Mark Galeotti joins us for War College’s Russian election special. The winner, Vladimir Putin, was never in doubt, but what’s the sham election all about? And what comes next for Russia and its relations with the world.

And by the way, is there a Gerasimov Doctrine? No, no there isn’t.

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From the Silver Legion to the Aryan Nation, the U.S. has had its share of fascist organizations but its never had anything quite like Atomwaffen Division. Grown and organized online, the group has been linked to five murders and a bomb plot in the past eight months. The group is so extreme that even prominent leaders of the Alt-Right have denounced it.

This week on War College, journalist Jake Hanrahan takes us through what the group believes, what it wants, and what it might be willing to do to get it.

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In the minds of many Russians, the Cold War never ended. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many spies never came in from the cold and the intricate game of espionage and counter-espionage has continued to the present day.

This week on War College, U.S. Naval intelligence officer Naveed Jamali shares his story about working as a double agent in the years after 9/11. Jamali posed as a Russian asset for years while passing on information to the FBI. He recounted the story in his memoir, How to Catch a Russian Spy, which is out now in paperback.

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This week we've got a blast from the past. Here's what we said back then:

This week Thomas Nichols helps us understand America’s current nuclear strategy … or lack thereof.

This August marked the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seven decades later, Washington and the Kremlin control more than 7,000 nuclear warheads … each. Not all of those weapons are active. The two nations have deployed some, stockpiled more and disarmed far too few. And those numbers are down from where they were just a few years ago.

Which is good because nuclear arms are the most terrifying weapons ever created. But with Russia and the United States sitting on so many potential Armageddons — not to mention other nuclear states such as China, India and Pakistan — and so many warheads unused for decades, it begs the question: just what are nuclear weapons good for?

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Iran is at war beyond its borders in Syria, Afghanistan, and other places, too. It’s a bit weird to hear it, but our guest, Amir Handjani, explains that one reason they’re fighting is a very similar principle to what drives the United States: Fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them here. But that’s not easy with an economy in shambles and protests cropping up where you’d least expect them.

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NATO’s second largest army has invaded Syria. Turkey is conducting military operations in Afrin—a Kurdish city on Syria’s north western border. Russia and the U.S. wait on the edges as the world’s most complicated war zone gets even more so.

This week on War College, Afrin native Can Êzîdxelo and freelance photographer Joey L. walk us through the conflict, what it means for the Kurds, and what it means for the unending Syrian Civil War.

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Yemen. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Syria. These are the countries that cross most of our minds when we think of the Middle East, but there’s an important actor in the region that we almost never hear about--Oman.

Next door to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and across the gulf from Iran, Oman sits in the middle of instability and war. Yet it’s politically and economically stable, friendly to the West, and fends off Islamic extremism with ease. What’s its secret?

This week on War College, Tom Orderman joins us to explain the “Switzerland of the Middle East” and what’s at stake if it falls.

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Xi Jinping’s China tends to look at itself as a historical victim, an underdog fighting to roll back indignities of the past and prove its strength. Author and journalist Paul French has been chronicling China’s rise since the 1980s, but has also focused on understanding the development of the country since the Opium Wars of the 19th century.

In this episode, French offers his view of how China’s past is informing its aggressive foreign policy now.

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Without America’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency there would be no internet, no GPS, no M16, and no Agent Orange. The mysterious group of scientists and soldiers created much of today’s military and civilian technology, but the average citizen doesn’t know much about them. That’s by design.

This week on War College, Sharon Weinberger—the executive editor Foreign Policy—reveals the hidden world of the Pentagon’s mad scientists.The agency is the subject of her book Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World, which comes out in Paperback on February 20.

Weinberger walks us through DARPA’s strangest and most savage projects—from it’s early days helping out the space program to its current foray into artificial intelligence and robotics.

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The Pentagon always wants more money and it usually gets its way. Between sequestration and the War on Terror, America’s military often feels like it’s stretched thin. The Navy says it needs more sailors to prevent disaster, U.S. nukes need upkeep to stay safe, and the Special Operations Forces need more and more support to do their job.

Yet the American military outspends every other major military power on the planet and watch dogs constantly complain of waste, fraud, and abuse at the Pentagon. What’s going on? Here to help us sort it out is one of the watchdogs, former Marine Corps officer and current Project on Government Oversight employee Dan Grazier.

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