School of War

Reporting from northern Israel, Aaron sits down with two unidentified Israeli army officers and Druze community leader Tamir Murad to explore the threats facing the country’s northern frontier. From drones changing the battlefield to the plight of Syria’s Druze, their conversations reveal how closely war touches everyday life. As one Israeli army officer puts it, “There’s no distance between the f...

Will Iran cost Republicans the midterms? What happens when half of the GOP turns against Israel? Middle East expert Mike Doran returns to School of War for a wide-ranging discussion of these questions as the midterms threaten to widen divisions on the American right over foreign policy. Taking aim at Tucker Carlson’s influence, Doran argues that the consequences of this divide reach far beyond Isr...

“It feels like an election where the nature of the country, the future of this foundational ethos of solidarity, is at stake,” says Haviv Rettig Gur. The Free Press Middle East analyst and host of Ask Haviv Anything joins Aaron MacLean in Jerusalem to explore the history behind the election’s deepest divisions. From Zionism’s origins as a rescue project to the military service that shapes its lead...

Sweden joined NATO in 2024. What took them so long? Historian Johan Wennström, author of The Stay Behinds: Sweden’s Cold War Guardians, joins Aaron MacLean to uncover how Sweden secretly collaborated with NATO for decades while remaining publicly neutral for fear the Soviet Union would invade Finland if they did. With Russia threatening Europe again, Wennström discusses the history of Sweden’s bal...

Russia is losing ground in eastern Ukraine and suffering mounting casualties. So why is the White House handing Vladimir Putin a lifeline? Retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan, author of the newsletter Futura Doctrina, joins Aaron MacLean to examine the links between the Iran war and Ukraine, and explains why Ukraine’s battlefield successes aren’t translating into political advantage. P...

During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party purged Xi Jinping’s father and subjected him to 16 years of persecution and imprisonment—so how did the current president of China emerge more devoted to the party than ever? “It’s like a comic book villain origin story,” says Aaron MacLean. Today, Joseph Torigian, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Party’...

In the Baltics, war with Russia is no abstraction. Putin could take Lithuania’s capital if he achieved surprise, the nation’s army commander told Aaron MacLean. This week, Aaron travels through Lithuania and Latvia to speak with Brigadier General Nerijus Stankevičius, Lithuanian defense Minister Robertas Kaunas, and Latvian foreign minister Baiba Braže about why Lithuania is amending its constitut...

America is running low on munitions, its shipyards can’t keep pace, and the materials its weapons depend on too often run through China. Michael Cadenazzi is the Pentagon official charged with turning that around, putting billions of dollars behind the factories, materials, and supply chains that make America’s military power possible. He joins School of War to explain how the Pentagon plans to ra...

A young researcher in Siberia has died under mysterious circumstances, raising questions about a potential lab leak. Russia won’t say how it happened. Marshall Billingslea, former Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, says Moscow has scrubbed news reports, had officials walk back talk of an outbreak, and kept the World Health Organization in the dark. He joins School of War to fill in what...

Three years after October 7, the deadliest terror attack in Israeli history looms large over the Jewish state’s upcoming election. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren says whomever takes the helm next is unlikely to “remove a single soldier from Lebanon, from Gaza, from Syria.” Today, Oren joins School of War to discuss Israel’s “80 percent” consensus on national security, why he th...

How do you fight a superpower you can’t afford to stop trading with? The Dutch faced that problem at the start of the 17th century in their war against Spain, and their answer was the Dutch West India Company, a business built to wage war. Alexander Bick, a historian who served on the National Security Council under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, joins School of War to discuss his new book, Minutes o...

“Let’s whisper it,” said historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. “The Trump blockade is working.” It can be hard to parse the state of play in the Middle East amid escalating rhetoric, but history gives us the necessary perspective to call balls and strikes in the present day. Today, the author of The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East joins School of War to discuss the forces that created t...

If America wants to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty, it needs to build more warships. China currently dominates global shipbuilding—producing vessels at a scale the United States can no longer match. Alex Wong, an executive at South Korean shipbuilding giant Hanwha Group and a former Trump administration national security adviser, thinks he has the solution. Today, Wong joins Aaron MacLean to discuss...

Could Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey form a “Muslim NATO?” Pakistan has the nuclear arsenal, Saudi Arabia has the wealth, and Turkey has the NATO-trained military—“you put these three together and it becomes a pretty formidable force,” says CBS News senior foreign correspondent Imtiaz Tyab. Today, he joins School of War to discuss whether the pact could really become an effective alliance, wha...

John Boyd was one of the most influential military thinkers of the 20th century, and the intellectual godfather of the U.S. Marines’ military strategy. Today, as artificial intelligence continues to transform battlefields in Ukraine and the Middle East, author and retired Marine officer Ian Brown argues that Boyd’s ideas are more relevant than ever. Today, Brown joins Aaron MacLean to discuss how...

People think retired Army Major John Spencer lost part of his ear in combat. He didn’t; he lost it in a fight behind a bar that cost him his spot in the Army Rangers. Spencer went on to serve repeatedly in combat and become one of the country’s leading experts on urban warfare. He joins Aaron MacLean to discuss his origin story and other anecdotes from his new book, Twenty Times I Almost Died, as...

Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster was on the phone with the Pentagon when the plane struck the building on September 11, 2001. “I thought, Okay, we are going to war,” he recalls. Twenty-five years after 9/11, McMaster joins Aaron MacLean to discuss the wars that followed. Drawing on his experience as a wartime commander and national security adviser, McMaster explains why he considers Afghanistan a...

A Chinese hypersonic missile targeting either U.S. coast would leave room for “about 10 minutes of warning time.” Zachary Krevor, CEO of Stratolaunch, is building vehicles to help the Pentagon learn to detect, track, and intercept this threat. Today, Krevor joins School of War to explain how China and Russia have outpaced the U.S. in hypersonic weapons testing, why AI-enabled missile “swarms” may...

When it comes to world superpowers, Cambridge historian Brendan Simms argues there are only four that matter—and two of them are fading. Today, Simms joins Aaron MacLean to argue that Britain still belongs among the world’s leading powers; why its place among them is “by no means guaranteed”; and why Hitler is no longer the absolute evil against which people define themselves. 4:08 The Four R’s of...

The story of Air Force General David Goldfein, who miraculously survived after his plane was shot down over Serbia in 1999, has since become military legend. Today, he joins School of War to recount the harrowing rescue mission that saved him, how he stayed alive  behind enemy lines, and the lessons his remarkable career offers about leadership, airpower, and preparing America for the next wa...

More than 75 years after the Korean War, its lessons endure—and divisions over isolationism and American power continue to shape the discourse around modern global conflicts. Dane J. Cash, historian and author of The Forgotten Debate: The Korean War and the Roots of America's Ideological Divisions, joins School of War to explain how the left’s hawk-dove divide during the Korean War foreshadowed th...

The U.S. military needs more drones, and it needs to build them without Chinese parts. Today, Defense Innovation Unit Deputy Director Travis Metz joins School of War to discuss how America can build drones quickly, cheaply, and on U.S. soil; what America can learn from Ukraine’s drone war; and the Pentagon’s new billion-dollar effort to upgrade its aging military technology. 2:23 - Why America Is...

In prerevolutionary Russia, it was not uncommon for children to dream of becoming terrorists when they grew up. “It was a respected profession,” says Northwestern University professor Gary Saul Morson, who now sees troubling parallels between modern-day America and an era in Russia when terrorism became fashionable and radicals came to see violence as an expression of moral virtue. Today, Morson j...

Pennsylvania senator Dave McCormick, a West Point graduate, Desert Storm veteran, and former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, is concerned about America’s wealth gap, which he says is approaching “a version of capitalism I don’t think we want.” Today, McCormick joins School of War for a candid conversation about why the right needs a better answer to socialism, lessons in modern warfare from his rec...

Is the tank obsolete? As drones and precision strikes transform modern battlefields, some have predicted that armored vehicles may soon meet the fate of the cavalry charge. Today on School of War, Colonel Jose A. Reyes and Lieutenant Colonel David “Cam” Smith of the 1st Cavalry Division make the opposite case. Drawing on their experience operating and commanding tanks, they join Aaron MacLean to e...