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
  • 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.
    Show More Show Less
    59 mins

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