Horns of a Dilemma

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Frank Gavin, chair of the editorial board of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Fredrik Logevall and Daniel Bessner, authors of “Recentering the United States in the Historiography of American Foreign Relations,” which appeared in the Spring 2020 edition of TNSR. This article discusses a trend in the academic history community, to try to seek explanations other than the role of the United States for major events in the world. While this had salutary effects on the field, it has also had the perverse effect of underplaying the role of United States — the most powerful actor in the post-1945 world — on global politics. It also has led to overstating the role of international developments on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy which, the authors argue, was primarily driven by American domestic factors. In this wide-ranging interview, Gavin, Logevall, and Besnner, discuss the process of working on the article, the movements in history to which they are responding, as well as the response that they’ve seen to the article.

The United States faces a unique confluence of crises right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented economic and social impact on society, and has caused many people to reconceptualize what “national security” means. At the same time, the nation finds itself convulsed by issues of racial injustice and the response to issues in our criminal justice system. This likewise causes a reconceptualization of what it means to be secure, and raises questions about the role of the military and security forces in the United States. In this episode Doyle Hodges, the executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with a panel of policymakers and academics to discuss how academics and those who study questions of war and peace broadly defined, can best influence and help as the United States works its way forward during these parallel crises. The panel features Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Jim Goldgeier, the Robert Bosch senior visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of international relations at American University, and Derek Chollet, the executive vice president of the German Marshall Fund.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, the executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with author Dr. Brendan Gallagher to discuss his book, The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace. America has been successful in the battlefield aspects of its military endeavors but has struggled over the last two decades to find lasting political solutions that are acceptable to all parties after the conflict has ended. As Dr. Gallagher says in the introduction, “This is a book about an uncomfortable subject. Why does the most powerful nation in the world achieve triumphant military victories, but botch nearly everything that comes next?” Dr. Gallagher’s perspective is informed by his time as an active duty infantry officer with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The views in his book are his own personal views, and not necessarily those of the Department of Defense, the Army, or any particular Army unit.

In this episode, we learn more about the Clements Center namesake, William J. Clements. Clements negotiated a deal with President Richard Nixon where he reported directly to the president, despite serving as the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He served two non-consecutive terms as a Republican governor of Texas at a time when Texas politics was dominated by the Democratic party. Through Clements’ own words in interviews and televised appearances, as well as through an interview between Will Inboden, the Executive Director of the Clements Center, and George Seay, the chairman of the Clements Center board — and Clements’ grandson — we learn more about the Bill Clements and his legacy.”

In this episode of Horns, William Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center, and author and journalist Craig Fehrman, discuss his book, Author and Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote. In this fascinating conversation, Inboden and Fehrman examine the relationships between presidents and their ghost writers. In addition, they talk about how it is that presidents use these books to advance their political views, careers, and at times, their financial well being.

Do reputations matter in international politics? Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with professor Danielle Lupton to discuss her book, Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics. Hodges and Lupton discus how reputations form and what results from these reputations. Lupton is professor at Colgate University and earned her PhD from Duke University in 2014.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, talks with Dr. Erik Lin-Greenberg about his article, “Allies and Artificial Intelligence: Obstacles to Operations and Decision-Making,” which is featured in Volume 3 Issue 2 of TNSR. Dr. Lin-Greenberg is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and an incoming assistant professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research examines how military technology affects conflict dynamics in the regulation of the use of force and how remote warfighting technologies, like drones and cyber warfare, shape crisis escalation. He also explores how technology influences alliance relationships and public attitudes toward the use of force.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we participate in our first ever cross-podcast and listen in on a conversation that took place on the This is Democracy podcast about the U.S.-China relationship. Jeremi Suri, a renowned scholar of democracy and host of This is Democracy, sits down with Sheena Greitens, one of the newest additions to the University of Texas faculty. Professor Greitens is about to become an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and she is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her research focuses on American national security, East Asia, and authoritarian politics in foreign policy. In particular, she has focused on China’s domestic security policies and their implications for the world. The conversation focuses on China under Xi Jinping’s leadership and takes a look at the regime of domestic surveillance that has developed.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of Texas National Security Review, takes a deep dive into “Coercion Theory: A Basic Introduction for Practitioners,”  an article by author Dr. Tami Davis Biddle that appeared in Volume 3 Issue 2 of the publication. Dr. Biddle is a professor of national security at the U.S. Army War College, where she has taught since 2001. Her book, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945, was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002 and was added to the Chief of Air Staff’s reading list from the Royal Air Force.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Paul Edgar, the associate director for the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with for a wide-ranging discussion about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on European governance. Paul is joined by Amanda Sloat, a Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, Michael Mosser, assistant professor of international relations and global studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Lorinc Redei, lecturer and graduate adviser for the Global Policy Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Their discussion reviews the impact of the novel coronavirus on governance issues such as the timing of European elections, the trend to authoritarianism in some European countries, and the likely impact on the future of