Ep 114: Eric Edelman on the Foundations of Nuclear Strategy (New Makers of Modern Strategy #11)

School of War

Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey and Finland, joins the show to talk about how nuclear strategic thinking began and how those debates resonate today.

Eric Edelman, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and Ambassador to Turkey and Finland, joins the show to talk about how nuclear strategic thinking began and how those debates resonate today.▪️ Times     •      01:47 Introduction     •      02:45 Oppenheimer’s Borden in reality    •      07:00 Brodie and The Absolute Power    •      11:12 Deterrence before Hiroshima     •      13:15 Blackett and Fear, War, and the Bomb      •      19:40 Counter-value vs counter-force     •      37:33 Russian nuclear strategy      •      42:44 Extended deterrence       •      52:37 Pain tolerance  <a href="https://bit.ly/41EloxN">Follow along </a> on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our <a href="http://schoolofwar.substack.com/">School of War Substack</a>

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.&nbsp;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.&nbsp;&nbsp; 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. <a href="https://schoolofwar.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Visit our Substack for episode transcripts</a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/school.of.war/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Follow along on Instagram</a>