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School of War Nebulous Media
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- История
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.
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Ep 130: John Spencer on Israel’s Unprecedented War (or, Urban Warfare 101)
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute and host of the Urban Warfare Project, joins the show to talk about urban combat and how Israel is fighting an unprecedented war against Hamas with justice and humanity.
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• 01:50 Introduction
• 02:08 Fighting and teaching
• 09:31 Changes in urban warfare
• 17:14 Terrain still matters
• 21:54 Israel’s unprecedented war
• 26:11 Learning on the ground
• 33:24 Genocide
• 43:57 The battle of Manila
• 49:41 Suffering is the strategic aim
• 51:04 Tunnels
• 55:51 Outthinking the enemy
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack -
Ep 129: Frank Gavin on Nuclear Strategy and Ukraine (War in Ukraine #2)
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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World -
Ep 128: Stephen Kotkin on Russia and Ukraine (War in Ukraine #1)
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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World -
Ep 127: Robert Blackwill & Richard Fontaine on the Failed Pivot to Asia
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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power -
Ep 126: Michel Paradis on D-Day and Eisenhower
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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower -
Ep 125: Nick Bunker on America and the Early Cold War
Nick 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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950