The New Fractured World (with Hal Brands) | Shield of the Republic Podcast

Eric welcomes friend of Shield of the Republic Hal Brands back to the show. Hal is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the editor of a new book, War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy and the Return of A Fractured World (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), a weekly columnist at Bloomberg.com and also has a recent article on the Foreign Affairs website. They discuss the origins of the new book and 6 overarching themes that emerged from the essays by the distinguished contributors to the volume. They also discuss why America's unique system of alliances may obscure for Americans the potential for disruption that tightening relations among authoritarian regimes presents to the global order and the rise and future of isolationism in the Republican party.
- muse.jhu.edu/book/122782/pdf
- muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_edited_...
- www.foreignaffairs.com/united...
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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[@andreaperry938]

I just listened to Ken. Burns and Rachel Maddow discuss authoritarians for the second time. There's some great advice on keeping a democracy.

[@hctobe]

Thanks for providing this analysis, extremely informative content, keep it coming please!👏🏼👏🏼😊

[@caseyleedom6771]

Thanks you. This is an amazing interview. I will read the new book.

[@johnmooney9495]

Great interview with some real insight.

[@joycesnodgrass7068]

Thank you!

[@thomassparrevohn8577]

Great episode

[@famfamfam5782]

Excellent discussion

[@CaliforniaBushman]

The forcast for tomorrow is Stormy.

[@georgefrench6876]

Such 47:52 a great conversation! Thank you gents!

[@GnosisMan50]

*_“Authoritarian government's natural drive, and first priority, is toward the growth its own systems and domain. Representative government, based on public opinion, cannot solve this problem, so long as populations are maintained at debilitating levels of ignorance and dependency, levels that preclude effective resistance to excessive and ineffective government. For a democracy to work in the long run, the electorate will have to be predominantly oriented to reality, recognizing and accepting the true nature of existence, humanity and the real nature of problems. Without this fundamental knowledge and rationality, the people will exhibit gross ignorance and dependency, presenting a chaos of opinion and providing no impetus for shaping and maintaining effective systems that would nurture knowledge and rationality within a society”_* The Origin of Social Dysfunction: The Pathology of Cultural Delusion By Everett E Allie

[@ellilock1]

Americans really don’t get the Middle East. Full disclosure. I am a Lutheran pastor’s kid. My dad worked extensively on ecumenical affairs - church speak for diplomacy. Lutherans are often the moderators in these discussions. A bishop he worked with flew into Bethlehem some 20 years ago and his cab driver said he was Palestinian. The bishop asked him if he were Jewish or Muslim. The cabbie said “My family is Christian.” The bishop said, “How long have you been Christian?” The cabbie said, “probably close to Pentecost.” The bishop felt awful that he created a false dichotomy in his perception of Palestinians are either Jewish or Muslim.

[@glennmorgan4197]

Vladimir Putin has forgotten the true history of Russia. They were started by a portion of the royal family that was too far down the line of succession to ever rule, so they left Ukraine and started a new country. 😮

[@merriferrell2818]

If Timothy Snyder is not in the books, it's lacking

[@tb8865]

Let's just ignore the failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and, soon, Ukraine, and keep going forward with the same policy of war, war, and more war. Because the track record for American military involvement is such a good one! Maybe the reason we've been failing is because we haven't been doing war hard enough?

[@merriferrell2818]

Ukraine is unlike the Middle East or Central Asia

[@vrencan9735]

You forgot why we had ww1 and 2. Peace isn't guaranteed and sometimes you have to fight.

[@Trying911]

49:11 it’s not JUST a lasting shift in the GOP. The entire nation is sprinting in a dovish direction following the Iraq War.

[@Trying911]

18:10 Obama’s reaction in 2014 is looking pretty smart now

[@vrencan9735]

Or his lack of response created the situation Ukraine is in now.

[@Trying911]

@@vrencan9735 what’s happening now coulda been happening in 2014. There was no appetite to fight Russia even then, which is one of the reasons why Trump became President.

[@tommarney1561]

In 2014, the US was weary of and disgusted with war-- especially elective war-- and Ukraine wasn't as admirable as it was after the revolution. It's obvious in hindsight that Obama's approach was a mistake, but it made more sense at the time.

[@Trying911]

@@tommarney1561 i don’t think it’s a mistake, let alone an obvious one. There was an armistice worked out between Russia and Ukraine back in 2022, and we (thru Boris Johnson) blew it up b/c we wanted to bleed Russia and potentially overthrow Putin. It was a decision that was incredibly callous with Ukrainian lives, let alone Russia lives

[@CaliforniaBushman]

I think you'll see two more Republican Reps quit very shortly over Johnson's refusal to bring a vote to fund Ukraine because of his pathetic fealty to Trump.

[@CaliforniaBushman]

Lessons on Deterrence? Biden while eating an ice cream cone on Russia using Nukes in Ukraine: "Don't. Don't".

[@IExpectedBSJustNotThisMuchBS]

What an Exceptionalism kind of discussion... little consideration for other countries (typical of us Americans)... for pity's sake, the screw driver analogy re the US and Ukraine leaves out all of the European countries providing aid. Lots of countries have interest in TRYING TO MANAGE the conflict. I disagreed with Obama and have little patience for people who play down the importance of this conflict with stupid analogies that add nothing.

[@tommarney1561]

Re current Republican isolationism, I suspect that a great deal of it is the product of Trump's appeal as a demagogue causing his deeply flawed predilections to contaminate the thinking of people who know better.

[@delta5297]

Trump's not an isolationist. The reason he hates our international alliances is because he hates liberal democracy and the idea of universal human rights. I suspect he'll have no qualms about allying with Russia or Saudi Arabia.

[@freedknitwit]

No sound😮

[@gcro9206texanforever]

You might try exiting and restarting. Sound working for me