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:
Katie Stallard's latest in the New Statesmen:
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast cosponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.
Excellent podcast, gentlemen. I look forward to watching you each and every weekend. Katie Stallard was a wonderful choice for a guest and I will now seek our her writing. My grandfather was a Scot who fought in both WWI and WWII and so these wars, and how they are remembered, are very personal for me.
Outstanding discussion! I never miss the Shield of the Republic podcasts. It an island of sanity, values and enlightenment in a sea of grievance, falsehoods, maliciousness, incompetence, and cowardice.
Thank you Eric and Eliot for Shield of the Republic. I have learned so much from you and your outstanding guests. It is terrifying to me that we are losing our collective memory of the horrible events that, fortunately, led to building strong alliances like NATO.
My father, as a brave and terrified teenager, was a Marine in the Pacific theater during WWII. Next month he will be 99 years old. Amazingly, he’s still going strong. The war and its effects are still all too real for him, my siblings and me, our children and their children. But we are not enough.
A couple years ago, I found postcards from my visit to Virginia after graduating high school in the 90’s. Some were pictures commemorating confederate statues. Figures like Robert E Lee were venerated. The US is not the Soviet Union, China or NK. But I am so afraid of the recreating history by the MAGA right, even for something that only happened a little over 4 years ago.
Very timely episode with the EO "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" set to make sure our history is erased and/or re-written........
After the Soviet Union prevailed in WW II and Stalin’s leadership was more solidified than ever, the ever-paranoid Stalin was still so suspicious and fearful of his famous generals, that the best of them, Marshal Zhukov, engaged in the battles for Leningrad, Moscow, and then Berlin, was eventually sorta “exiled” to a command near the Mongolian border. I don’t see any Russian commanders, who have not distinguished themselves in the current Ukraine war despite heavy advantages in men and material, threatening Putin’s leadership via any sort of popularity among the Russian masses (except of course for the Wagner Group whose tentative threat to Putin has been eliminated).
I’ve always been curious of why dreadful Stalin’s Soviet Union armies performed so much better than the Tsar’s armies in WW I. They faced Hitler’s Wehrmacht for 2 1/2 years essentially by themselves (ignoring the Mediterranean campaigns and Lend-Lease) in comparison to the four-year western front in WW I. I read an estimate that 83% of Wehrmacht casualties were sustained on the eastern front of WW II. But the Red Army was absolutely callous about casualties; the NKVD would have machine gun emplacements behind Red Army lines to mow down retreating Red Army soldiers. Hitler believed that Operation Barbarossa would send “the whole rotten structure collapsing.” Why did they fight? Nazi atrocities? Defense of home and hearth?
As ever with you guys and with another great guest, a wonderfully illuminating listen. Thank you so much, again as ever, for putting the present horror show in the US into both historical and global context. Oh, if only there was an appetite for truth instead, for so many it seems, of a dangerous acceptance of untruths.
And thank you for letting me know about her and her book, I just borrowed it from my library!
That seems to be the norm when it comes to rewriting history by authoritarian regimes. My question which never gets answered by maga is "when was the country great?" And every answer falls flat. We were on the path to greatness but that's all changed unless we can remove this cancer that is in power now and all the supporters hard core followers who are corrupting our values. Tolerance has reached the end of its rope.
This was absolutely fabulous. I appreciate her so much.
And then there’s this:
“ REPORT: Passwords of Top U.S. Security Officials Found Online – Hegseth, Gabbard, Waltz Among Those Affected”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/report-passwords-of-top-u-s-security-officials-found-online-hegseth-gabbard-waltz-among-those-affected/ar-AA1BIP3A?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=e38662692bec47ed9cc59148c557c012&ei=68
More incompetence…it just doesn’t end…
“Passwords and private information belonging to top national security officials in the Trump administration have been found online, according to the German publication Der Spiegel.
In a stunning report published on Wednesday, the paper said its journalists “used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web.” Those whose information was compromised include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.
“Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet,” the outlet wrote. “DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.”
And it just gets worse from there….
I don’t think these people have any idea what the word “security” means or how to protect their own information, much less the country’s information. They should all be fired ASAP.
“Jackassery” - what an appropriate description for the current ship of fools in the WH.
A terrific yet somewhat terrifying interview. My major takeaway is that a significant difference between autocracies and democracies/republics is the ability of all people (big and small) to review the nuances of history and when appropriate to push back against false narrative. I'm hopeful that the preservation of this liberty along with the historical record (e.g., no auto-delete) is a fight worth waging.