Ep 160: Thomas Barfield on Empire and Imperial Strategies Today

School of War

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.  

Thomas Barfield, Professor and Chairman of the Anthropology Department at Boston University and author of <a href="https://a.co/d/e4DjM8d">Shadow Empires: An Alternative Imperial History</a>, joins the show to discuss empire.  ▪️Times     •      01:15 Introduction     •      03:20 Understanding Afghanistan     •      05:15 Classifying empires     •     09:59 Failures and features      •      12:24 Borders    •      15:30 Exogenous empires    •      21:36 Brits and Athenians      •      26:40 Vulture empires     •      32:21 Taking responsibility     •      37:15 Empires of nostalgia    •      44:50 Vacuum empires      •      51:05 American/Athenian policy     •      54:53 China and empire today <a href="https://bit.ly/41EloxN">Follow along</a> on Instagram or YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@SchoolofWarPodcast">@SchoolofWarPodcast</a> Find a transcript of today’s episode on our <a href="http://schoolofwar.substack.com/">School of War Substack</a>

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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>