A. Wess Mitchell, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, historian, and author of Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger, joins the show to discuss just what diplomacy is.
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Times
• 01:37 Introduction
• 02:08 Bad reutation
• 04:37 Misconceptions
• 09:35 A part of grand strategy
• 13:11 Not trickery
• 18:05 Attila the Hun
• 24:17 Appeasement
• 35:00 Other options
• 39:33 The State Department
• 44:22 Molding diplomats
• 47:31 Ukraine
• 52:47 Major risks
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57:42
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57:42
Ep 233: Mick Ryan on the Ukraine War’s Urgent Lessons
Major General Mick Ryan, Australian Army (retired), Senior Fellow for Military Studies the Lowy Institute and author of the Futura Doctrina substack, joins the show to discuss his latest piece, Translating Ukraine Lessons for the Pacific Theatre.
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Times
• 01:40 Introduction
• 02:18 Translation
• 04:03 Ground forces
• 08:40 Australian defense
• 11:25 Threats from the North
• 13:25 Chinese influence
• 16:46 The mask slips
• 19:51 What we don’t know
• 24:36 The Pacific
• 32:18 Information ops
• 37:31 Corrosive influences
• 40:15 Mass
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42:11
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42:11
Ep 232: Ran Baratz on the Gaza War and Israel’s ‘Postmodern’ Military
Ran Baratz, military historian and former senior Israeli official, and author of What's Wrong with the Postmodern Military?, joins the show to discuss operations in Gaza and problems with how the IDF officer corps thinks about war.
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Times
• 01:37 Introduction
• 02:27 Gaza
• 06:23 Diplomatic obstacles
• 12:27 Worse than you think
• 15:28 Paradigm shift
• 30:23 Real wars
• 38:49 Art of the general
• 43:51 War as policy
• 50:00 Netanyahu
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53:07
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53:07
Ep 231: Peter Rough on Russian Drone Incursions into NATO
Peter Rough, senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, joins the show to discuss the recent Russian drone incursions in Poland and Romania and what they mean.
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Times
• 01:08 Introduction
• 01:35 What actually happened?
• 05:30 Destructive decoys
• 07:27 European moods
• 11:23 Rightwing response
• 16:32 Strategic autonomy
• 23:52 Zapad
• 30:00 On/off switch
• 33:31 Where do we stand?
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36:04
Ep 230: Prit Buttar on the Great Soviet Offensive of 1944
Prit Buttar, historian and author of Bagration 1944: The Great Soviet Offensive, joins the show to discuss the immense Russian campaign that broke the German Army on the Eastern Front.
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Times
• 01:48 Introduction
• 02:50 A war unto itself
• 08:02 Flanders
• 15:20 Maskirovka
• 24:35 Soviet intelligence
• 28:27 Bolshevism
• 30:22 Lebensraum
• 31:40 Bagration
• 36:14 Cracking the line
• 39:00 Warsaw
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Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack
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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