Angry Planet

Nuclear war. These days it feels like we’re closer to Global Thermonuclear Annihilation than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—an organization of experts that calculates humanity’s odd of Armageddon—seems to agree. The Doomsday Clock is set at two midnight to midnight. 

It’s easy to see why. On August 2, the US pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles, Russia keeps talking about all its fancy new nuclear weapons, and Democratic presidential candidates are on stage talking about America’s lack of a “no first use” policy. Here to help us figure out how doomed we are is John Carl Baker.

Baker is the Nuclear Field Coordinator and Senior Program Officer at Ploughshares Fund. His work has appeared in The New Republic and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

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Libya. Dictator Muammar Gaddafi ruled the country from 1969 to 2011. The Arab Spring led to a Civil War and the deposition and death of Gadaffi in 2011. The country never quite recovered and remains in the throws of a violent Civil War. One most of us in the West, myself included, have not paid much attention to.

Someone who did pay attention is today’s guest Robert Young Pelton. Pelton is an author and documentarian with extensive experience covering conflicts. He’s just back from Libya.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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This week on War College, producer Kevin Knodell is back from his trip to the Middle East and he’s got stories. He shares his experiences climbing a mountain in Kurdistan, eating at KFCs that are better than the ones in America, and talks about the future of the region.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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Thinking about geopolitics is all about picking the right metaphor. After World War II, America’s elite conceived of a world engaged in a Cold War, where the United States and Soviet Union played a game of spies and skirmishes to spread political ideology across the planet. In the 19th century, the British and Russian Empires engaged in the Great Game, a political and diplomatic game of shadows that played out in Afghanistan and its neighboring territories. The problem with metaphors is that the map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal and if you get caught up in a great power competition, it can be hard to see the world any other way.

Here to help us sort through this, and try to figure out what metaphors best fit our troubled times, is Ali Wyne. Wyne is a policy analyst at RAND, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on International Security, and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute. His work, especially on this topic, has appeared in The National Interest.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, was obsessed with the occult. He attempted to read minds and used astrological star charts to inform his battle plans. On the allied side, English magician Aleister Crowley kept in contact with German occultists, fed them false information, and even created the V for Victory.

Today on War College, we sit down with media theorist, documentarian and author Douglas Rushkoff to talk about the bizarre occult history of World War II and how it affected strategic decisions during the war.

His latest book – Aleister & Adolf – is a historical fiction that tells the story of a strange ‘magickal’ battle between the Allies and Axis powers during World War II. It spans the globe, and connects Crowley, Hitler, General Patton, Heinrich Himmler and even Ian Fleming – the creator of super spy James Bond.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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Misinformation. Grainy and low resolution images from government sources. Signals intelligence. Satellite imagery. Photographs and social media posts from those nearby. Online databases of vast and public knowledge. These, and more, are the tools by which Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat suss out truth in a complicated world.

On June 13, something attacked two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States blamed Iran, producing footage it claimed linked Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to the incident. Iran denied responsibility and people aboard the tanker say the story the US is telling doesn’t add up.

So is this a clever sleight of hand from Iran, a Gulf of Tonkin style operation meant to draw the US into war, or something else entirely. Here to help us figure that out, and more importantly how he came to the conclusion, is Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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On June 13, explosions—probably from Limpet Mines—hit two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States has blamed Iran. On June 20, Iran shot down one of the United States’ Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk drones, basically a fancy unmanned spy plane.

In the aftermath, US President Donald Trump considered a retaliatory action, then pulled back. I’m recording this at 5pm on Friday, June 21. It’s possible between then and the time you hear this, the situation will have changed again.

Iran is complicated. In the American imagination, it’s become a stand in for a power in direct opposition to the United States. It’s famously part of George W Bush’s Axis of evil and, it often feels, Washington’s Hawks have long wanted an excuse to go to war there.

So. Today. Three shows from War College’s past that, strung together, represent a closer and more nuanced look at Iran. All with remastered audio.

The first is a look at the strength of the Iranian military during the end of the Obama presidency, and before the signing of the Nuclear Deal. The second is an interview with New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard about Iran’s use of Hezbollah. The third is deep dive into Iranian domestic politics and its role in Syria circa 2018.

I present all of it in an attempt to paint a picture of how we got where we are today. America’s relationship with Iran is deeper, bigger, and more complicated than one President in one moment.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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China and America are two of the world’s great powers. Their economies are intertwined, their military’s powerful, and their soft power spreading across the globe. And tensions are rising. Neither side wants to go to war, but both sides are committed to winning that war should the unthinkable ever occur.

Recently, War College’s own Kevin Knodell spent time at the Army’s Joint Warfighting Assessment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State. The weeks long training brought together military personnel from seven different countries to train together for a nightmare scenario—a new war in the Pacific.

Kevin is the producer of War College, but also a journalist whose work has appeared in Playboy, The Daily Beast, and McClatchy. He’s the co-author of several non-fiction graphic novels—including The ‘Stan and Machete Squad.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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Flying saucers. Little Green Men. UFOs. Over the past few years, reports from US Navy Pilots of strange flying objects has been hitting the pages of America’s newspapers. And no, not just the tabloids. The New York Times is talking about UFOs.

So what is going on? Is this evidence of extraterrestrial life? Lights reflecting off of swamp gas, or dastardly new tech designed by America’s enemies? Here to help us answer these tough questions is the editor-in-chief of The War Zone, Tyler Rogoway.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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The Soviet Union sent Sputnik into space in 1957. By 1958, thanks in part to the work of famed scientist Carl Sagan, the Pentagon had a plan to show the commies what for by nuking the moon. Thankfully, it was just a plan. One that the U.S. never acted on. But it’s far from the only military scheme the US and others cooked up over the years. From bat bombs to an aircraft carrier built from an iceberg, military history is full of outlandish and ridiculous schemes best left abandoned at the planning stages.

Here to help us untangle these James Bond sounding plots is Vince Houghton. Houghton is a U.S. Army vet who served in the Balkans. Now, he is the historian and curator at the international Spy Museum in Washington D.C. He collected the wild schemes from America’s past in the new book Nuking the Moon and Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board.

You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.

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