Texas National Security Network Podcasts

On this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Melvyn Leffler talks about his book, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq. Leffler discusses why he decided to write a book about the invasion of Iraq and how he went about doing so. He then outlined what he learned about this period of American history and how President Bush hel…

On this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Jonathan Hunt talks about his book, The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam. Hunt starts out with an anecdote about the origins of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty under U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs W…

On this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration Beth Sanner delivers a candid and enriching lecture about being an intelligence professional at the highest level in the White House. Among many duties, this job involved serving as U.S. President Donald Trump's intelligence briefer. Ms. S…

On this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, William Inboden, editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review and executive director of the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, sat down with Amb. Kay Bailey Hutchison, former United States senator from Texas and, later, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO…

In this week’s Horns of a Dilemma, Maj. Ben Griffin, the Chief of the Military History Division at West Point, discusses his new book, Reagan's War Stories: A Cold War Presidency. In the book, Ben tells three stories about United States President Ronald Reagan, the President who ushered in the end of the Cold War. The book touches on Reagan’s relat…

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Ann Ganzer of the State Department's Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation recently visited the University of Texas, Austin. In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Ganzer sits down with Clements Center Associate Director Paul Edgar to discuss many of the issues she discussed with student…

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Marine Corps Gen. (Ret) Robert Neller joins University of Texas, Austin Professor Paul Pope to discuss the recent force structure and doctrine changes in the Marine Corps, intended to create a force ready to fight a war with China. Neller begins with a basic overview of the contemporary security environ…

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, addresses the challenging questions of how to allocate defense spending to meet American strategic interests around the globe. Eaglen discusses the relationship between strategy and budget, as well as how "reality always gets a vote…

Napoleon once said that leaders are "dealers in hope." While such a label might seem to fit Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky, it fits more awkwardly on Russian President Vladimir Putin. How has the leadership of these two men shaped the onset and current progress of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Would the invasion have happened at all, or i…

In this week's Horns of a Dilemma, Daniel Runde of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, speaks about his new book, The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership Through Soft Power. Liberals and conservatives are frequently divided over foreign policy preferences, with conservatives favoring hard power, such as military might,…

The turnover between U.S. presidential administrations can be a time of uncertainty and vulnerability. In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we hear from former National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley, who discusses the forthcoming volume, Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama. This book, a collection of tra…

A year ago, as Russia's aggressive war in Ukraine was proving not to be the quick and easy victory Vladimir Putin had expected, some observers speculated that the bungled decision to invade his neighbor could be Putin's undoing. The idea of a Russian state without Putin raised alluring prospects of reform. In this week's Horns of a Dilemma, America…

In this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma, we listen to a discussion between Will Inboden, executive director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and Hal Brands, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. Brands and Inboden discuss a book wri…

On this week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma Clement Center Senior National Security Fellow Mark Pomar, who helped to oversee the Russian language broadcasts of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty during the Cold War, discusses his book, Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Pomar is joined …

Many great figures in American history are full of contradictions. Thomas Jefferson wrote stirringly about liberty while owning human beings as property. Woodrow Wilson was both the idealistic author of the 14 Points, and a racist who re-segregated the federal work force. But few figures in American history embody as many contradictions as the two …

This week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma features author and public intellectual Walter Russell Mead speaking about his book, The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People. As Mead discusses, the trope that American foreign policy toward Israel can be explained by the outsized influence of Jewish people in Ame…

On the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, Horns of a Dilemma features a talk by University of Texas, Austin Professor Jeremi Suri about his new book, Civil War by Other Means: America's Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. In seeking to understand the events of January 6, 2021, Suri looks to the American Civil War and the period …

Many stories of the Battle of Midway highlight the role of cryptography in breaking Japanese codes and the herculean effort to repair USS Yorktown after the battle of the Coral Sea so that she could participate in the battle. In this week's Horns of a Dilemma, author Steven McGregor highlights a less-known but equally important aspect: the SBD Daun…

The deployment of the Soviet SS-20 missile system in the 1970s and 1980s, and U.S. plans to deploy the Pershing II and Ground Launched Cruise Missile in response, spurred a crisis within NATO over U.S. nuclear deterrence in Europe. Susan Colbourn, associate director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University's Sanford School …

Nathan Law first came to international prominence as a student leader of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2014. In the years that followed, he was elected as the youngest parliamentarian in Hong Kong's history, debarred from holding office, convicted for his activities in leading student protests, jailed, released, and exiled--all before his 3…

In this week's epsidode of Horns of a Dilemma, Sheena Greitens, head of the Asia Policy Program at the University of Texas, Austin, joins author Nury Turkel to discuss Turkel's book, No Escape: The True Story of China's Genocide of the Uyghurs. Turkel, who was born in a re-education camp during China's culturual revolution, uses his own experiences…

Before he became governor of California and later president of the United States, Ronald Reagan was an actor. In the 1940 film, Knute Rockne: All American, Reagan portrayed Notre Dame running back George Gipp who, on his deathbed from pneumonia, told Coach Rockne to have the team "win just one for the Gipper." Rockne related the line to his team in…

This week's episode of Horns of a Dilemma is a must-listen for anyone who knows that microchips are a national security issue, but perhaps doesn't really understand just why chips are so strategically important. It is equally enlightening for those who have been closely following the security issues around microchips and are eager to know more. Pro…

Politics is serious business. According to Aristotle, "the main concern of politics is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions." But some political leaders seek to manipulate passions and prejudices, rather than appealing to reason and pursuing a noble end. The ancient Greeks calle…

Civil-military relations is not a topic that gets many hearts racing. Yet attention to the relationship between the military and the society it serves has become more urgent after it was revealed that Gen. Mark Milley, the nation's most senior military officer, worked with cabinet and sub-cabinet officials to frustrate the desire of President Donal…