Episoder
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Eric welcomes Eliot back from scenic Lake Champlain where Eliot communed with the spirit of Benedict Arnold. They host Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and Ambassador (ret.) Robert Blackwill, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. They discuss Fontaine and Blackwell's new book Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). They review the origins and history of "The Pivot" to Asia during the Obama Administration, the reasons that this rebalancing of U.S. power and policy to the East was not implemented, the various efforts to do so subsequently and the reasons that they too did not succeed, the trade-offs among U.S. responsibilities for security in Europe and the Middle East and re-orienting to the Indo-Pacific, the need for a substantial increase in defense spending, the lack of a real trade policy for East Asia, the balance between diplomacy and deterrence and whether or not productive diplomacy with an autocratic regime and leader like Xi Jinping is even possible.
https://a.co/d/3VvFaeh
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Eric hosts New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, author of The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, The Perfect Weapon and most recently New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion and America's Struggle to Defend the West. They discuss the underlying assumptions that led American policymakers to underestimate the rise and threat of great power competition, whether hawks or doves have been more correct in analyzing the course of events over the past 15 years, the tensions, both past and present, in the Biden-Zelensky relationship, the Biden Administration's efforts at "escalation management" during the war in Ukraine, Russian nuclear threats and how seriously to take them, the question of whether the US and China have been engaged in an action-reaction spiral of distrust or whether Chinese actions have unfolded against a backdrop of American complacency, the unprecedented challenge of deterring two nuclear peers and the Biden Administration's Iran policy which seems to be on autopilot.
New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West: https://a.co/d/9nTIoD3
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Mangler du episoder?
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Eric and Eliot ruminate on the past 100 episodes of Shield of the Republic looking back retrospectively on big takeaways about US national security since the show began in September 2021 in the shadow of the catastrophic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. They talk about President Biden's limitations as a communicator and the broader difficulties of communicating a coherent strategic message in our current fractionated media and information ecosystem. They discuss the bandwidth difficulties for any American administration's dealing with more than one and a half crises at a time and the specific problem of dealing with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza at the same time and touch on the issues left unaddressed -- like having a policy to deal with Iran's growing stock of low enriched uranium at the 60% level. They contrast the troubles on campus today with the university upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the decline of the academic discipline of history and the catastrophic collapse in history enrollments in Universities. They discuss Eliot's article in Foreign Affairs on a theory of victory for Ukraine and the dangers of a Trump election victory as well as the necessity of loosening the US (and German) imposed restrictions on the use of weapons by Ukraine against legitimate military and logistical targets inside Russia.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/theory-victory-ukraine
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/university-gaza-protests-squirm/678437/
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/ukraine-cant-win-if-it-cant-shoot?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
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 the Lennert Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia and he and Eric are joined by Bret Stephens, columnist for the New York Times, founding Editor-in-Chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversation, former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary at the Wall Street Journal and author of America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder, (New York: Sentinel, 2014). They discuss the war in Gaza, Israel's apparent lack of a strategy, the ICC decision to seek warrants for PM Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant for war crimes, the anti-Israel bias of the UN system, the spread of anti-semitism on campus and beyond, the return of isolationism of both the left and the right, the prospects for this fall's election and the political failures of the Biden Administration, and the prospects for American resilience in the face of all this darkness.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
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. -
Eric welcomes Will Selber, Military Affairs Fellow with the Bulwark and a 20 year veteran of U.S. military intelligence with multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to his writing at the Bulwark, you can read Will's substack - Grumpy Combat Veteran - and listen to the podcast he co-hosts, Shoulder to Shoulder. They discuss the recent IS-KP attack on the Crocus City Theater in Moscow, the terrorist threat from both IS-KP and al Qaeda operating from Afghanistan, the difficulties of establishing an over-the-horizon counter-terrorist capability for CENTCOM, the Trump and Biden decisions to withdraw from Afghanistan, the failure to hold the Taliban to the terms of the Doha agreement, the repetition of US failures in VIetnam in training the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), a post-mortem on the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the reputational damage to the U.S. for abandoning its Afghan allies, the importance of military introspection and accountability for some of the failures in Afghanistan, and the ongoing impact of the Afghanistan debacle on military recruiting for the all volunteer force (AVF).
https://grumpycombatveteran.substack.com
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/al-qaeda-in-afghanistan-how-serious-threat
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/president-biden-should-talk-about-afghanistan
https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/deeper-reason-for-military-recruitment-woes -
Eliot and Eric welcome CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto to the show. The recipient of multiple awards for his journalism, including the Emmy, Edward R. Murrow, and George Polk awards he is also the author of The Shadow War, The Madman Theory, and recently The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War (New York: Dutton, 2024). They discuss why as a journalist he writes books, how the shooting war in Ukraine changed the perspective of both journalists and government officials about the danger of great power competition, the role of frontline states like Finland and Estonia and understanding the threat of Russian revanchism, Jim's reporting on the potential for Russian use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield in the fall of 2022 and whether the threat was genuine or an example of Russian use of information operations for "reflexive control," the transformation of Taiwan's defense posture and the threat of disruption and damage to US alliances in a second Trump Presidency.
The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War:
https://a.co/d/1RVHvZ4
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Eliot grills Eric on three recent articles identifying some big problems in U.S. foreign policy. What will happen once Iran is nuclear armed? Will the Ayatollahs undergo "nuclear learning" as some political scientists suggest or will they become more emboldened (not to seek a suicidal nuclear armageddon but to unleash their proxies -- Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, etc)? Should the U.S. be ready to launch a pre-emptive or prevent strike? Should it accelerate covert efforts at regime change? What about NATO decision-making? Now that the alliance is made up of 32 rather than 12 members should the decision-making move away from the consensus rules that have governed it since 1949? What should be done to avoid Hungary, Turkey or Slovakia from blocking consensus and acting as a Trojan horse inside the alliance? How tough should the U.S. be willing to be with putative allies, particularly in a wartime scenario? Finally, has the Trumpist turn to "America First" isolationism in the GOP rendered it unfit as a political instrument for conservatives who remain committed to internationalism and the US role in upholding the global order? Is it time for a new conservative internationalist political party?
https://thedispatch.com/article/when-iran-goes-nuclear/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iran-protesters-want-regime-change
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/natos-decision-process-has-an-achilles-heel/
https://sapirjournal.org/friends-and-foes/2024/03/republican-isolationists/
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 Peter Pomerantsev, British journalist, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, television producer and author of Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible, This is Not Propaganda, and his most recent book How to Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2024). They discuss the story of Sefton Delmer, the bilingual British journalist who headed up covert propaganda operations for the Political Warfare Executive during World War II. They touch on what makes for effective propaganda, whether idealistic appeals or trying to reach people via crasser motives is more effective, the morality of counter-propaganda efforts, distinguishing fact from fiction, people's desire to escape responsibility for government policies, creating permission structures for people subject to effective propaganda to think differently about what they are being told and the lessons from Delmer's efforts for today's world -- defeating Putin's propaganda in Russia and abroad and breaking through the cult-like propaganda of MAGA.
How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler:
https://a.co/d/8LbiEqJ
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Eric welcomes Finnish Professor Kimmo Rentala, Emeritus Professor of Political History at the University of Helsinki to the show to discuss his recently released book, How Finland Survived Stalin: From Winter War to Cold War (Yale University Press, 2024). The discuss Stalin's plans for Finland, Finnish resistance to the Soviet Union, Sweden's role in Finland's survival during the twentieth century, changes in access to Russian archival material from the immediate post-Soviet period to Putin's Russia, and what Ukraine can learn from Finland's experience with a large hostile neighboring country.
How Finland Survived Stalin: From Winter War to Cold War
https://a.co/d/hz6MDU5 -
Eric and Eliot inaugurate the first video episode of Shield of the Republic by welcoming former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) to discuss her New York Times best-selling book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning (New York: Little, Brown, 2023). They discuss her assessment of the impact on public discourse and public perceptions of the hearings and final report of the Congressional committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. They discuss the domestic and international consequences of a potential second Donald Trump Presidency, particularly its impact on the ability of the US to exercise international leadership in a world beset by aggressive, authoritarian regimes in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. They talk about the intellectual corruption on display at CPAC where would-be dictators were welcomed and the prospective end of democracy in America was cheered by the participants. Finally they consider the future of conservative internationalism and the Republican Party and whether or not the GOP is salvageable or whether a new conservative party needs to arise.
Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning
https://a.co/d/aTTN4iF
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 bemoan the death/murder of Alexei Navalny, Tucker Carlson's performative buffoonery in Moscow, and the irresponsibility of the Republican House of Representatives. They also welcome Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at St. Andrews University and author of How the War Was Won, The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, and the forthcoming book The Strategists. They discuss the reasons for overestimation of Russia at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the prospects for Ukraine with and without US aid, what a Ukrainian victory would look like, the situation in Avdiivka, whether Russia is getting stronger or weaker and what a Russian defeat would entail. They also discuss the prospects for the transatlantic alliance if Trump is re-elected, the recent change of command in Ukraine and Phil reflects on what historians bring to the discussion of war today.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Counter to type Eric welcomes Eliot back from his travels with a discussion of the positive things going on in the world. They discuss the strong response of the European allies to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, including the German Zeitenwende and the increase in German defense spending, they discuss the Franco-American relationship and the fact that France has emerged over the past twenty years as a much stronger and capable ally, the discuss the Ukrainian naval performance in the Black Sea and the return of grain exports to almost pre-war levels, they talk about Tucker Carlson beclowning himself in his interview with Putin and that latter's unconcealed contempt for his interviewer, they talk about the PRC's muted reaction to President Lai's election in Taiwan and the seeming slight and perhaps transitory improvement in US-China relations, as well as the good work of the Biden Administration in strengthening the links among U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. They discuss the indictment of Jair Bolsonaro and the success of Ecuador's President in fighting drug cartels and gangs. Eric also apologizes to Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan for misattributing an article to his journal that actually appeared on the Council of Foreign Relations website.
https://www.ft.com/content/51cf54ed-55df-4369-bdef-6f98be17d26c
sonofadiplomat.substack.com
https://www.sgdsn.gouv.fr/files/files/20240212_NP_SGDSN_VIGINUM_PORTAL-KOMBAT-NETWORK_ENG_VF.pdf
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. -
Eric welcomes former Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) of NATO General Philip Breedlove. General Breedlove is one of the nation's preeminent military strategists having served as commander of US Air Forces in Europe as well as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Practice at the Sam Nunn School at Georgia Tech (General Breedlove's alma mater). They discuss the state of play in Ukraine, the successes and failures of Ukraine's counter-offensive (including successes in the air and naval domains), the prospects for renewed Russian offensive operations in the direction of Kupyansk, the longer term trajectory of the conflict absent the supplemental aid bill currently before the U.S. Congress, the role that different weapons systems can make on the battlefield, how the U.S. administration has assessed the escalation risks, the long term consequences of defeat and the prospect of a reconstituted Russian threat to NATO, as well as the travails of Israel fighting in Gaza.
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 (joining from the Iberian Peninsula) discuss the Iranian strike on US soldiers located at Tower 22 in Jordan and the Administration's options for retaliation. They consider the argument's in Eliot's Atlantic piece suggesting that the US needs an entirely new strategy for Iran, the nature of the regime, and the difficulty American government officials have with ideological antagonists motivated by religious impulses. They discuss the current situation in Ukraine and the divisions between President Zelensky and Commander of the Armed Services General Zaluzhny as well as the Russo-centric assumptions of American politicians and policymakers. They discuss the potential for European states to fill the gap in material support to Ukraine created by the US political stalemate. They also consider the ICJ genocide case brought by South Africa against Israel and the scandal surrounding UNWRA workers participating in the Hamas October 7 assault and hostage taking in Israel. Finally they discuss the role of Antonio Salazar's corporatist, authoritarian (but not Fascist) dictatorship in Portugal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/iran-problem/677282/
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2015-12-14/time-get-tough-tehran
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2020-04-13/next-iranian-revolution
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/middle-east/iran-protesters-want-regime-change
https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Aftermath-Forging-Strategy-toward/dp/0817921540#customerReviews
https://www.amazon.com/Salazar-Dictator-Who-Refused-Die/dp/1787383881
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. - Se mer
