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.
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What Would Kamala's Foreign Policy Look Like?
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Eric welcomes back Eliot from his trip to the High North in Svalbard, Norway where he was attending a workshop on Nordic-Baltic views on European security. Eliot discusses the views of the Nordic countries vis a vis Russia, the role of climate change in the Arctic, and great power competition in that region. They also discuss Eliot's recent Atlanti…
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Eric welcomes back Michael Mandelbaum, author and Christian A. Herter Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Michael is the author of the new book The Titans of the Twentieth Century: How They Made History and the History they Made (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024)…
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Eric and Eliot host historian Luke Nichter in a special convention episode that looks back at the last time the Democrats hosted a national convention in Chicago: 1968. Nichter is the James H. Cavanaugh Chair in Presidential Studies and Professor of History at Chapman University and author of The Year that Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the…
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Eric welcomes historian Timothy Ryback, the Co-Founder and Director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in the Hague. He has been Director and Vice President of the Salzburg Seminar and a lecturer in History at Harvard University and is the author of Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). Th…
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Hostages, Assassinations, and the Future of National Defense
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Eric and Eliot discuss the multinational hostage return deal with Russia and talk about what it reveals about the Russia and the Putin regime, the diplomatic skill in pulling it off and the moral calculus between the imperative of getting wrongly accused American citizens home and the danger of political moral hazard by encouraging Putin to take mo…
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Paul Nitze: National Security's Forgotten Man
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Eric and Eliot host James Graham Wilson, an historian in the Department of State's Historian's Office to discuss his new book America's Cold Warrior: Paul Nitze and National Security From Roosevelt to Reagan. They discuss Nitze's background as an America First supporter between the wars, his anti-Semitism and his family's connection to the Black To…
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Is Trump 2.0 a Guaranteed Foreign Policy Disaster?
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Eric and Eliot debate the latter's Atlantic article arguing that a second Trump term might not be that catastrophic on foreign policy. They discuss why people shouldn't catastrophize the possible outcomes, the traditional continuity between Administrations on foreign policy despite overheated partisan campaign rhetoric and the inextricable links be…
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Eric and Eliot host Sergey Radchenko, the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies based in Bologna, Italy. They discuss Sergey’s personal story of growing up in Sakhalin in the Soviet Union, living in China, becoming an historian and gain…
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What's at Stake in the Global 2024 Elections
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Eric is rejoined by Eliot who has been reconnoitering his old stomping grounds in Boston. They discuss a series of upcoming elections, including in the UK on July 4 where the Tory Party (the oldest political party in the world) looks to be obliterated by a Labour landslide, France where President Macron's "party" looks likely to be squeezed out by …
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Was Machiavelli the Father of Modern Grand Strategy?
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Eric welcomes Professor Christopher Lynch, Chair of the Political Science Department at Missouri State University, the editor and translator of the most recent edition of Machiavelli's The Art of War and author of Machiavelli on War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023). They discuss Machiavelli as statesman, military leader and diplomat and…
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Eric welcomes Eliot back from scenic Lake Champlain where Eliot communed with the spirit of Benedict Arnold. They host Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Center for a New American Security and Ambassador (ret.) Robert Blackwill, the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. They discuss Fontaine and Blac…
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Eric hosts New York Times Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, author of The Inheritance, Confront and Conceal, The Perfect Weapon and most recently New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion and America's Struggle to Defend the West. They discuss the underlying assumptions that led American policymakers to underestimate the rise and th…
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Shield of the Republic Crosses the Century Mark
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Eric and Eliot ruminate on the past 100 episodes of Shield of the Republic looking back retrospectively on big takeaways about US national security since the show began in September 2021 in the shadow of the catastrophic US withdrawal from Afghanistan. They talk about President Biden's limitations as a communicator and the broader difficulties of c…
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Eliot returns from the Lennert Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia and he and Eric are joined by Bret Stephens, columnist for the New York Times, founding Editor-in-Chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversation, former Editor in Chief of the Jerusalem Post, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary at the Wall Street Journal and author of America in …
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Eric hosts Dale Copeland, Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics at UVA and faculty senior fellow at the Miller Center. Dale is the author of A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024). They discuss Dale's dynamic realist …
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With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes back Robert W. Kagan, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor at large at the Washington Post, to the show to discuss Kagan's new book, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart - Again (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). They discuss the origins of America's liberal tradition in the rad…
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Eliot and Eric welcome Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, and author of America Last: The Right's Century Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. They discuss the origin story of "America First" during the First World War when critic and satirist H.L. Mencken and German-Ameri…
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Facing One of the Largest War Machines in Human History
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Eric and Eliot welcome Illia Ponomarenko, a Ukrainian journalist, formerly with the Kyiv Post and Kyiv Independent (of which he was a founder), and the author of I Will Show You it Was: The Story of Wartime Kyiv (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). They discuss how he came to write the book, the buildup to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Russi…
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Eliot returns from his travels and provides a trip report on his visit to Ukraine. He and Eric discuss the state of the fight, the challenges that the Ukrainians face with a hiatus in U.S. assistance, the progress that Russia has made in battlefield adaptation, Ukrainian defense innovation, the U.S. efforts to limit Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil…
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The New Fractured World (with Hal Brands)
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Eric welcomes friend of Shield of the Republic Hal Brands back to the show. Hal is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of a new book, War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy and the Re…
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Eric welcomes Will Selber, Military Affairs Fellow with the Bulwark and a 20 year veteran of U.S. military intelligence with multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to his writing at the Bulwark, you can read Will's substack - Grumpy Combat Veteran - and listen to the podcast he co-hosts, Shoulder to Shoulder. They discuss the r…
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The National Security Beat with Jim Sciutto
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Eliot and Eric welcome CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto to the show. The recipient of multiple awards for his journalism, including the Emmy, Edward R. Murrow, and George Polk awards he is also the author of The Shadow War, The Madman Theory, and recently The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War (New Yo…
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Nuclear Iran, NATO's Future, and America First Isolationism
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Eliot grills Eric on three recent articles identifying some big problems in U.S. foreign policy. What will happen once Iran is nuclear armed? Will the Ayatollahs undergo "nuclear learning" as some political scientists suggest or will they become more emboldened (not to seek a suicidal nuclear armageddon but to unleash their proxies -- Hezbollah, Ir…
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The Art of Propaganda with Peter Pomerantsev
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Eric and Eliot welcome Peter Pomerantsev, British journalist, senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, television producer and author of Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible, This is Not Propaganda, and his most recent book How to Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler (New York: Public Affa…
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Eric welcomes Finnish Professor Kimmo Rentala, Emeritus Professor of Political History at the University of Helsinki to the show to discuss his recently released book, How Finland Survived Stalin: From Winter War to Cold War (Yale University Press, 2024). The discuss Stalin's plans for Finland, Finnish resistance to the Soviet Union, Sweden's role …
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Eric and Eliot inaugurate the first video episode of Shield of the Republic by welcoming former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) to discuss her New York Times best-selling book Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning (New York: Little, Brown, 2023). They discuss her assessment of the impact on public discourse and public perceptions of the hearings …
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What Happens if the House Fails in its Obligation
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Eric and Eliot bemoan the death/murder of Alexei Navalny, Tucker Carlson's performative buffoonery in Moscow, and the irresponsibility of the Republican House of Representatives. They also welcome Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at St. Andrews University and author of How the War Was Won, The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, …
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Counter to type Eric welcomes Eliot back from his travels with a discussion of the positive things going on in the world. They discuss the strong response of the European allies to the Russian aggression against Ukraine, including the German Zeitenwende and the increase in German defense spending, they discuss the Franco-American relationship and t…
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This War is Going to End Exactly How the West Decides it Will
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Eric welcomes former Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) of NATO General Philip Breedlove. General Breedlove is one of the nation's preeminent military strategists having served as commander of US Air Forces in Europe as well as Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Practice at the Sam Nunn School at Georg…
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Eric and Eliot (joining from the Iberian Peninsula) discuss the Iranian strike on US soldiers located at Tower 22 in Jordan and the Administration's options for retaliation. They consider the argument's in Eliot's Atlantic piece suggesting that the US needs an entirely new strategy for Iran, the nature of the regime, and the difficulty American gov…
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David Petraeus & Andrew Roberts on War
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Eric and Eliot are joined by General David Petraeus and historian Andrew Roberts to discuss their New York Times bestselling book Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine (N.Y.: Harper, 2023). They discuss how and why the two authors came together to write the book, the link between the causes of war and the manner in which wars are …
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Eric and Eliot welcome David Stahel, Senior Lecturer at the University South Wales, Canberra and author of a multivolume history of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and other works on World War II on the eastern front. They discuss the historiography of World War II on the eastern front, the new primary sources he has tapped for his historical…
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What happens when the Russians come to your country
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Eric and Eliot welcome Yaroslav Trofimov, Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent of the Wall Street Journal and author of the new book Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine's War of Independence (N.Y.: Penguin Press, 2024) released on January 9, 2024. They discuss Putin's rationale for the war, his long-standing views (shared by ma…
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Eric welcomes Eliot back from his long travels who reports back on his trip with a bipartisan delegation of national security experts to Israel and recounts the ongoing trauma that both the Israeli public and national security elite are experiencing over the attacks on October 7 and the ongoing saga of the hostages. He describes the comprehensive n…
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Eric visits the Miller Center and joins John Owen IV, the Amb. Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and the Miller Center for Public Affairs and Marc Selverstone, the Miller Center's director of presidential studies, co-chair of the Center’s Presidential Recor…
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While President Zelensky is meeting in the White House on Dec. 12, Eric welcomes former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor to Shield of the Republic. They discuss the state of play on the supplemental aid legislation, the causes for the Ukrainian Counter Offensive's "failure" this summer, the search for a new strategy, General Zaluzhny's ide…
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Understanding Hamas with Jonathan Schanzer
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Eric welcomes Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to discuss the war in Gaza. Jonathan Schanzer was a terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department and holds a BA from Emory University, a Masters degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a Doctorate from Kings College London an…
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Eric and Eliot welcome former Secretary of Defense and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates to discuss his article in the current (November-December) issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Dysfunctional Superpower: Can a Divided America Deter China and Russia." They touch on the unprecedented threats (Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, violent Islamist extre…
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Eric and Eliot host Bruno Tertrais, the Deputy DIrector of France's Fondation Pour La Recherche Strategique, one of the country's leading think tanks and author of the recent book La Guerre des Mondes: Le Retour de la geopolitique et le choc des Empires (War of the Worlds: The Return of Geopolitics and the Shock of Empires). They discuss historical…
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Eliot and Eric talk about great teachers including Eric's undergraduate mentor at Cornell, the late Walter LaFeber and Eliot's Harvard mentor Samuel Hungtington. They talk about the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history -- its strengths and weaknesses, the nature and progress of historiography, the qualities that made LaFeber and Huntington such…
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Eric and Eliot talk about what is perhaps the most complex and dangerous moment in national security since the end of World War II. They discuss the explosion of vile anti-semitism globally and particularly on U.S. university campuses and the failures of higher education that this reveals. They discuss the Israeli operations in Gaza, the likely cou…
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The Hollow Crown: Eliot's latest book is out now!
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**NOTE** For a limited time, Shield of the Republic listeners can receive a 20% discount on The Hollow Crown. Use code HLLW23, at checkout at https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/eliot-a-cohen/the-hollow-crown/9781541644861/. Offer valid through November 2nd, 2023. Eric welcomes Eliot back on publication day for Eliot's new book, The Hollow Cro…
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We Need a Renaissance in Deterrence Policy
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Eric welcomes Franklin C. Miller, a Principal at the Scowcroft Group and long time public servant at the Department of State, Defense and the White House with deep expertise on nuclear strategy, escalation dynamics and deterrence. They discuss the loss of intellectual capital in the nuclear strategy arena after the end of the Cold War, the numerous…
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Eliot joins Eric from his walking tour in the Cotswolds to discuss the horrifying Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7. They discuss the intelligence and policy failures that allowed Israeli officials to be taken by surprise, the introspection and self-criticism that Israelis had applied in the past when these kinds of things have taken pl…
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Eric and Eliot welcome Leland Miller, a non-resident senior fellow at the Asia Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on Strategy and Security and co-founder & CEO of China Beige Book International. Lee explains how China Beige Book acquires data on the PRC economy as well as the pitfalls of using official Chinese government…
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If You Have a Book, You'll Never Be Alone
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Eric and Eliot take a break from the depressing flow of international news and talk about books. They discuss their favorite bookstores, favorite historical memoirs, books that influenced them, cherished but unread books, greatest works of history, what they are reading now and what is sitting in their night side table waiting to be read. Shield of…
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Eric and Eliot discuss the growing global disorder starting with the potential for a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh), the degree to which events in the Caucasus and Central Asia are related to Russia's involvement in Ukraine, the Iranian angle in the Caucasus and the recent release of unjustly detained Americans…
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Eliot returns with a debrief from his trip to Taiwan and Japan. He and Eric discuss the coming Presidential election in Taiwan, the disingenuous nature of much of our discourse about the Taiwan issue that results from our "One China" policy, the reason it is wrong to think of China as a "pacing threat," the dangers of a blockade rather than an inva…
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Eliot's road trip continues but Eric welcomes syndicated columnist, Bulwark Policy Editor, and host of the Beg to Differ Podcast Mona Charen. They discuss Mona's 2003 book Useful Idiots describing the left's Cold War and post-Cold War passion for anti-anti Communism and indulging in apologetics for Communist regimes including the Soviet Union, the …
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With Eliot on the road Eric welcomes Bulwark Editor at Large Bill Kristol to the show. They discuss the prospects for a Supplemental Appropriation for Ukraine aid in the Congress, the state of public opinion on the war in Ukraine, the impact of the Republican Presidential debate on support for Ukraine, the effort that Bill and Bulwark publisher Sar…
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