Press | Podcast

Clements Executive Director Will Inboden joined The World and Everything in it to discuss the nature of the US and China’s relationship in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “I think the current crisis is accelerating what was already a deteriorating relationship between the United States and China, and likewise accelerating what was already growing global…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Clements Center Associate Director Paul Edgar sits down with retired Marine Gen. Robert Neller, the former 37th commandant of the Marine Corp., and retired Army Gen. Vincent Brooks, former commander of U.S. Forces Korea. Edgar, Brooks, and Neller discuss how the military is supporting civic authorities as…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen to a discussion moderated by Steve Slick of the Intelligence Studies Project about the role of intelligence in the COVID-19 pandemic. Slick is joined by Bobby Chesney, director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, Paul Pope, senior fellow at the Intelligence Studies…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Will Inboden, director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute to talk about nuclear weapons. Their conversation is wide-ranging, covering the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, American policies regarding testing, and arms control…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, William Inboden, director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin, sits down with Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for New American Security. In this wide-ranging discussion that spans the globe, Inboden and Fontaine look at issues of great power competition, making a…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen in on a talk given by Brig. Gen. (ret.) Kimberly Field, professor of the practice and executive director of the Albritton Center for Grand Strategy at Texas A&M. Gen. Field discusses the notion of grand strategy in the context of alliance relationships. Specifically, she draws…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen in on a conversation moderated by Dr. Michele Malvesti, vice president at the Financial Integrity Network and visiting professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, and Dr. Julie Schafer, the chief technology officer for Flu Lab. Dr. Malvesti and Dr. Schafer discuss…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen in on a book talk given by James Mann, author of The Great Rift: Dickey Cheney, Colin Powell, and the Broken Friendship that Defined an Era. Mann, a journalist and prolific author who has previously written about foreign policy in the Reagan, Bush, and Obama administrations, is…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen in on a talk given by Ambassador Dennis Ross, former special envoy to the middle east peace process. Ambassador Ross discusses his new book, “Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny,” in which he describes four Israeli leaders…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Alan McPherson, the Thomas J. Freany Jr. Professor of History and director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy of Temple University, comes to the University of Texas to talk about his book, Ghosts of Sheridan Circle. McPherson discusses the September 1976 car bomb assassination…

John Gans, director of communications and research at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, gives a talk at the University of Texas at Austin to discusses his book, White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War. In this talk, Gans focuses on the career and the accomplishments of a single NSC staffer, who ultimately perished during his duties in Bosnia. He uses the story of Nelson Drew as a way to illustrate both the power and the process that exists within the NSC. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Amanda Sloat, a Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, talks about Brexit. Sloat details the path of how Britain got to this point, as well as the number of efforts on the part of Theresa May…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Aaron O’Connell, associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, and Paul Edgar, associate director of the Clements Center for National Security, moderate a conversation with retired Gen. Robert Neller, the 37th Commandant of the United States Marine Corps. During the discussion, Neller focuses on…

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, comes to the University of Texas to discuss his book, How Churchill Waged War: The Most Challenging Decision of the Second World War. Packwood explores issues that are lesser known than…

Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center, sits down with a panel of experts to discuss the origins and possible outcomes of the Brexit referendum. Will is joined by Michael Mosser, assistant professor of international relations and global studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Lorinc Redei, lecturer and graduate adviser for the Global Policy Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin, and Amanda Sloat, a Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Charlie Laderman, lecturer in international history at the War Studies Department at King’s College, discusses his book Sharing the Burden: The Armenian Question, Humanitarian Intervention, and Anglo-American Visions of Global Order. Laderman talks about the mass killing and death of Armenians during the period that preceded and shortly followed the independence of the Turkish Republic. The subject of this episode focuses on the question of how this incident signaled the rise of a global order based simultaneously on liberalism, sovereignty, and a commitment to human rights. 

In this episode of Horns of Dilemma, “The Spy Who Hacked Me,” Calder Walton, assistant director of the Applied History Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, talks about election meddling in the past, present, and future. He describes the history of KGB interference in U.S. elections and how the U.S. has countered it. Walton discusses how the KGB found that they just couldn’t just construct a lie out of whole cloth. Instead, they had to build on pre-existing divides that existed in America. KGB propaganda focused on issues of race, religion, and, strangely, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Darren Dochuk, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, discusses his new book, Anointedwith Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America. Dochuk explores how oil grafted itself to the soul of the United States and became part of its identity. He uses the term “wildcat Christianity“ to describe the actions of oil prospectors who used the profits from their ventures to support Christian missionary endeavors around the world and traces how the religious identity and cultural identity of the United States are intertwined with this natural resource.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Will Inboden sits down with Professor Paul Pope and Dr. Kiril Avramov of the Intelligence Studies Project and Dr. Calder Walton, assistant director of the Applied History Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, to discuss the history of influence operations and active measures by the Soviet…

Sovereignty as a concept conveys that a single entity has the legitimate authority to exercise governance over a particular territory. So, how can an exclusive individual right be shared? John Ciorciari, associate professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and director of the Weiser Diplomacy Center and the International Policy Center, explores these questions at a talk he recently gave at the University of Texas. Specifically, he asks what sovereignty sharing is and why it matters, and what the conditions are under which it could work. Ciorciari uses examples from Cambodia, Liberia, and Guatemala to illustrate what sovereignty sharing looks like in practice, and why it matters. This talk took place at the University of Texas at Austin and was sponsored by the Clements Center.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, TNSR‘s executive editor, Doyle Hodges, sits down with Laurie Blank, clinical professor of law and director of the International Law Clinic at Emory University, and Bobby Chesney, Clements Center faculty fellow and Strauss Center director. They discuss the field of national security law broadly, including why Americans have turned increasingly to law to address questions related to national security, even as public confidence in institutions associated with law has declined. They also dive into how law confers legitimacy on the process of national security decision-making and what the limitations of law are in addressing national security questions. Join us for a fascinating discussion on law, security, technology, and society.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, John Gans, director of communications and research at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, sits down with several members of the University of Texas faculty to discuss his new book, White House Warriors: How the National Security Council Transformed the American Way of War.

Retired General Amos Yadlin sits down with Steve Slick, director of the Intelligence Studies Project, to discuss Middle East security and Israeli security concerns. Slick and General Yadlin also engage in a conversation about the role of Israel in the middle east, the future of Israel, and questions regarding security in the region. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, retired Gen. Vincent Brooks sits down with William Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center. The conversation spans Gen. Brooks’ career from his days as a cadet at West Point, where he was the first African American appointed to serve as first captain, all the way through his retirement after thirty-eight and a half years as a four star general commanding all U.S., U.N., and combined U.S. and Korean forces on the Korean peninsula. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, William Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center for National Security, and Robert Chesney, director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, sit down with Texas congressman Mac Thornberry for a wide-ranging discussion on defense policy. Congressman Thornberry is a ranking member of the House Armed…

Dr. O’Connell offers an insightful comparison of the Vietnam War and U.S. efforts in Afghanistan on NPR’s Morning Edition. 

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Jim Goldgeier, professor and former dean of the American University School of International Service, and Derek Chollet, current executive vice president of the German Marshall Fund, discuss their 2008 book, America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 and the arc of post-cold war American foreign policy. In this podcast, they’ve included another 11/9, referring not to the end of the Cold War, but to Nov. 9, 2016, the day after the election of Donald Trump. This talk was recorded during the Clements Center’s Summer Seminar on History, Statecraft, and Diplomacy.

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, chair of the Texas National Security Review Editorial Board Frank Gavin interviews political scientist Robert Jervis. In a wide-ranging interview that reaches all the way back to Jervis’ undergraduate days at Oberlin College in the late 1950’s, Gavin explores the factors which shaped Jervis’ career, the state of the political science field today, especially as it relates to security studies, and how political scientists deal with challenges ranging from the expansiveness of their theoretical claims to balancing political considerations in policy-relevant work.  This interview was recorded during the University of Texas Clements Center’s Summer Seminar on History, Statecraft, and Diplomacy.

This episode of Horns of a Dilemma expands on a recent roundtable in the Texas National Security Review that examines the question of adopting a nuclear no-first-use policy. Dr. John Harvey, a scientist and former senior Defense Department official, and Jon Wolfsthal, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, debate whether such a policy adds or detracts from stability in the event of a crisis, and how it affects the calculus of deterrence.

James B. Steinberg, professor at the Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, former deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and deputy national security adviser under President Bill Clinton, discusses the process and considerations that led to the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Based on his…

Recorded at the 2019 Clements Center Summer Seminar, Alexandra Evans, Jim Goldgeier, Tanvi Madan, Doyle Hodges, and Ryan Evans field questions on international security from the junior scholars in attendance that they considered oft-ignored or ill-explored.

In the latest episode of this new podcast series from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr. Green and Dr. Inboden unpack popular misconceptions about the application of history to grand strategy and discuss the critical place of values in American foreign policy. They also preview Dr. Inboden’s forthcoming book on the Reagan administration.