Horns of a Dilemma

If you think of the 1990s, you may think of the “The Simpsons,” Nirvana, or “Seinfeld.” But if you’re a security or policy wonk, one of things you’re going to remember about the decade is a military response option that seemed to be one of the first things officials considered for almost any dilemma — the no fly zone. What are no fly zones? What are the politics and prospects of no-fly zones?   In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Stephen Wrage, professor at the Naval Academy, and Lt. Col. (ret.) Scott Cooper, to discuss their book, No Fly Zones and Internal Security: Politics and Strategy.

In this episode of Horns of Dilemma, Will Inboden, editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review, and Ashlyn Hand, a Ph.D. candidate at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, speak with Lauren Turek, a professor at Trinity College, about her new book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Right on US Foreign Relations.   American foreign policy has often had a strong religious component, whether that be in the form of manifest destiny, or in the idea of American exceptionalism. But as Turek documents, in the late 20th century, the specific notion of human rights intersected with evangelical missionaries and their perceptions of the risks associated with communism and other important foreign policy questions, and were able to organize and influence U.S. foreign policy in a new and important way.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, William Inboden, editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review, is joined by Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, and Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the 9/11 Commission and counselor to numerous administrations, to discuss Zoellick’s new book, America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. They also discuss how Zoellick transformed himself from an economist, an expert in finance, a lawyer, and a diplomat, into a historian who wrote an overarching history of a vast period of American power.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Sheena Greitens, associate professor at the LBJ School at the University of Texas, moderates a discussion between Tanvi Madan, senior fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, and Jim Steinberg, professor of social science, international affairs, and law at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Their conversation revolves around the fraught, contentious, and important relationship between the world’s largest democracy, India, the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, and the world’s fastest rising economy, China.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with professor Bartholomew Sparrow, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and author of, The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security, to talk about the late Brent Scowcroft.   Scowcroft was a towering figure in American foreign policy for over 50 years. After a distinguished Air Force career, he served as deputy national security advisor in the Nixon administration and as national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. He is considered by many to have been the best national security advisor in U.S. history. Scowcroft remained engaged in foreign policy issues after his government service. In 2002, he penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that argued the United States should not invade Iraq, becoming the most prominent and influential Republican national security professional to oppose the war. Scowcroft was known for his collegiality, professionalism, and commitment to a prudent, realistic U.S. foreign policy.

We live in an era of almost unprecedented partisan division and polarization where any issue of policy can become one that is deeply divided along party lines, and many of those issues of policy involve the military. We’ve seen this in examples of troops being deployed to the southwest border of the United States and through the use of federal troops in response to the racial justice protests. How does the military avoid becoming partisan in these divisive times?   Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, explores this question with Jim Golby, senior fellow at the Clement Center at the University of Texas at Austin.  

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, explores how social media has played an increasingly prominent role in the public discourse. Listeners to the War on the Rocks podcast may recall an episode featuring Camille Francois of Graphika, and Jessica Brandt, head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, dealing with the question of disinformation. These topics have also been covered in more popular press with books such as Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media, by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, and War in 140 Characters, by David Patrikarakos. But very few of these explorations have gone into how social media effects international relations. Professor Sarah Kreps, the John L. Wetherill professor in the Department of Government and adjunct professor of law at Cornell University, unpacks that very idea in this episode. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Mark Lawrence, director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, to discuss the inner workings of the presidential library system and the purposes they serve. Who runs them and who funds them? What mission do they serve? Does every President get one? Lawrence and Hodges also examine the complicated history and contradictory characteristics of President Johnson himself.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Rebecca Hersman, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss her article, “Wormhole Escalation in the New Nuclear Age,” featured in Volume 3/Issue 3 of the Texas National Security Review.   In her article, Hersman argues that our understanding of nuclear escalation may be obsolete. Rather than following a traditional step-wise ladder model, she argues that new technologies may results in sudden and unexpected escalation--much like the concept of a wormhole.”

Often when we discuss national security we tend to focus on “hard security concepts,” things like military capability, nuclear weapons, deterrence, and other things that are comfortable to those that have studied security for a long time. But what does it mean to be secure? Are people secure from something or someone? And who is it that we mean by the concept of “the nation”? Frequent listeners to Horns will have heard in the discussion with Kori Schake, Derek Chollet, and Jim Goldgeier, the notion that the concurrent pandemic and crisis of racial justice requires us to reconceptualize what we mean by “national security.”   In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma Doyle Hodges, the executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Shirin Sinnar, professor at Stanford University Law School, to discuss race, identity, and national security.