Horns Of A Dilemma

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with Simon Miles, assistant professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, to discuss his book, Engaging the Evil Empire: Washington, Moscow, and the Beginning of the End of the Cold War. In his book, Miles asserts that the beginning of the thawing of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, usually attributed to the relationship between President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, actually had its roots in the period of 1980 to 1985 under previous Soviet leaders, such as Yuri Andropov and Leonid Brezhnev. Miles talks about the effort on the part of both the Soviet Union and the United States to find opportunities for meaningful diplomatic interaction that laid the groundwork for thawing, even at a time when the Cold War was at its height.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H.R. McMaster, author of the new book Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, discusses his theories of strategic empathy and the security processes that he implemented in the Trump administration, and examines the threats posed by Russia, China, and a myriad of other actors around the world.   This wide-ranging discussion is moderated by Jim Golby, senior fellow at the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

This episode of Horns of a Dilemma is a powerhouse of intelligence knowledge. Adm. (Ret.) William McRaven, former chancellor of the University of Texas at Austin and retired U.S. Navy four-star admiral, sits down with John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to discuss Brennan’s new book, Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, At Home and Abroad. This is a wide-ranging discussion that covers the history of the CIA, the decision-making styles of the presidents Brennan worked for, the events of 9/11, and some of the more controversial projects with which the CIA was involved.   McRaven and Brennan were introduced by Stephen Slick, director of the Intelligence Studies Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Bobby Chesney, director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sit down with Peter Baker and Susan Glasser to discuss their new book, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Time of James A. Baker III. James Baker was the secretary of state for George H.W. Bush at the end of the Cold War and the man who helped orchestrate the remarkably broad coalition that prosecuted the first Gulf War. While those are substantial diplomatic achievements, Glasser and Baker point out that James Baker’s accomplishments were much broader than that and included substantial involvement with political campaigns including running the re-election campaign of Gerald Ford and others.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Michael Kimmage, professor and department chair at the Department of History at Catholic University in Washington D.C., discusses his book, The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy. Kimmage asserts that the idea of the “West” — a set of shared values that he argues revolve around liberty and self-determination — can be traced both to Wilsonian idealism, as well as to profound developments at the end of World War II. He traces the influence that this concept that there is a group of like-minded transatlantic nations had on Cold War foreign policy. Kimmage’s discussion is wide ranging, encompassing issues as diverse as the influence of race and questions about “America first.”   Kimmage was introduced in this episode by Jeremi Suri of the LBJ School and professor at the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Clint Work of the Stimson Center hosts a discussion between Gen. Vincent Brooks, senior fellow at the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and Sheena Greitens, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, about the Korean Peninsula. This group of experts assesses the security situation on the peninsula and how it affects U.S. security.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen to a talk by David French, author of Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How we Restore our Nation. French details the way in which the United States has become increasingly polarized politically, geographically, and culturally, and examines what he considers to be the threat of secession. French makes the case that in order to unite the country, Americans need to find causes and ways of interacting that focus on bringing people together and finding common ground. This discussion was part of the University of Texas’ celebration of Free Speech Week.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Dr. Michele Malvesti, professor at the LBJ School and the Strauss Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Julie Schafer, chief technology officer for Flu Lab, discuss how the response to the COVID-19 pandemic is coming along. They talk about issues related to the development of vaccines and to what extent the response to the pandemic has conformed with planning assumptions. The episode explores what we can learn to help our response to future pandemics and other biological threats.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with Jim Golby, senior fellow at the Clements Center, to discuss the similarities and differences in foreign policy between a second Trump administration or a Biden administration. Their conversation covers a variety of foreign policy topics as well as discovering differences in process, personality, and procedure between the two potential administrations.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Jim Golby, a senior fellow at the Clements Center at the University of Texas of Austin, sits down with Brandon Archuleta to talk about his new book, Twenty Years of Service: The Politics of Military Pension Policy and the Long Road to Reform. Archuleta’s book unpacks the forces that are behind the long persistence of a retirement system that was, as he puts it, “cliff vested,” where soldiers who remained for less than 20 years would receive nothing and those who remained for over 20 years would receive a generous pension. He also looks at the forces that enabled reform in the pension system in 2018.   Archuleta is an active duty Army officer and the views and opinions he expresses are his own and not those of the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or any other aspect of the military.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with Evelyn Farkas, president of Farkas Global Strategies and former deputy assistant secretary of defense, to discuss global politics in the era of Trump.   Dr. Farkas provides a survey of global politics and the retrenchment of freedom since 2005. She then places this in the context of the Trump administration, concerns among some U.S. allies and partners overseas about Washington’s commitment to democracy around the world, and whether we are seeing a reduction of democratic principles within America that mirrors some of the developments we have seen in other countries.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Aaron O’Connell, associate professor of history at the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and Michel Paradis, a law professor at Columbia Law School and Georgetown Law School, discuss Paradis’ book, Last Mission to Tokyo, examine the aftermath of the Doolittle Raid. In April 1942, Col. Jimmy Doolittle lead a group of Army aviators launching B-25 bombers from Navy aircraft carriers to bomb Tokyo on a one-way mission. All but eight of the raiders escaped captivity. However, those eight were tried for war crimes by the Japanese and sentenced to death. Three were executed and five had their sentences commuted. Pardis’ book takes a look at the trial of the Japanese lawyers after the war who arranged the military commission and trial of the Doolittle Raiders.  

If you think of the 1990s, you may think of the “The Simpsons,” Nirvana, or “Seinfeld.” But if you’re a security or policy wonk, one of things you’re going to remember about the decade is a military response option that seemed to be one of the first things officials considered for almost any dilemma — the no fly zone. What are no fly zones? What are the politics and prospects of no-fly zones?   In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Stephen Wrage, professor at the Naval Academy, and Lt. Col. (ret.) Scott Cooper, to discuss their book, No Fly Zones and Internal Security: Politics and Strategy.

In this episode of Horns of Dilemma, Will Inboden, editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review, and Ashlyn Hand, a Ph.D. candidate at the LBJ School at the University of Texas at Austin, speak with Lauren Turek, a professor at Trinity College, about her new book, To Bring the Good News to All Nations: Evangelical Influence on Human Right on US Foreign Relations.   American foreign policy has often had a strong religious component, whether that be in the form of manifest destiny, or in the idea of American exceptionalism. But as Turek documents, in the late 20th century, the specific notion of human rights intersected with evangelical missionaries and their perceptions of the risks associated with communism and other important foreign policy questions, and were able to organize and influence U.S. foreign policy in a new and important way.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, William Inboden, editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review, is joined by Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, and Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the 9/11 Commission and counselor to numerous administrations, to discuss Zoellick’s new book, America in the World: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy. They also discuss how Zoellick transformed himself from an economist, an expert in finance, a lawyer, and a diplomat, into a historian who wrote an overarching history of a vast period of American power.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Sheena Greitens, associate professor at the LBJ School at the University of Texas, moderates a discussion between Tanvi Madan, senior fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution, and Jim Steinberg, professor of social science, international affairs, and law at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. Their conversation revolves around the fraught, contentious, and important relationship between the world’s largest democracy, India, the world’s most powerful democracy, the United States, and the world’s fastest rising economy, China.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with professor Bartholomew Sparrow, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin and author of, The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security, to talk about the late Brent Scowcroft.   Scowcroft was a towering figure in American foreign policy for over 50 years. After a distinguished Air Force career, he served as deputy national security advisor in the Nixon administration and as national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. He is considered by many to have been the best national security advisor in U.S. history. Scowcroft remained engaged in foreign policy issues after his government service. In 2002, he penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that argued the United States should not invade Iraq, becoming the most prominent and influential Republican national security professional to oppose the war. Scowcroft was known for

We live in an era of almost unprecedented partisan division and polarization where any issue of policy can become one that is deeply divided along party lines, and many of those issues of policy involve the military. We’ve seen this in examples of troops being deployed to the southwest border of the United States and through the use of federal troops in response to the racial justice protests. How does the military avoid becoming partisan in these divisive times?   Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, explores this question with Jim Golby, senior fellow at the Clement Center at the University of Texas at Austin.  

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, explores how social media has played an increasingly prominent role in the public discourse. Listeners to the War on the Rocks podcast may recall an episode featuring Camille Francois of Graphika, and Jessica Brandt, head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, dealing with the question of disinformation. These topics have also been covered in more popular press with books such as Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media, by P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, and War in 140 Characters, by David Patrikarakos. But very few of these explorations have gone into how social media effects international relations. Professor Sarah Kreps, the John L. Wetherill professor in the Department of Government and adjunct professor of law at Cornell University, unpacks that very idea in this episode. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of the Texas National Security Review, sits down with Mark Lawrence, director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, to discuss the inner workings of the presidential library system and the purposes they serve. Who runs them and who funds them? What mission do they serve? Does every President get one? Lawrence and Hodges also examine the complicated history and contradictory characteristics of President Johnson himself.