Shield of the Republic The Bulwark

Eric hosts Dale Copeland, Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics at UVA and faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center. Dale is the author of A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2024). They discuss Dale's dynamic realist theory of international relations which seeks to meld "offensive realism" which sees states as power maximizing entities in an anarchic world and "defensive realism" which sees states as acting to modulate power maximizing in order to avoid a spiral into conflict. Dale contrasts this theory to liberal institutional theories that see foreign policies as driven by internal dynamics including ideology. They discuss his account of American foreign policy which sees US statesmen as successful practitioners of realpolitik in a way that has advanced the U.S. national interest and created what Dale calls the "FDR legacy" or the liberal international order over which the U.S. has presided since the end of World War II. They talk about analysts who are either China "pessimists" who believe a conflict between the U.S. and China is unavoidable and China "optimists" who think it may be possible to avoid conflict. They discuss China's tightening relations with Russia, whether or not the U.S.-China relationship will be a bipolar one, whether or not we have seen "peak China," Xi's recent trip to Europe, how one would know enough to conclude that China was a threat that require containment and much more about the U.S.-China relationship.

A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China:
https://a.co/d/8GWjZVd

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes back Robert W. Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor at large at the Washington Post, to the show to discuss Kagan's new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart - Again (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). They discuss the origins of America's liberal tradition in the radicalism of the American Revolution. How the American Revolution differed from the French, the persistence of an anti-liberal tradition that from its inception was wrapped up with the defense of slavery and white supremacy. The persistence of that anti-liberal tradition in the 19th Century, today's Catholic integralism and Christian nationalism and the tensions between those schools of thought. The connections between anti-liberalism and America First and the connection to anti-semitism, left-wing anti-liberalism and the from whence the threat to American democracy is greatist, the stakes in the 2024 election and the global struggle against liberal democracy by Russian and Chinese autocrats.

Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart--Again:
https://a.co/d/hkh6fxJ

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/china-russia-republican-party-relations/678271/

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Eliot and Eric welcome Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, and author of America Last: The Right's Century Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. They discuss the origin story of "America First" during the First World War when critic and satirist H.L. Mencken and German-American propagandist (and paid agent) George Sylvester Viereck led the charge against American intervention in the Great War and how both played roles in the 30s and early 40s America First movement to prevent FDR from aiding the Allies. They discuss the hostility of America Firsters to the liberal tradition in America, its connection to anti-Semitism, William F. Buckley's role and evolution on anti-Semitism, Jeanne Kirkpatrick's views on authoritarianism and totalitarianism and the left's own tradition of admiration for tyrants as well as how these tendencies are reflected in today's MAGA movement.

America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators
https://a.co/d/91qv3YA

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Eric and Eliot welcome Illia Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian journalist, formerly with the Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent (of which he was a founder), and the author of I Will Show You it Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv (New York:  Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). They discuss how he came to write the book, the buildup to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russia's over the top rhetoric and bad assumptions about the nature of Ukraine and the likely course of the war, the criminal nature of Putin's regime, the Russian failure at the battle of Kyiv and whether that means Russia has lost the war, the delay in U.S. assistance, his own experience in the U.S. and why it made him optimistic that the U.S. would do the right thing, the impact of U.S. and western assistance on the war, the Belarus and Istanbul negotiations in March 2022 that some have alleged might have ended the war (spoiler alert: the Russians were not negotiating in good faith), the current battlefield situation, and how this war ends. You can follow Illia on Twitter (X) @IAPonomarenko and you can support his work at http://buymeacoffee.com/saintanger.  

I Will Show You How It Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv:
https://a.co/d/3QxgSKd

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Eliot returns from his travels and provides a trip report on his visit to Ukraine. He and Eric discuss the state of the fight, the challenges that the Ukrainians face with a hiatus in U.S. assistance, the progress that Russia has made in battlefield adaptation, Ukrainian defense innovation, the U.S. efforts to limit Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries and military bases inside Russia proper, and the recent article in Foreign Affairs that outlines the April-May 2022 negotiations between Russia and Ukraine that failed to yield an end to the war. They discuss Iran's massive, complex uav and missile assault on Israel, the deterioration of deterrence and Israeli options for resetting deterrence in response.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine

https://x.com/dszeligowski/status/1780183950507262201

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/04/kyiv-spring-ukraine-military-aid/678013/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/iran-israel-coalition-malevolent/678069/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/10/the-kind-of-thing-crisis/

https://archive.org/details/the-weekly-standard-2014-03-17/page/n11/mode/2up

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

Eric welcomes friend of Shield of the Republic Hal Brands back to the show. Hal is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of a new book, War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy and the Return of A Fractured World (Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), a weekly columnist at Bloomberg.com and also has a recent article on the Foreign Affairs website. They discuss the origins of the new book and 6 overarching themes that emerged from the essays by the distinguished contributors to the volume. They also discuss why America's unique system of alliances may obscure for Americans the potential for disruption that tightening relations among authoritarian regimes presents to the global order and the rise and future of isolationism in the Republican party.

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/122782/pdf

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_edited_volume/chapter/3881912/pdf

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/new-autocratic-alliances

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.