Angry Planet

Iran is at war beyond its borders in Syria, Afghanistan, and other places, too. It’s a bit weird to hear it, but our guest, Amir Handjani, explains that one reason they’re fighting is a very similar principle to what drives the United States: Fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here. But that’s not easy with an economy in shambles and protests cropping up where you’d least expect...

NATO’s second largest army has invaded Syria. Turkey is conducting military operations in Afrin—a Kurdish city on Syria’s north western border. Russia and the U.S. wait on the edges as the world’s most complicated war zone gets even more so. This week on War College, Afrin native Can Êzîdxelo and freelance photographer Joey L. walk us through the conflict, what it means for the Kurds, and what it...

Yemen. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Syria. These are the countries that cross most of our minds when we think of the Middle East, but there’s an important actor in the region that we almost never hear about--Oman. Next door to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and across the gulf from Iran, Oman sits in the middle of instability and war. Yet it’s politically and economically stable, friendly to the West, and fends of...

Xi Jinping’s China tends to look at itself as a historical victim, an underdog fighting to roll back indignities of the past and prove its strength. Author and journalist Paul French has been chronicling China’s rise since the 1980s, but has also focused on understanding the development of the country since the Opium Wars of the 19th century. In this episode, French offers his view of how China’s...

Without America’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency there would be no internet, no GPS, no M16, and no Agent Orange. The mysterious group of scientists and soldiers created much of today’s military and civilian technology, but the average citizen doesn’t know much about them. That’s by design. This week on War College, Sharon Weinberger— the executive editor Foreign Policy —reveals the hidd...

The Pentagon always wants more money and it usually gets its way. Between sequestration and the War on Terror, America’s military often feels like it’s stretched thin. The Navy says it needs more sailors to prevent disaster, U.S. nukes need upkeep to stay safe, and the Special Operations Forces need more and more support to do their job. Yet the American military outspends every other major milita...

It’s been a while since the Air Force built a new bomber. In fact, it’s still flying an aircraft that’s 60 years old, the B-52. The more recent B-1 and B-2 bombers were beset by problems during their development and construction, and are now long in the tooth themselves. So, here comes the B-21, still in its development stage. In this episode, we talk with retired Air Force General David A. Deptul...

It's a blast from the past this week and Jason and Matthew get ready for 2018. Here's what we said back then: From Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica, few battlefields are as fought over in pop-culture as space. Which makes sense. Since the end of World War Two, people have looked to the stars as the next great frontier of both exploration and warfare. For the United States, the Space Race was abou...

ICYMI: This holiday week we're re-running the first episode of the new era! We'll be back after the new year. The Weimar Republic was doomed from the start. World War I left Germany in a precarious position. The Treaty of Versailles ended outright aggression but it also left the German economy crippled and saddled its people with a government they never quite believed in. Worse, it stipulated that...

Marty Skovlund Jr. first went to Afghanistan as an Army Ranger. This year he returned as a journalist. His reports offer a sharp contrast to the main narrative about a place that’s been at war for decades. He sees some hope in the form of Special Operations forces, along with well-trained commandos and police units. But are these really signs of peace to come? Check out Skovlund’s excellent report...

War. War has changed. Anyone can keep up to date with the latest conflict on Twitter. Facebook is a great place to watch the propaganda game of entire countries unfold. YouTube amplifies previously marginalized conspiracy theories to millions. Everything is different now. This week on War College, we talk to author and journalist David Patrikarakos about his new book War in 140 Characters: How Soc...

On a Summer day in 1346, a small army of upstart British peasants cut the heart out of the French aristocracy. That’s the story anyway. The Battle of Crécy was one of the most important of the Hundred Years War. A British army led by Edward III faced an overwhelming French force backed by Genoese crossbowmen. The French outnumbered the British two to one, had the initiative, and attacked in its ow...

As Jason and Matthew sleep off their holiday induced Turkey Comas, War College presents an episode from the early days of the show. Here’s what we said back then— The media in Russia is lively, often entertaining and largely state controlled. Still, an illusion of freedom remains key for the Kremlin to maintain its grasp over a country that spans 11 time zones. In this episode of War College, we l...

If you just look at the number of warheads, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is a small fraction of the size it was during the Cold War. But is that even the right measure anymore? This week on War College, Reuters’ Scott Paltrow discusses a special report the wire service will release this week. Paltrow’s investigation discovered vast improvements to bombs whose names have stayed the same as their power...

War is hell and the people who fight often have a hard time coming home. Kevin Lacz didn’t. Lacz is a former U.S. Navy SEAL who served alongside Chris Kyle in the battle of Ramadi. He survived, came home, and thrived. He’s written books, spoken to crowds, and even played himself in Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper . This week on War College, Lacz tells us what it’s like to go to war, what it’s lik...

Joseph Stalin’s Bolsheviks were atheists. At least in the traditional sense. But that didn’t mean they didn’t believe in prophecy. In fact, it was prophecy that guided their nearly every action. If people would just obey the rules of communism, peace, prosperity, justice and brotherhood would grow from the soil and be mass produced in the factories. So, what happens when a decade passes and the Bo...

An ambush killed four U.S. Special Operations soldiers in the North African country of Niger. Before the incident, few Americans had ever heard of Niger and fewer knew American soldiers were fighting and dying on the continent. What were the troops (a mix of Green Berets and support troops) doing there, and who is ultimately responsible for their deaths? This week, War College looks for some answe...

The Kurds live in Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq but have no country to call their own. When they decided to create one for themselves inside Iraq, it didn’t go well. After Iraq's Kurds held an independence referendum—which passed with more than 90 percent of the vote—Baghdad's armed forces moved fast. Its armies and allied Shi'ite militias took the city of Kirkuk and the surrounding oil fields. Wi...

Tensions between North Korea and the United States are at a fever pitch. The DPRK’s nukes are scary, but once the first missile flies there’s no way to know who might join the fight and how it might end. That’s scarier. So just how bad could it get? Would global nuclear war leave nothing alive but the cockroaches? We talked with Neil Halloran, who has literally done the math. The answer wasn’t wha...

Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military to directly prepare for climate change. Donald Trump’s White House reversed that policy. So what’s a general to do? Tara Copp, Pentagon bureau chief for Military Times, takes us deep into the five-sided box to tell us what the military is doing to fight what they see as a real threat, not just a political football. With more and more civilians in need of resc...

Sometimes the only way a spy agency can hide a secret is under the brightest of spotlights. This week, we talk with author Josh Dean about how the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology works and about some of its most audacious projects, including the SR-71 Blackbird. According to Dean, though, nothing tops the CIA plan to recover a sunken Soviet submarine from 3-miles deep in the Pacific. E...

On August 6, 2011, an American Chinook helicopter named Extortion 17 carried 38 people—including 15 members of SEAL Team Six—to an area 40 miles southwest of Kabul. As the helicopter made its final descent to land, a group of insurgents fired an RPG at it. The lucky shot destroyed the helicopter’s rear rotor and the subsequent crash killed everyone on board. It was the greatest loss of life from a...

The Party of God, Hezbollah, is reaching out far beyond its Lebanese roots as they work with Iran to spread their joint vision of holy war. Working with money and equipment from Iran, the Shi’ite militia now operates in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The party dedicated to the destruction of the Israel is doing a lot of work in countries east of its target. Don’t get them wrong, Hezbollah still hates Isr...

From The Day After to Threads , fiction has long reflected our nuclear fears. Today, Daenerys Targaryen’s flying dragons stand in for B-52 bombers armed with thermonuclear bombs and the ashen corpses of Lannister guards remind us of Hiroshima. This week on War College, nuclear weapons expert Timothy Westmyer talks us through the nuclear metaphors in Game of Thrones . Westmyer is a nuclear security...

The impunity of some of the world’s most frightening men is under threat from people stereotyped as geeks in basements around the world. In the 21st century, well-informed and observant social media addicts have extraordinary powers. Eliot Higgins started watching and reporting on war from the comfort of his living room in 2012. Five years later, he’s using his skills to help the International Cri...