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School of War
Learn what war teaches

This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras.The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.  


Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has worked as a foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and spent seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps.


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Michael Leggiere, Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida and editor of War Studies Journal 1, joins the show to discuss the sad state of military history in higher education.
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Mackenzie Eaglen, senior fellow at AEI and author of Keeping Up with the Pacing Threat: Unveiling the True Size of Beijing’s Military Spending, joins the show to discuss the dire situation the U.S. defense budget is in.
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Thomas Barfield, Professor and Chairman of the Anthropology Department at Boston University and author of Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History, joins the show to discuss empire.
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Rebeccah Heinrichs, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of Duty to Deter: American Nuclear Deterrence and the Just War Doctrine, joins the show to make the moral argument for why the United States should modernize and grow its nuclear arsenal.
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Randall Schriver, Chairman of the Board at The Project 2049 Institute, and Dan Blumenthal, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, join the show to discuss a road map for economic competition—and warfare—between the U.S. and China.
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