Frank Gavin, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and author of Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, joins the show to discuss the promise and perils of using history to guide today’s statecraft.
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02:20 Political Science vs. History
05:37 The Importance of Historical Thinking
08:13 Historical Interpretation
11:22 Counterfactuals
14:26 The Misuse of History in Policy Making
17:19 Thinking in Time
22:27 Errors When Thinking Historically
31:57 Putin’s View of History
40:01 Philosophical Understanding
47:05 Does History Have a Direction?
53:34 A Checklist for Historical Thinking
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Ep 253: Michael Pack on the Battle of Fallujah
Michael Pack, President and CEO of Palladium Pictures LLC and director of The Last 600 Meters: The Battles of Najaf and Fallujah, joins the show to discuss his remarkable documentary of the Iraq war and the Marines and battles that it portrays.
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Times
01:59 The Journey of Creating 'The Last 600 Meters'
06:24 Censored
10:55 Combat and Valor
21:06 Political Decisions and Military Strategy
26:02 The Human Experience of War
36:29 The Hell House
40:24 Beyond the Battlefield
45:42 Full Metal Jacket
50:45 The Withdrawal from Afghanistan: A New Perspective
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Ep 252: Andrew Lambert on the British Empire’s Strategic Challenges and America’s Today
Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History in the Department of War Studies, King's College London and No More Napoleons: How Britain Managed Europe from Waterloo to World War One, joins the show to discuss how the British Empire maintained the balance in Europe between the fall of Napoleon to the summer of 1914.
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Times
02:59 Studying the Problem of War
06:20 British Perspectives of the European Coast
11:33 The French Likelihood of Invading Britain
21:40 The Scheldt River Estuary
30:33 Marlborough, Wellington, and Eisenhower
36:48 The 19th Century and the Rise of Steampower
47:35 Divided attention and British Mistakes of 1914
54:40 The Failure of British Strategic Off-Shore Balancing
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Ep 251: John Lee on Ukraine, Peace, and What China Wants
John Lee, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, joins the show to discuss the Trump administration’s efforts to bring the war in Ukraine to an end, and what it all means facing China in the Pacific.
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Times
01:56 Strategic Implications of the War
03:24 The 28-Point Peace Plan
09:49 Challenges of Negotiating Peace
15:19 The Russia-China Connection
19:48 Nuclear Deterrence and Arms Control
29:30 Linking Ukraine and Taiwan
35:18 Ukraine War as a Chinese Proxy Conflict
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Ep 250: Jeremy Armstrong on Ancient Rome’s Myths and Warfare
Jeremy Armstrong, Professor of Classics & Ancient History at the University of Auckland and author of Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome's Empire, joins the show to discuss the early history of Rome, the role of family and clan in the structure of its military, the transition from monarchy to republic, and the nature of warfare during this formative period.
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Times
02:28 The Problems of Early History
06:05 Warfare in Early Rome: A Complex Picture
11:52 The Importance of Myths in Roman Identity
15:01 Aeneas and Romulus: Founding Figures of Rome
18:00 The Significance of Aeneas in Roman Culture
20:48 The Function of Rome
33:09 The Role of Land and Mobility in Early Rome
36:07 Understanding the Monarchy and Military Structure
42:32 Transition from Monarchy to Republic
53:26 The Impact of the Sack of Rome
1:01:27 Shifting Towards Imperial Ambitions
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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 former 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 Hudson Institute. 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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