Shield of the Republic

Shield of the Republic

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. We probe beyond the hive mind of Washington conventional wisdom on national security and foreign affairs.

Episodes

October 5, 2025 54 mins
Eric welcomes historian Tim Bouverie, author of Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World, to Shield of the Republic. They discuss Tim’s fascinating account of the interplay among personalities and larger forces during the Second World War. They touch on Anglo-French relations and the role of Charles de Gaulle, Britain’s failed efforts to bring Turkey into the war as an ally, as we...
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On a special edition of Shield of the Republic, Eric and Eliot break down Secretary of Defense Hegseth and President Donald Trump's speeches to the General Officer Corps at Quantico this week. They discuss the administration's ongoing damage to civil-military relations and the implications for the future of our armed forces.

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affair...
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September 28, 2025 46 mins
Eliot and Eric welcome Anne Neuberger, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber Affairs and currently the Payne Lecturer at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Center, to discuss her latest article in Foreign Affairs. They discuss Salt Typhoon, the Chinese hack of U.S. computer systems, and the fact that the Chinese sit astride key nodes of U.S. domestic infrastructure in the cyber realm and could inflict enormous damage on Ame...
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September 21, 2025 58 mins
Eric and Eliot discuss the perilous moment for the American Republic in which we find ourselves after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They discuss the recent developments in the Ukraine war, including the violation of Polish and Romanian airspace by Russian drones and the extreme danger these steps represent to European security. Eliot also reports from Israel on the recent strike against Hamas senior leadership in Qatar, o...
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September 11, 2025 54 mins
Eric and Eliot welcome Yaakov Katz, former Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post and co-author of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East. They discuss Israel's persistent misjudgments of Hamas and lack of preparedness for October 7, highlighting the impact of Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the absence of on-the-ground intelligence that blinded Israel to Hamas’s plans. They...
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September 4, 2025 59 mins
With Eliot traveling, Eric welcomes Stephan Kieninger, author of Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO and Russia After the Cold War. They discuss the role of Strobe Talbott, a close Clinton confidante and Deputy Secretary of State, in crafting Clinton’s strategy for building a “Europe whole and free” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They cover U.S. efforts to stabilize Russia’s move toward a free market and de...
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August 28, 2025 60 mins
Eliot and Eric welcome John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies with the Madison Policy Forum and Co-Director of the Urban Warfare Project and author of numerous articles and studies of urban and subterranean warfare. They discuss the unique characteristics of urban warfare, the traditional U.S. military approach to urban warfare as well as historical examples from the U.S.-Mexican War in the 19th Century to more recent ex...
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August 21, 2025 57 mins
Eliot and Eric are joined by Juan Carlos Pinzón, former Colombian Minister of Defense and two-time Ambassador to the U.S. They discuss the success of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe's counterinsurgency efforts against FARC and narco-trafficking, the subsequent domestic developments in Colombia that have led to significant backsliding on narco-trafficking, as well as the current prosecution of the former President in Co...
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Eric and Eliot discuss Secretary Hegseth's restoration of the '"Reunion" memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, the President's nationalizing of the DC National Guard to engage in law enforcement in the nation's capital, and the diplomatic pratfalls of Steve Witkoff whose misinterpretation of President Putin has resulted in the misbegotten forthcoming summit in Alaska between Trump and Putin. To distract themselves from the ...
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August 7, 2025 61 mins
Eliot and Eric welcome Fred Starr, former President of Oberlin University and current Chairman of the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute (CACI). They discuss the current situation in Russia and highlight the logistic difficulties and enormous human and material losses that Russian forces are facing. They also discuss Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan which are rich in mineral and hydrocarbon resources b...
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July 31, 2025 65 mins
Eric and Eliot address the latest buffoonery emanating from the Pentagon before turning to a discussion about Trump's evolving position on Russia. They also address the horrendous situation in Gaza and try to apportion blame as fairly as possible given the difficulty of parsing statements by both Hamas and the Israeli government. The conversation includes updates on the situations in Syria, Iran, and domestically on Columbia U...
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Eric and Eliot welcome Karen Elliott House, former long-time correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, President of Dow Jones International, Publisher of the Wall Street Journal and author of The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed Bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia (New York: HarperCollins, 2025). They discuss the rise of MBS, the scope of the changes he has wrought in the Kingdom in less than a decade in power, t...
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July 17, 2025 57 mins
Eric and Eliot welcome Rebecca Friedman Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper to Shield of the Republic to discuss their recent article in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, "Absent at the Creation?: American Strategy and the Delusion of a Post-Trump Restoration." They discuss the speed with which Trump has imposed policy changes, the likelihood that old international order will be irreparably broken by the end of this term, the...
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Eric and Eliot cover the latest Pentagon dysfunction, with military aid to Ukraine stalled and mixed signals on Trump’s defense policy. They also look at the Iran strikes, Trump’s shifting posture on Putin, and the growing strain inside the MAGA foreign policy orbit.
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June 24, 2025 39 mins
Eric and Eliot host a special Shield of the Republic episode to discuss the Iranian response to Trump's strike on Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. They assess the largely symbolic Iranian attack on al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as an attempt to take an off ramp from further escalation as they did in the aftermath of the Soleimani strike in 2020. They also touch on why Trump did it, the difficulties of bomb damage assessment, what happ...
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In a special episode of Shield of the Republic, Eric and Eliot discuss the Israeli military operation against Iran. They discuss the intelligence on Iran that purportedly prompted the decision to take military action against the Iranian program, the questions of whether the operation is really about regime change, if the US intervenes and bombs the facility at Fordow will it lead to a quagmire or endless war, the split inside ...
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June 19, 2025 60 mins
Eric and Eliot welcome LTG (ret.) Douglas Lute, former Director of Operations for the Joint Staff, Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO to discuss the upcoming June 24-25 NATO Summit in the Hague. They discuss NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's formulas for reaching the Trump Administration target for NATO Members to...
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Eliot and Eric offer up candidates for jackassery of the week before turning to a discussion of The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, (New York: Crown, 2025) the second volume of journalist/historian Rick Atkinson's monumental military history of the American revolution. They discuss Atkinson's background as a military journalist for the Washington Post who has written books about...
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June 5, 2025 59 mins
Eric and Eliot discuss this week's jackassery (Joni Ernst's dismissive attitude towards Medicaid cuts, Trump's obsessive posting on Truth Social and his disconnection from reality) before moving into a discussion of the Ukrainian drone attack on Russian Long-Range Aviation and the degree to which it represents an inflexion point in military affairs. How much will future wars in different parts of the world look like what we wi...
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Eliot returns from overseas travel and brings back the jackassery of the week segment with him. He and Eric discuss the President's reliance on totally fraudulent evidence while ambushing the President of South Africa with a video alleging genocide against whites in his country, the President's bizarre commencement address at the "Army Acadmey," the disembowling of the national security council staff, and the continued sniping...
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