Episodes

  • Trump's Stunning Ignorance

    Trump's Stunning Ignorance
    Nov 7 2024
    With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un as well as his abysmal level of basic knowledge of how the U.S. government actually works and international affairs more broadly. They discuss the likely makeup of a Trump national security team in a putative second Trump term and what a Trump victory would mean for Ukraine and the future of NATO. They also discuss what a Harris team might look like and whether a Harris foreign policy would be a continuation of the Biden policies or whether it might be more reflective of the more Reaganite rhetoric she has used on the campaign trail. Finally, they discuss the two or three international security issues that Ambassador Bolton believes will require the most urgent attention from whoever wins the election.

    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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    32 mins
  • Trump's Stunning Ignorance (with John Bolton)

    Trump's Stunning Ignorance (with John Bolton)
    Nov 7 2024
    Note: This was recorded prior to the results of the 2024 presidential election.

    With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un as well as his abysmal level of basic knowledge of how the U.S. government actually works and international affairs more broadly. They discuss the likely makeup of a Trump national security team in a putative second Trump term and what a Trump victory would mean for Ukraine and the future of NATO. They also discuss what a Harris team might look like and whether a Harris foreign policy would be a continuation of the Biden policies or whether it might be more reflective of the more Reaganite rhetoric she has used on the campaign trail. Finally, they discuss the two or three international security issues that Ambassador Bolton believes will require the most urgent attention from whoever wins the election.

    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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    32 mins
  • Georgia On My Mind

    Georgia On My Mind
    Oct 31 2024
    Eric and Eliot try to explain (for a foreign audience and American expats) how it is possible that the election is so close. They discuss the role of inflation, the border, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as craziness on campus, and elite disdain for non-college educated Americans in fly-over country. They touch on Eric's article in the Bulwark that dissects efforts by former Trump Administration officials to put a patina of coherence and strategy to Trump's views on national security. They examine the objectives and success of Israel's recent retaliatory strike on Iran in response to the October 1 mass ballistic missile attack launched by Tehran as well as the prospects for the region in the aftermath and, in particular, the potential for Israel to reshape the region's politics (spoiler alert: color both Eric and Eliot skeptical). They also examine the dispatch of North Korean soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war and what that tells one about Putin's vulnerabilities and they discuss Russia's political warfare (with mixed results) in Georgia and Moldova. Finally they finish up with a discussion of recent readings on British naval history, FDR's efforts to mobilize the country for potential war in 1940 and the colonization of Mars.

    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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    56 mins
  • How Do You Adapt Under Fire?

    How Do You Adapt Under Fire?
    Oct 24 2024
    Eric and Eliot welcome Australian MG (ret.) Mick Ryan to the show to discuss his new book, The War For Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation under Fire (Naval Institute Press, 2024). They examine the initial strategies pursued by Russia and Ukraine as well as the assumptions that underpinned those strategies as well as considering how the two sides have adapted to changing conditions on the battlefield. They discuss the role of leadership and Ukraine's demonstration of greater ability to implement innovation in tactics on the battlefield from the ground up. Eliot and Mick discuss the difference between the relatively unchanging nature of war as opposed to the evolving character of war and how new technology and doctrine can make a difference in comparative advantage between adversaries. They discuss civil-military strains in both Ukraine and Russia, Russian challenges with mobilization of manpower as well as Ukraine's difficulties with both manpower and training as well as absorbing some of the high end equipment they have received from NATO allies and other partners. They consider the current state of the battlefield, the Kursk offensive by Ukrainian forces and some of the flaws in US and NATO military advice and decision-making during the course of the war.

    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/liz-cheney-on-american-authoritarianism-d00

    War Transformed: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Great Power Competition and Conflict:
    https://a.co/d/5LKv7m3

    The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire
    https://a.co/d/0AoPXRR

    Mick's Substack:
    https://mickryan.substack.com

    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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    56 mins
  • October 7th: One Year Later

    October 7th: One Year Later
    Oct 10 2024
    Eric and Eliot note the sad commemoration of the Hamas attack on Israel and the consequences that came in its wake. They touch on the shocking nature of the sexual violence, the denial of the attack and the reality of the horrific violence as well as the explosion of anti-semitism internaionally and, in particular, on US college campuses, they discuss the Israeli successes in attacking the Hezbollah leadership and military infrastructure in Lebanon (and the blindspot with regard to Hamas that the successes against Hezbollah represent). They also assess the Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel, what it reveals about the state of Israel's layered, integrated air and missile defense systems (Arrow, David's Sling, and Iron Dome) as well as the prospects for both Israel's and the U.S. responses. They discuss the impact of lame duck status on the Biden Administration's diplomatic efforts, the difficulty that the BIden team seems to have in moving to Plan B when their initial efforts are stymied, and the curious lack of empathy for allies and partners strategic circumstances despite the Administration's lauding of alliances in the abstract. Finally, they discuss Seth Jones's recent Foreign Affairs article on the PRC's industrial war footing, how easily military technology yields military capability and how America's adversaries might take advantage of a chaotic, post-election transition period.

    Seth Jones on China's War Footing:
    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-ready-war-america-is-not-seth-jones

    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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    59 mins
  • An Unlikely Network of Dictatorships

    An Unlikely Network of Dictatorships
    Oct 3 2024
    Eric and Eliot welcome back Anne Applebaum, Pultizer and Duff Cooper Prize Winning author of Gulag and Red Famine and currently staff writer with The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They discuss Anne's new book Autocracy Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World. They examine the threat that autocratic regimes represent to their own citizens at home and to liberal democracy abroad, the West's slowness to recognize the threat that the authoritarians represent, the excessive optimism that (after the end of the Cold War and with the advent of globalization) liberal democratic ideals would triumph without recognizing the danger that authoritarian, illiberal ideas might flow into democracies, whether or not the authoritarians think they are winning and how they measure success, Russia's role in prompting much of the authoritarian offensive and the role of western institutions in facilitating the emergence of Russia as a personalist, authoritarian mafia state, the weaknesses of the authoritarians and how the western democracies might go on the offensive against the political warfare being waged daily by the authoritarians against the democracies, and the effort to obliterate truth and promote hopelessness and cynicism in citizens in democracies and setting them against one another.

    Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World:
    https://a.co/d/ifaCL3E

    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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    59 mins
  • How WWII's Warlords Approached Strategy

    How WWII's Warlords Approached Strategy
    Sep 26 2024
    Eric and Eliot welcome back Phillips Payson O'Brien to Shield of the Republic. Phil is the author of The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler - How War Made Them and How They Made War (New York, Dutton, 2024) as well as the co-author with Eliot of The Russia-Ukraine War and a Study in Analytic Failure, a new report from CSIS. They discuss Phil's earlier work on World War II that focused on air and seapower and the competition in industrial production between the Allies and the Axis, the formative role of World War I experiences on all of these World War II leaders, the role of will as opposed to a focus on material production as a differentiator between the two sides in World War 2, Hitler's (and others') "magical thinking" about strategy, Churchill's understudied role as Minister of Munitions during World War 1, FDR's role in 1916 Naval Preparedness program, Stalin's (and Putin's) historical mythologizing, the reasons for analytic failure at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine war, and prospects for escalation (and strategy) between Israel and Hezbollah/Iran.

    The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler--How War Made Them and How They Made War
    https://a.co/d/14ip0sY

    How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II
    https://a.co/d/erLbwrf

    Report Launch: The Russia-Ukraine War and a Study in Analytic Failure
    https://www.csis.org/events/report-launch-russia-ukraine-war-and-study-analytic-failure

    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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    59 mins
  • How John Adams Established Enduring American Customs

    How John Adams Established Enduring American Customs
    Sep 19 2024
    Eric and Eliot provide their thumbnail review of the Trump-Harris debate and then welcome their special guest Lindsay Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and the author the new book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged a Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). They discuss the role of the January 6th insurrection in sparking her interest in the peaceful transfer of power in the United States and the first instance of a transfer via election in 1800. She discusses how this perspective provided new insight into understanding John Adams's Presidency which is frequently depicted as a failure but which successfully resolved the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790s, established the norms of civilian oversight of the military and Presidential command of foreign policy and control of the executive departments of government. They discuss the political intriguing of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson who sought to undermine Adams, the fears of a standing army, the extremism of the "Arch Federalists" and the violent rhetorical excesses of factionalism in the party, the role of the French Revolution and immigration in American politics in the early Republic, and ultimately how Adams put country over party and personal political success to establish the norms of a peaceful transfer of power. Finally, she discusses how the death throes of the Federalist Party (and later the Whigs) might shed light on possible futures for the GOP.

    Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic:
    https://a.co/d/3v539F7

    What History Tells Us Might Happen to the Republican Party:
    https://www.thebulwark.com/p/history-political-parties-republican-gop

    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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    58 mins