130 episodes
School of War Nebulous Media
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- History
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 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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Times
• 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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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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Times
• 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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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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Times
• 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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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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Times
• 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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Follow the link to buy the book - In the Shadow of Fear: America and the World in 1950 -
Ep 124: Shane Brennan on Xenophon and Leadership
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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Times
• 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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Follow the link to buy the book - Xenophon's Anabasis: A Socratic History -
Ep 123: Sergey Radchenko on Soviet Motivations in the Cold War
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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Times
• 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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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
Follow the link to buy the book - To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power