How to Practice Productive Statecraft
With Eliot still on the road, Eric welcomes Dennis Ross, Counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former Director of Policy Planning under James Baker, Special Middle East Envoy under President Clinton among several other high level national security positions at State, Defense and the White House under Presidents Carter, Reagan, B...
1hr May 22, 2025
1hr
The Man in Kissinger's Shadow
With Eliot traveling abroad, Eric hosts Financial Times Washington commentator Edward Luce, author of Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet (New York, Avid Reader Press, 2025). They discuss Zbig's historical significance, why there have been more biographies of Henry Kissinger than Brzezinski and whether or not he was, in the long pull of history, more consequenti...
59m May 15, 2025
59m
America is Torching Its Credibility
Eliot and Eric welcome Larry Summers, former President of Harvard University and former Secretary of Treasury in the Clinton Administration. They discuss why his prescient advice about the dangers of inflation were ignored by the Biden Administration and whether or not Democrats have learned the lesson that inflation affects all Americans with corrosive political effects. They also touch on the...
58m May 08, 2025
58m
A New Era of Economic Warfare
Eliot and Eric welcome Edward Fishman, Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy and Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University's SIPA program and author of Chokepoints: American Power in The Age of Economic Warfare (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2025). They discuss the American tradition of reaching for economic sanctions as an alternative to...
1hr 1m May 01, 2025
1hr 1m
Is America Underestimating China?
Eric and Eliot welcome former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University's school of Foreign Service and author of The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, to discuss their article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "Underestimating China: Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale...
59m Apr 20, 2025
59m
Trump's New World Order
Eliot and Eric note this week’s jackassery—tariffing McDonald Island and Heard Island off Australia, almost exclusively inhabited by penguins, and Trump’s plan for a four-mile-long military parade to mark his birthday on June 14 and the anniversary of the United States Army. In a more sinister vein they discuss the absolute craziness of the NSC staff purge apparently orchestrated by conspiracy ...
1hr 5m Apr 10, 2025
1hr 5m
Lessons From a Successful American Diplomat
Eric and Eliot discuss VP Vance's trip to Greenland and his appointment by the President to oversee the purging of American history at the Smithsonian and other museums. They also discuss who the biggest loser will be from Signalgate. They consider an excellent diplomatic memoir from the 1960s written by former Ambassador and Under Secretary of State Robert "Bob" Murphy -- Diplomat Among Warrio...
58m Apr 03, 2025
58m
How Autocrats Use History
Eric and Eliot discuss the most recent example of jackassery by the Trump Administration national security team which appears to have conducted a sensitive Principals Committee meeting on bombing the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, an unclassified commercial phone app. To discuss this and much more they also welcome Katie Stallard, the Senior Editor for Global Affairs for the New Statesman magazi...
58m Mar 27, 2025
58m
The Ongoing Vandalism of Our Government
Eric and Eliot try to parse the firehose of insanity and self-harm emanating from the Trump Administration. They discuss the disestablishment of the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, a little known but important institution created during the Cold War. They also discuss the silencing of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti despite the vi...
57m Mar 20, 2025
57m
Russia Is a Habitual Treaty Violator
Eric and Eliot welcome Lt. Col. (ret.) Alexander Vindman, former director for Europe on the National Security Council during the first Trump term and author of The Folly of Realism: How the West Deceived Itself about Russia and Betrayed Ukraine (New York: Public Affairs Press, 2025). They discuss the U.S. government's prioritization of US-Russia relations over Ukraine policy across multiple Adm...
57m Mar 13, 2025
57m
Is American Decline an Illusion?
Eliot and Eric welcome Michael Beckley, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of Unrivalled: Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower, and co-author, with Hal Brands of Danger Zone. They discuss his article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Strange Triumph of a Broken America." Th...
54m Mar 06, 2025
54m
Emergency Podcast: An Oval Office Ambush
Eric and Eliot bemoan the shameful meltdown in the Oval Office between VP Vance, President Trump and President Zelensky. They discuss Vance’s ambush and whether he executed it alone or in concert with Trump and note that those who are blaming Zelensky for rising to the bait are objectively pro-Putin. They discuss Vance’s dark political views and they consider what Europeans can and should do. T...
39m Mar 01, 2025
39m
A Disgraceful Episode of American Diplomacy
Eric and Eliot mark the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine with a shout out to the brave Ukrainians who are resisting Russian tyranny. They discuss the Friday night massacre at the Pentagon, noting the remarkable personal qualities of General C. Q. Brown and his role as Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They touch on the role of the JAGS and the da...
56m Feb 27, 2025
56m
An American Blunder in Munich
Eliot and Eric discuss the Munich Security Conference including its background and history. They review the contradictory signals sent by the many Trump officials who have been in different parts of Europe in the run-up to and aftermath of the Munich conference. They discuss Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's comments, Vice President J.D. Vance's lamentable, off-key speech to the conference, t...
53m Feb 20, 2025
53m
This Time the Damage Will Be Permanent
Eric and Eliot try to parse the fire hose of news emanating from the Trump Administration. They discuss Eliot's Atlantic article on the American antecedents and causes of Trump's ascendancy and whether there is still some point in looking at the European autocrats like Viktor Orban on whom some Trumpists model themselves, as well as Ruy Texeira's article in the Free Press arguing that defending...
1hr 1m Feb 13, 2025
1hr 1m
Russia's Long History of Subjugating Ukraine
With Eliot traveling Eric welcomes Eugene Finkel, the Kenneth H. Keller Professor of International Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) to discuss his recent book Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine (New York:  Basic Books, 2024). They discuss the long-term Russian effort to dominate, subordinate and eliminate...
56m Feb 07, 2025
56m
Charles Lindbergh and the Ghosts of America First
Eric and Eliot welcome Professor H. W. Brands, the Jack S. Blanton Chair in History at the University of Texas, Austin and the best-selling author of more than a dozen books on American History. They discuss his book America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War (New York: Doubleday, 2024) touching on what drew him to the subject of the America First movement, the nature of the na...
58m Jan 30, 2025
58m
The Intersection of Theatre and Politics
Eliot and Eric welcome Drew Lichtenberg (resident dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company) and Deborah Payne (Professor of Literature at American University), authors of Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company. They discuss the long history of Washington’s fascination with and interest in Shakespeare. They talk about the tensions inside the Folger Library with regard to stu...
56m Jan 23, 2025
56m
Biden's Foreign Policy Legacy
Eric and Eliot welcome friend of the show Kori Schake back to Shield of the Republic. Kori is Senior Fellow and Director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press, 2017). They discuss her recent retrospective article in Foreign Policy on the BId...
44m Jan 16, 2025
44m
Trump's New International Reality
Eric and Eliot are back from the break and have lots to discuss. They note the anniversary of January 6th and the somewhat successful efforts by MAGA types to rewrite its history in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Eric talks about the world that Trump will inherit which will be much more disorderly and dangerous that what he inherited in his first term as President, including...
1hr 6m Jan 09, 2025
1hr 6m
Deterrence is Cheaper Than War
With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes back prolific historian and author Hal Brands to the show to discuss his forthcoming book The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2025) which will be published in mid-January. They discuss the ideas and careers of geopolitical thinkers Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Nicholas Spykman wh...
54m Dec 20, 2024
54m
A Catastrophic Blow to Putin
Eric and Eliot discuss the rapidly unfolding events in Syria and examine the causes and consequences of the collapse of Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria. They discuss the big winners (Turkey, Israel, the Syrian people and to a lesser extent the U.S) and the big losers (notably Russia and especially Iran). They discuss the timing of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham offensive, how to interpret the claim...
1hr Dec 12, 2024
1hr
Trump's Nightmare National Security Nominations
Eric and Eliot return from Thanksgiving to discuss the Trump transition and its national security nominations so far. They talk about Kash Patel as FBI Director, the new allegations against Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth, as well as the nepotistic nominations of in laws Charles Kushner, a convicted felon, as Ambassador to France and Massad Boulos as Middle East advisor. They discuss ...
58m Dec 05, 2024
58m
We're Already at War with Russia
Eric and Eliot welcome former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow John J. Sullivan. John was Deputy Secretary of Commerce in Bush 43, Deputy Secretary of State under Secretary Pompeo and served as Ambassador to Moscow for both Presidents Trump and Biden. They discuss his terrific account Midnight in Moscow: A Memoir From the Front Lies of Russia's War Against the West (New York:  Little Brown and Co., 20...
56m Nov 21, 2024
56m
What Comes Next for Our National Security?
Eric welcomes Eliot back from his recent trip to Israel. They discuss the election results, whether or not it represents a mandate for Trump, why the Dems lost, and what the initial signals from the Trump transition augur for national security. Will the normie Republicans control the cabinet positions with MAGA true believers taking the second and third tier positions? They touch on the role of...
1hr 1m Nov 14, 2024
1hr 1m
Trump's Stunning Ignorance
With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un as well as his abysmal level of basic knowledge of how the U...
32m Nov 07, 2024
32m
Trump's Stunning Ignorance (with John Bolton)
Note: This was recorded prior to the results of the 2024 presidential election. With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes John Bolton, former Ambassador to the United Nations, National Security Advisor to Donald Trump and author of Surrender is Not an Option and The Room Where it Happened. They discuss why Trump is so susceptible to the blandishments of foreign dictators like Xi Jinping, Vladimir Pu...
32m Nov 07, 2024
32m
Georgia On My Mind
Eric and Eliot try to explain (for a foreign audience and American expats) how it is possible that the election is so close. They discuss the role of inflation, the border, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan as well as craziness on campus, and elite disdain for non-college educated Americans in fly-over country. They touch on Eric's article in the Bulwark that dissects efforts by former...
56m Oct 31, 2024
56m
How Do You Adapt Under Fire?
Eric and Eliot welcome Australian MG (ret.) Mick Ryan to the show to discuss his new book, The War For Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation under Fire (Naval Institute Press, 2024). They examine the initial strategies pursued by Russia and Ukraine as well as the assumptions that underpinned those strategies as well as considering how the two sides have adapted to changing conditions on the battlefi...
56m Oct 24, 2024
56m
October 7th: One Year Later
Eric and Eliot note the sad commemoration of the Hamas attack on Israel and the consequences that came in its wake. They touch on the shocking nature of the sexual violence, the denial of the attack and the reality of the horrific violence as well as the explosion of anti-semitism internaionally and, in particular, on US college campuses, they discuss the Israeli successes in attacking the Hezb...
59m Oct 10, 2024
59m
An Unlikely Network of Dictatorships
Eric and Eliot welcome back Anne Applebaum, Pultizer and Duff Cooper Prize Winning author of Gulag and Red Famine and currently staff writer with The Atlantic and senior fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. They discuss Anne's new book Autocracy Inc: The Dictators who Want to Run the World. They examine the threat that autocratic re...
59m Oct 03, 2024
59m
How WWII's Warlords Approached Strategy
Eric and Eliot welcome back Phillips Payson O'Brien to Shield of the Republic. Phil is the author of The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler - How War Made Them and How They Made War (New York, Dutton, 2024) as well as the co-author with Eliot of The Russia-Ukraine War and a Study in Analytic Failure, a new report from CSIS. They discuss Phil's earlier work on World ...
59m Sep 26, 2024
59m
How John Adams Established Enduring American Customs
Eric and Eliot provide their thumbnail review of the Trump-Harris debate and then welcome their special guest Lindsay Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon and the author the new book Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged a Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024). They discuss the role of the Januar...
58m Sep 19, 2024
58m
Why We Should Be Worried About Iranian Nukes
Eric and Eliot pay homage to Daily Telegraph journalist and podcaster David Knowles who was the driving force behind the podcast, Ukraine: The Latest, on which Eliot has appeared several times. They also discuss the intensifying cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea including the just announced intensified schedule of joint Sino-Russian military exercises and Iran's transfer of...
1hr 1m Sep 12, 2024
1hr 1m
What Would Kamala's Foreign Policy Look Like?
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 Atlantic piece on What Kamala Harris might face with r...
58m Sep 05, 2024
58m
The Men Who Made a Century
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). His book is a study of the interaction betwe...
57m Aug 29, 2024
57m
The Lessons of '68
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 Presidential Election of 1968 (New Haven, CT: ...
1hr 8m Aug 22, 2024
1hr 8m
How to Kill a Democracy
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). They discuss why Tim wrote this book and why it ...
55m Aug 15, 2024
55m
Hostages, Assassinations, and the Future of National Defense
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 more "hostages" in the future. They also discuss ...
1hr Aug 08, 2024
1hr
Paul Nitze: National Security's Forgotten Man
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 Tom sabotage incident during World War I. They ta...
55m Aug 01, 2024
55m
Is Trump 2.0 a Guaranteed Foreign Policy Disaster?
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 between domestic and foreign policy. They discuss...
55m Jul 25, 2024
55m
The Long Shadow of the Evil Empire
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 gaining access to documentary sources in both count...
1hr Jul 11, 2024
1hr
What's at Stake in the Global 2024 Elections
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 Marine Le Pen's renovated version of the old an...
49m Jun 27, 2024
49m
Was Machiavelli the Father of Modern Grand Strategy?
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 Machiavelli as Political Philosopher, The Art ...
54m Jun 20, 2024
54m
The Fallout From a Lost Decade
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 Blackwell's new book Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to...
58m Jun 13, 2024
58m
David Sanger on the New Cold Wars
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 threat of great power competition, whether hawks...
1hr 6m Jun 06, 2024
1hr 6m
Shield of the Republic Crosses the Century Mark
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 communicating a coherent strategic message in ou...
1hr May 30, 2024
1hr
Israel's Current & Future Conundrum
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 Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Gl...
58m May 23, 2024
58m
Would China Risk it All?
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 theory of international relations which seeks ...
1hr 3m May 16, 2024
1hr 3m
A Resurgence of Antiliberalism
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 radicalism of the American Revolution. How the Ame...
1hr May 09, 2024
1hr