Our guest for this episode is Michael Vlahos, a writer, a historian of military strategy and history, and author of the book Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change. Over several decades, he has taught war and strategy at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval War College, and has conducted strategic analysis for Johns Hopkins Applied Physic Laboratory. He is a weekly contributor to The John Batchelor Show, and has been publishing articles in major magazines and journals for as long as I’ve known him for 25 years as of this September. He is a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, and you can read his most recent work in Compact Magazine and Agon.
Michael joined us this week to talk about proxy wars — why and how are they successful, and when do they fail? He walks us through the history of the most famous successes and failures in modern military history, and why the US is losing its current one today in Ukraine.
Donald Trump Should Not Repeat Woodrow Wilson’s Failure
April 30th is an important date in American politics. This is the day 100 for the American President in the White House, and all attention will be on the reports of his achievements and failures. But nothing can be more critical than Peace…
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6 mins read
A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
Russia’s invasion has made ordinarily outspoken critics of antisemitism wary of criticizing Ukrainian Nazi collaborators
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1 min read
Qi Book Talk: The Culture of the Second Cold War by Richard Sakwa
Richard Sakwa has for many years been one of the most distinguished and insightful observers of relations between the West and Russia, and one of the leading critics of Western policy. In this talk with Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, Sakwa discusses his book, The Culture of the Second Cold War (Anthem 2025). The book examines the cultural-political trends and inheritances that underlie the new version of a struggle that we thought we had put behind us in 1989. Sakwa describes both the continuities from the first Cold War and the ways in which new technologies have reshaped strategies and attitudes.