Shield of the Republic

Peter Feaver, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Duke University, discusses his book 'Thanks for Your Service' on public confidence in the US military. They touch on causes of public confidence, the politicization of the military, partisanship's impact, and the lack of support for civil-military norms. They also explore the consequences of Republican critiques on military recruitment and the challenges of teaching in the age of CHATGPT.

Eric and Eliot are joined by Isabel Kershner, the New York Times Jerusalem correspondent and author of The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023). They discuss the division and polarization in Israeli society and the cleavages between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi populationns, as well as between secular and Haredi Jews, the emergence of identity politics and populism in Israel and, of course, the current struggle over judicial reform. They consider the judicial crisis in the context of Bibi Netanyahu's political predicament and ruminate on whether Israel's greatest challenges in the future will come from within the country or from the external security environment. https://www.amazon.com/Land-Hope-Fear-Israels-Battle/dp/1101946768 Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric and Eliot welcome Financial Times Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller, author of The War Came to Us: Life and Death in Ukraine (London: Bloomsbury, 2023). Chris describes his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bakhmut and his transition to journalism as a reporter for the Kyiv Post exposing corruption and self-dealing in Ukraine before the "revolution of dignity" at the Euromaidan in 2014. He talks about his coverage of the fall of Ukrainian President Yanukovych, the Russian seizure of Crimea, the outbreak of the 2014 war in Donbas, his encounters with Igor "Strelkov" Girkin (now under arrest in Moscow for criticizing Putin's conduct of the current war) and the "Cossack Bomb Squad," the wartime leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky and the dilemmas that await him as well as the course of the current Ukrainian counter-offensive. Shield of the Republic will be on a short summer break next week. https://www.amazon.com/War-Came-Us-Death-Ukraine/dp/139940685X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1690910070&sr=8-1 Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric welcomes Eliot back from Edinburgh where it was not all Walter Scott tourism and Scotch sipping. They discuss the project that Eliot and Phillips O'Brien have undertaken to analyze the failures of Russia experts to correctly assess the run up to and the course of the war in Ukraine, the ongoing state of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the lingering political repercussions in Russia of the Prigozhin mutiny and how it might affect the battlespace, the Biden Administration's nomination of Derek Chollet as Under Secretary of Defense for policy and the current hold that Sen. Tommy Tuberville has placed on the confirmation of senior military and civilian defense officials, as well as the troubling state of Israeli democracy. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eliot and Eric welcome former President of Estonia (and SotR fan) Toomas Ilves to the show. They do a post-mortem on the Vilnius NATO Summit. How did the Biden team perform? What are the prospects for European security with a revanchist Russia? How should NATO approach Ukraine's future association with Alliance? They also discuss the importance of Finland and Sweden in NATO and much more. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eliot and Eric welcome Michael Vickers, the author of By All Means Available: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Operations and Strategy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2023). They discuss his role in overseeing the CIA's covert assistance program to the Afghan resistance in the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s, how his experiences as a Green Beret impacted his approach to policy making as a senior official, his academic work at the Office of Net Assessment and CSBA on the revolution in warfare, his return to government in the Bush 43 Administration orchestrating the intensification of the war against Al Qaeda and his role in the bin Laden raid, as well as his thoughts on the endgame in Afghanistan and the lessons of earlier proxy wars for the current fight in Ukraine. They also discuss the delicacy of working with nuclear land mines as a special forces officer. https://www.amazon.com/All-Means-Available-Intelligence-Operations/dp/1101947705/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1689088835&sr=8-1 https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/the-shadow-wars-of-michael-vickers https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/the-revolution-in-war/publication/1 Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric and Eliot dig in to Eliot’s recent travels to Poland and Ukraine. They discuss the future of European security relations with Ukraine, Kyiv’s understandable neuralgia about steps short of NATO membership, the meaning and impact of Prigozhin’s rebellion in Russia and on the battlefield, the prospects for Ukraine’s counter-offensive and Ukraine’s ongoing requirements for long range strike, short-range air defenses and cluster munitions. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric welcomes back Eliot to host Stephen Sestanovich, the George F. Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations and Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor at the School of International Political Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University to discuss the short-lived semi-farcical mutiny in Russia led by Evgeniy Prigozhin, the proprietor of the Wagner Group private military company. They discuss the backstory of Wagner and the legal limbo in which it operates, how its business model benefits members of Putin’s kleptocratic elite, whether Putin has emerged weaker or stronger from this affair and the impact that Prigozhin’s actions may have on the stability of Russia and the ongoing war effort on Ukraine. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/three-logics-russias-prigozhin-putsch/674538/ https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110854/witnesses/HHRG-116-FA14-Wstate-MartenK-20200707.pdf Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Eliot still on the road, Eric welcomes back Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and introduces Thomas Mahnken, the President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) to discuss The New Makers of Modern Strategy, published by Princeton University Press in May. They discuss the backstory of the Makers of Modern Strategy franchise, the purpose and themes of the current volume, arms races and arms control in peacetime competition between nations, the Anglo-German naval arms race before WWI, the US-Soviet arms race in the Cold War, the role of Andrew Marshall as both a strategist and patron of strategy and much more. Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Eliot on the road again Eric hosts Andrew Hoehn, Senior VP and Director of Research at the RAND Corporation, and Thom Shanker (formerly New York Times national security reporter and editor) Director of the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University. The authors of Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats (New York: Hachette Books, 2023) discuss why we are entering an age of greater danger than we have known since the end of the Cold War, the nature of the government's machinery for warning and action in the national security realm, the feasibility and desirability of "whole-of-government" and "whole-of-society" solutions to these looming national security challenges, the legacy of Andrew Marshall (the director of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment for 40 years), the role of cost-imposing strategies and the use of attritable unmanned aircraft and sensors for deterring the PRC in the Taiwan Strait, the nature of "unobtanium", and the Russian war on Ukraine. https://www.amazon.com/Age-Danger-Keeping-America-Superpowers/dp/030682910X Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at shieldoftherepublic@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices