Shield of the Republic

By: The Bulwark
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  • Summary

  • Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. We probe beyond the hive mind of Washington conventional wisdom on national security and foreign affairs.
    Bulwark Media
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Politics & Government World
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Episodes
  • Trump's New International Reality

    Trump's New International Reality
    Jan 9 2025
    Eric and Eliot are back from the break and have lots to discuss. They note the anniversary of January 6th and the somewhat successful efforts by MAGA types to rewrite its history in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Eric talks about the world that Trump will inherit which will be much more disorderly and dangerous that what he inherited in his first term as President, including an Iran on the cusp of having a nuclear weapons capability, the largest land war in Europe since World War II with battlefield situation for Ukraine looking grim even as Russia faces catastrophic losses of men and material, and Russia and China escalating an increasingly aggressive hybrid war of sabotage in the Baltic, off Taiwan and farther afield. They discuss turbulence of politics in the democratic world and the various causes of the rise of populist nationalism which has affected not just the U.S. but democracies around the world. They discuss Elon Musk's unprecedented role as an agent of political disruption around the democratic world and its byproducts in the UK, Germany, and Canada. Finally, they reprise their discussion of the futile efforts by members of the Biden Administration to polish and shape its foreign policy legacy through interviews and speeches when the final verdict will be rendered by historians likely to be unaffected by these transparently self-interested efforts.

    Eric on Conversations With Bill Kristol:
    https://conversationswithbillkristol.org/conversation/eric-edelman-on-the-world-trump-inherits/

    JINSA Iranian Nuclear Report:
    https://jinsa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Day-1-Strategy-to-Defeat-Iran-12.19-Compressed.pdf

    Phillips OBrien on Biden's legacy burnishing:
    https://substack.com/home/post/p-154316690

    Secretary Blinken Interview:
    https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-lulu-garcia-navarro-of-nyts-the-interview-podcast/

    Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Deterrence is Cheaper Than War

    Deterrence is Cheaper Than War
    Dec 20 2024
    With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes back prolific historian and author Hal Brands to the show to discuss his forthcoming book The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2025) which will be published in mid-January. They discuss the ideas and careers of geopolitical thinkers Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Nicholas Spykman whose views about the influence of geography on international affairs became enormously influential among political leaders of all stripes in the early to mid-Twentieth Century. They touch on the costs of deterrence versus the much higher costs of great power wars, the breakdown of the international trading system in the 1930s and how it presaged military conflict, why regional crises in the interwar period rapidly metastasized into the most costly global conflict in history and how our contemporary world resembles the world of 1940-1941. They also discuss the rise of China and the bipartisan consensus it has spawned on diagnosing our current international environment but has not yet led to a bipartisan execution of policies to remedy the situation. They also discuss the rise of geopolitical super predators in the 1930s, the evolution of "Fortress Eurasia" -- the emerging alliance among the PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea, Senator Mitch McConnell's recent Foreign Affairs article arguing against retrenchment, and why it is hard to imagine a future conflict not becoming a global conflict today.

    Shield of the Republic will be taking a break for the holidays and will return in early January.

    The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World:
    https://a.co/d/2XQ7lWa

    The Price of American Retreat:
    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/price-american-retreat-trump-mitch-mcconnell

    Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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    54 mins
  • A Catastrophic Blow to Putin

    A Catastrophic Blow to Putin
    Dec 12 2024
    Eric and Eliot discuss the rapidly unfolding events in Syria and examine the causes and consequences of the collapse of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria. They discuss the big winners (Turkey, Israel, the Syrian people and to a lesser extent the U.S) and the big losers (notably Russia and especially Iran). They discuss the timing of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham offensive, how to interpret the claims of HTS leader abu Mohammed al Jolani that the group has moderated, the prospects for Russia maintaining its Khmeimim Air Base and its naval base at Tartus, as well as the future of Iranian national security policy. In particular, they discuss whether the Iranians will have incentives to sprint to a nuclear weapon or whether they will temporize and seek to embroil the incoming Trump administration in an endless negotiation over the nuclear program. They discuss the Biden Administration's efforts to polish its reputation in the aftermath of recent events and the waxing and waning of leadership reputations including former President Barack Obama and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They consider what effect events in Syria might have on Trump's approach to the war in Ukraine. They also touch on listener criticisms that calling for greater defense spending seems out of touch with today's American political scene. They consider the results of the recent Reagan National Defense Forum survey and the light those results shed on the question of public support for stronger national defense.

    Eliot's latest pieces in the Atlantic:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/khamenei-iran-syria/680920/

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/european-troops-ukraine-war/680928/

    Eric & David Kramer's latest in Politico:
    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/12/06/trump-ukraine-better-foreign-policy-00192415

    Reagan Foundation Study on Public Perception of Defense Spending:
    https://www.reaganfoundation.org/media/363274/rndf-survey-nov-2024-memo.pdf

    Financial Times Retrospectives on Angela Merkel:
    https://www.ft.com/content/0a538c85-27fb-400e-ae8b-f13fb6ce4e72

    https://www.ft.com/content/e82af5d9-32ea-444e-93e2-9e457d6a6796

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

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