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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 former 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 Hudson Institute. 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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Eric Cline, Professor of Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies and of Anthropology at The George Washington University and author of ⁠1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed⁠, joins the show to break down the collapse of the Bronze Age civilization and why it matters today.
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Elliott Abrams, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela and Iran from 2019 to 2021, joins the show to discuss events in the Caribbean.
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Nadia Schadlow, former Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy and senior fellow at Hudson Institute, joins the show to breakdown what strategic depth is and why it remains relevant today.
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Roya Hakakian, author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace and A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious, joins the show to discuss the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, and how these events have shaped the world.
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Frank Gavin, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University SAIS and author of ⁠Thinking Historically: A Guide to Statecraft and Strategy⁠, joins the show to discuss the promise and perils of using history to guide today’s statecraft.
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