Horns of a Dilemma

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we hear from Professor Sandra Fahy of Carleton University about the way in which states use video evidence to try to falsely defend themselves against claims of human rights abuses. While many of us might associate misleading video with modern technology, such as deep-fakes, Fahy traces the phenomenon to the earliest days of video and shows how it con...

As the threat of Russian invasion looms over Ukraine, this week's epsiode of Horns of a Dilemma helps to clarify the origins of the post-Cold War security structure in Europe and the role of NATO expansion and enlargement in defining both Western and Russian threat perception.  Clements Center Executive Director Will Inboden sits down with Professor Mary Sarrotte to discuss her book, Not One Inch:...

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we continue with a panel discussion that follows author Wesley Morgan's discussion of his book,  The Hardest Place . If you haven't listened to last week's episode, which includes Morgan's book talk, you may want to do so, since this week's episode includes discussion of events that are covered in Morgan's talk. This event was held at the University o...

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma , the first of two parts, author Wesley Morgan discusses his book, The Hardest Place: The American Military Adrift in Afghanistan's Pech Valley . Morgan has written an extraordinary biography of the American presence in Afghanistan, focusing on one particular place, and through the history of the American war in that place, capturing the 20-year American war e...

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we hear from retired U.S. Army Colonel Dr. Christopher Kolenda about his new book, Zero Sum Victory: What We Get Wrong About War .  Kolenda draws on his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to help explain why it feels as if the United States has had what he calls "the inverse Midas touch" when it comes to interventions: everything we've tried has bogge...

This week's Horns of a Dilemma may be a first in that it deals with a work of fiction.  Author David McCloskey joins Stephen Slick of the Intelligence Studies Project at the University of Texas, Austin, to discuss his new novel, Damascus Station . In the novel, McCloskey draws on his years as a CIA analyst to lend realism to both the civil war in Syria (the setting for the novel) and to the cultur...

Joseph Stalin said at the 1943 Tehran Conference that World War II would be won with "British brains, American steel, and Soviet blood." Indeed, the scale of Soviet losses in the war is nearly unimaginable: Some estimates place the number of military and civilian deaths at over 20 million.  But the scale of Russian losses, and the bitter hatred and brutality that characterized combat on the Easter...

In last week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we heard from Professor Jane Vaynman how emerging technologies may influence the future of arms control. In this week's episode, we hear from Tim Morrison, currently of the Hudson Institute and formerly a deputy advisor to the president for national security in the Trump administration, how arms control is influenced by different positions staked out...

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we hear from Professor Jane Vaynman, author of " Better Monitoring and Better Spying: The Impact of Emerging Technology on Arms Control ," which appears in Vol. 4/Iss. 4 of the Texas National Security Review , a special issue dedicated to the memory and legacy of Janne Nolan. Vaynman explores how advances in the technology of drones, small satellites, artifi...

The People's Republic of China has risen over the past two decades to become the world's largest economy, when measured by purchasing power parity. As Chinese global economic interests and influence have expanded so, too, has the size and capability of the Chinese military. In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma , Thomas Shugart, adjunct senior fellow with the defense program at the Center f...

While most people think of North Korea today as an isolated pariah state, the "hermit kingdom" exercised significant influence among Third World nations during the Cold War. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerrilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. State-run media coverage of events in...

In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we hear from Elbridge Colby, co-founder of the Marathon Initiative, former deputy assistant secretary of defense, and author of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Competition . Colby makes the case for a U.S. defense strategy focused on preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia by denying the Chinese the ability to achieve faits d'ac...

With the release of the Pandora Papers, news reports are filled with stories derived from computer files once thought to be hidden from public scrutiny.  While  the source of the Pandora Papers leak isn't yet known, the pattern of leaked computer files shaping international relations has become increasingly common as information migrates to "the cloud." In addition to the Pandora Papers, the relea...

In the wake of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, much attention has focused on the fate of Afghan citizens who risked their lives to aid U.S. forces. The hastily organized evacuation of Afghan refugees has frequently drawn unfavorable comparison to the evacuation and resettlement of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. As the guest in this week's podcast demonstrates, howe...

Grand strategy can be a vexing term. While many people understand grand strategy to be an important expression of the way in which countries wield their power, there can often be confusion as to exactly what the term "grand strategy" encompasses. (For listeners eager to explore more on this, Vol. 2, Iss. 1 of  Texas National Security Review  contains three excellent scholarly articles on grand str...

The 2016 presidential election was a milestone in modern American politics, not only for the surprising victory of a candidate whom many pundits and observers had considered unlikely to win, but also for the degree to which foreign powers attempted to influence the electoral process and outcome. In this week's Horns of a Dilemma , we hear from Emily Harding, a senior fellow at the Center for Strat...

In the 1950s, researchers at the RAND Corporation ran two different wargames exploring questions of nuclear strategy. Both were named the Cold War Game, known to the participants as COW.  One, run by the Mathematics Analysis Division (MAD), abstracted questions of the ethics of nuclear war in order to seek reproducible results. The other, run by the Social Sciences Division (SSD), reflected concer...

With the fall of President Ashraf Ghani's government and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces, most of Afghanistan is now under the control of the Taliban. In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma , we are joined by Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at Brookings, and by Scott R. Anderson, a visiting fell...

Being an editor involves saying "no," quite a bit. 85 percent of submissions to both the Texas National Security Review and War on the Rocks never make it to publication.  At the recent Clements Center Summer Seminar on History and Statecraft in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Doyle Hodges, executive editor of TNSR and chief publishing officer of War on the Rocks , and Megan Oprea, managing editor of TNSR...

Mark Twain once said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The repetition of patterns of events and responses is one reason that scholars and policymakers often turn to the past for insight into how to best deal with contemporary events. It is also why classic works of history and strategy — such as Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War — have become classic and remain...

The history of nuclear weapons is, thankfully, largely a history of things that haven't happened.  Since 1945, nuclear weapons have dominated strategy and statecraft, but they have not been used after the first two bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Professor Frank Gavin of Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and Chair of the Texas National Security Review editoria...

Two weeks ago on Horns of a Dilemma, Professor Jim Goldgeier of American University and the Brookings Institution joined Ambassador Alexandra Hall Hall to discuss the thematic connections between the choice in the early 1990s to add new members to the NATO alliance and Britain's choice in 2016 to leave the European Union.  In last week's episode , Professor Goldgeier expanded on the history, polit...

In last week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we heard Professor Jim Goldgeier of American University and the Brookings Institution and former British Ambassador Alexandra Hall Hall discuss the thematic connections between the addition of new NATO members after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the dynamics that ultimately led to Brexit.  In this episode, Professor Goldgeier goes into more depth...

The admission of new NATO members from the former Soviet Union and Warsaw pact marked an expansion of European multilateral institutions.  The growth in membership of European institutions continued until 25 years later, when Britain decided to withdraw from the European Union.  In a session recorded at the Clements Center Summer Seminar on History and Statecraft in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Profess...

American security policy has made use of tripwire forces for many years.  One of the most prominent examples cited is the case of Berlin: As Thomas Schelling famously described the logic, the small garrison of US soldiers stationed there during the Cold War weren't militarily capable of defeating the far-larger East German or Soviet forces nearby but, the East Germans or Soviets would be deterred...