Eric and Eliot welcome former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, Assistant Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University's school of Foreign Service and author of The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, to discuss their article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "Underestimating China: Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing's Enduring Advantages." They discuss China's massive advantages of scale in the strategic competition with the United States and the metrics that can be used to measure it including manufacturing capacity, not only in traditional industries but also in areas like biotechnology and aviation where the U.S. used to have the lead. They note how this translates into military production of ships, ballistic missiles, and drones. While acknowledging ongoing Chinese demographic, economic and environmental problems and continuing U.S. advantages they call for right-setting U.S. understanding of China rather than swinging from defeatism to triumphalism and back again. They examine the prospects for a U.S. led alliance to offset China's scale advantages but argue that it will require a new kind of alliance management by Washington policymakers that they call "capacity-centric statecraft." They also touch on the prospects of conflict over Taiwan in the next 5 years and whether it will take the form of a cross channel invasion or a blockade.
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59:32
Trump's New World Order
Eliot and Eric note this week’s jackassery—tariffing McDonald Island and Heard Island off Australia, almost exclusively inhabited by penguins, and Trump’s plan for a four-mile-long military parade to mark his birthday on June 14 and the anniversary of the United States Army. In a more sinister vein they discuss the absolute craziness of the NSC staff purge apparently orchestrated by conspiracy theorist and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer and the subsequent cashiering of NSA Director and Cybercom Commander Gen. Timothy Haugh (as well as his deputy) and the firing of Adm. Shoshana Chatfield as the U.S. military representative to NATO for various imagined DEI sins.
They also touch on the insane economic self harm of Trump’s trade war and the incompetence of the Trump team as they calculated the tariffs. Eric and Eliot diverge on the issue of how trade policy has migrated from the legislative to the executive branch and how the constitutional system set up by the Founders is out of balance. They also discuss Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, the prospect of U.S.-Iranian direct negotiations over the nuclear program, the larger crisis of democracy in Israel and the danger of Israeli overreach in attempting to reset the Middle East.
Then they discuss the recent visit of Russian envoy Kiril Dmitriev and his discussions with U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and what they might augur for the prospects of a ceasefire in Ukraine. Finally, in response to comments from viewers about Eric and Eliot’s criticisms of the history behind the New York Times’s 1619 Project, they provide the following commentary by several distinguished historians below:
Sean Wilentz: https://philosophy.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/122/2013/10/oph_oph-202101-0005.pdf
James Oakes: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/12/what-the-1619-project-got-wrong
Gordon S. Wood: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/28/wood-n28.html?mod=article_inline
Leslie M. Harris: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
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1:05:40
Lessons From a Successful American Diplomat
Eric and Eliot discuss VP Vance's trip to Greenland and his appointment by the President to oversee the purging of American history at the Smithsonian and other museums. They also discuss who the biggest loser will be from Signalgate. They consider an excellent diplomatic memoir from the 1960s written by former Ambassador and Under Secretary of State Robert "Bob" Murphy -- Diplomat Among Warriors. Murphy pioneered the role of Political Advisor (POLAD) for military leaders working closely with Generals Dwight Eisenhower and Mark Clark on the invasion and subsequent governance of North Africa, Sicily and Italy and then worked with General Lucius Clay on the military government of Germany. They note Murphy's controversial role in maintaining diplomatic relations with the Vichy government of France and negotiating a deal with French Admiral Darlan to smooth the way for the invasion of North Africa. They also discuss critics like AJP Taylor who complained that the US had no policy during World War II and whether FDR's desire to postpone political decisions until after the war was naive or reflected a higher realism given the likely dominant role the US would have at the end of the war. They conclude that Murphy represents an important tradition of professionalism and subject matter expertise in government that is well worth preserving.
Diplomat Among Warriors: The Unique World Of A Foreign Service Expert:
https://a.co/d/742sKIz
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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58:21
How Autocrats Use History
Eric and Eliot discuss the most recent example of jackassery by the Trump Administration national security team which appears to have conducted a sensitive Principals Committee meeting on bombing the Houthis in Yemen over Signal, an unclassified commercial phone app. To discuss this and much more they also welcome Katie Stallard, the Senior Editor for Global Affairs for the New Statesman magazine in the UK. They discuss Katie's book Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, North Korea and Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022) and how authoritarian regimes have used the history of World War II (and in China and North Korea's case the Korean War) to shore up their legitimacy and to short circuit criticism. They discuss how, as the late Alexei Navalny suggested, the focus on the past is used to "displace thoughts about the future and questions about the present." They discuss how the interpretation of WWII has changed over the years to suit the needs and interests of the ruling clique in all these countries and the resonance of Vaclav Havel's observations that these regimes falsify everything the past, present and future and the only way to combat such mendacity is "living in truth." Finally, they discuss the disturbing resonances of these discussions about history that are now manifesting themselves in the United States.
Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea:
https://a.co/d/iywWYPT
Katie Stallard's latest in the New Statesmen:
https://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/geopolitics/2025/03/us-foreign-policy-return-of-america-first
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
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58:15
The Ongoing Vandalism of Our Government
Eric and Eliot try to parse the firehose of insanity and self-harm emanating from the Trump Administration. They discuss the disestablishment of the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, a little known but important institution created during the Cold War. They also discuss the silencing of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti despite the vital role these institutions played in the country's success in the Cold War. They discuss Eliot's Atlantic article on why invading Canada has not worked out well for the United States in the past and how the Trump Administration's policies are pushing the Canadians (among others) to contemplate canceling their order of F-35 fighter aircraft and joining the European Union. In addition they discuss Bibi Netanyahu's attempt to fire Ronen Bar, the head of Israel's internal security service the Shin Bet and whether or not BIbi needed Trump's example to go after the Israeli "deep state."
Eliot on invading Canada:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/us-canada-relations-trump/682046/
New York Times report on DOGE cuts to the National Nuclear Security Administration
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/us/politics/federal-job-cuts-nuclear-bomb-engineers-scientists.html
Eliot on the late Andrew Marshall:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/andrew-marshall-brain-pentagon-passed-away/588952/
Axios report on Netanyahu firing Ronen Bar:
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/16/netanyahu-fire-shin-bet-ronen-bar
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. We probe beyond the hive mind of Washington conventional wisdom on national security and foreign affairs.
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