.
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• 02:04 Introduction
• 04:01 Is Hamas winning?
• 10:29 Fighting the clocks
• 13:10 Defeat from the jaws of victory
• 18:24 An Iranian-American conflict
• 22:44 Managing decline
• 26:40 Lessons not learned
• 33:00 The Iranian nuclear umbrella
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Rabbi Shlomo Brody, executive director of Ematai and author of Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality, joins the show to talk about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and the Jewish tradition of military ethics.
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Times
• 01:28 Introduction
• 04:04 Just war
• 07:27 The Bible as a framework
• 13:34 International service
• 18:33 Reprisals
• 21:37 Purity of arms
• 27:09 Collateral damage
• 33:41 International law
• 35:48 Proportionality
• 39:40 A dangerous ideology
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David Stahel, associate professor of history at the University of New South Wales and author of Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded, joins the show to talk about Heinz Guderian, the myth and the man.
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Times
• 01:38 Introduction
• 02:57 Diving into the letters
• 08:43 Debunking
• 15:30 A sinister figure
• 19:39 Achtung - Panzer!
• 27:37 Guderian the Nazi
• 33:42 Poland and France
• 45:49 Russia
• 50:50 Barbarossa bound to fail?
• 54:48 Guderian the chameleon
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Buy the book here - Hitler's Panzer Generals: Guderian, Hoepner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded
Stephen Robinson, author of The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War, joins the show to talk about Boyd, the man who developed the concept of “maneuver warfare,” and what Boyd may have gotten wrong.
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Times
• 01:21 Introduction
• 02:24 “A genuine polymath”
• 04:20 The OODA Loop
• 07:39 J.F.C. Fuller and B.H. Liddell Hart
• 13:28 The conventional blitzkrieg
• 19:26 Maneuver warfare
• 25:01 Cannae
• 29:07 Tactical success to operational failure
• 34:07 Post-Vietnam U.S. military woes
• 37:24 Active defense
• 43:31 Skeptical of technology
• 48:07 The Defense Reform Movement
• 53:50 Iraqi Freedom
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Buy the book here - The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War
Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey and Finland, joins the show to talk about how nuclear strategic thinking began and how those debates resonate today.
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Times
• 01:47 Introduction
• 02:45 Oppenheimer’s Borden in reality
• 07:00 Brodie and The Absolute Power
• 11:12 Deterrence before Hiroshima
• 13:15 Blackett and Fear, War, and the Bomb
• 19:40 Counter-value vs counter-force
• 37:33 Russian nuclear strategy
• 42:44 Extended deterrence
• 52:37 Pain tolerance
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Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the director of its Keystone Defense Initiative, joins the show to talk about the state of U.S. deterrence of Russia, Iran, and China—and what Washington could be doing better.
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Times
• 01:42 Introduction
• 02:18 Conventional and strategic deterrence
• 04:06 A failure of strategic deterrence
• 09:38 Integrated deterrence
• 13:33 Putin is committed to the bit
• 15:36 If Russia wins, what’s it to the US?
• 19:16 Options if Russia uses nuclear weapons
• 24:06 The pendulum keeps swinging
• 28:20 Washington’s confusion regarding Iran and Israel
• 31:56 Red Sea adrift
• 36:00 China and the rest
• 40:01 Pacific flashpoints
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Paul Scharre, Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at CNAS and author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, joins the show to talk about how AI will change the battlefield.
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Times
• 01:38 Introduction
• 01:54 Becoming a Ranger
• 03:48 A defining moment
• 07:25 A historical parallel for AI
• 11:16 Hardware
• 14:10 “Taiwan is the Saudi Arabia of chips”
• 16:20 Military applications
• 19:37 Battle damage assessment and AI tracking
• 22:50 Autonomous weapons
• 27:50 Legal, ethical, and control issues
• 30:08 Battlefield applications
• 32:43 Operational ability
• 36:51 WMDs
• 40:09 Countermeasures
• 43:53 Transportable?
• 46:40 AI and nuclear weapons
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Buy the book here - Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Prit Buttar, historian and author of To Besiege a City: Leningrad 1941–42, joins the show to talk about the siege of Leningrad and about the nature of war on the Eastern Front.
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Times
• 01:56 Introduction
• 02:10 A familiar story
• 06:09 Themes of the Eastern Front
• 13:19 From Tsar to Stalin to Putin
• 11:10 Barbarosa
• 19:45 An immense scale
• 27:29 Doctrinal failure
• 33:17 Inside the Russian mindset
• 37:21 The myth of the “Clean Wehrmacht”
• 40:20 The siege
• 49:15 Who stays?
• 51:18 How did the Germans fail?
• 01:03:25 Staying vigilant
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Thomas Mahnken, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, joins the show to talk about net assessment and the future of war.
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Times
• 01:39 Introduction
• 02:02 An interesting journey
• 03:33 The Office of Net Assessment
• 09:49 A tool, not a solution
• 13:19 Both quantity and quality matter
• 15:05 Soviet thinking
• 19:20 Leveraging insight
• 23:11 Potential outcomes
• 28:35 “The Houthis have friends.”
• 33:19 Danger and opportunity
• 37:20 The terms of success change
• 43:14 Solving the problem of the moment
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Fantastic episode!