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The cliche goes that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. But history is more than just a memory and a lesson, sometimes it’s a tool and a weapon. Some pundits are concerned that historians in their ivory tower of academia are neglecting the study of war and policy in favor of identity politics, and in some cases shirking their role of educating the public in favor of an academic elitism that is mostly aimed producing work for themselves and their colleagues to consume.

Brian Laslie is the Deputy Command Historian at NORAD and United States Northern Command.  He previously served as the Historian of the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base from December 2009 to August 2012.  In 2011, he deployed as the Air Forces Central Command (Forward) Historian to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, from September 2011 to January 2012. It was while deployed that Brian wrote the majority of what would become his first book.

Brian’s views expressed here are his own and don’t reflect those of the United States government.

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Drugs and war go together like peanut butter and jelly. American soldier boys smoked the reefer in Vietnam, the Wehrmacht ran on amphetamine, and Viking Berserkers were probably on something. Soldiers have enhanced and altered perception using chemicals for centuries, but in the annals of getting fucked up and going to war you don’t hear a lot about psychedelics such as LSD and MDMA.

But that might be changing. With us today is Marine Corps officer Emre Albayrak. Albayrak is an Expeditionary Ground Reconnaissance officer and has served as an intelligence officer for 12 years. He’s also the author of an interesting article in the February issue of the Marine Corps Gazette—a professional journal published by the Marine Corps Association. It’s titled Microdosing: Improving Performance Enhancements in Intelligence Analysis. It suggests, very basically, that military intelligence operations could get a boost if Marines dropped a little acid

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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It’s a story some of you may know, it’s been told over and over in different forms. A gaijin, an outsider, comes to Japan and ingratiates themselves with the local military power. From James Clavell’s Shogun, to a bad Tom Cruise movie, to William Adams, it’s a story told over and over in both Japan and the West. Some of those stories have a kernel of truth and few are as fascinating as that of Yasuke—a Samurai born in Africa.  

Here to help us unravel the mystery and history of this legendary Samurai is Thomas Lockley. Lockley is a professor at Nihon University College in Tokyo and a visiting scholar at the University of London. Along with Geoffrey Girard, Lockley is the author of the book African SamuraI: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan.

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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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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Civil Defense! From the dawn of World War II and throughout the 1960s, America had a plan to keep its civilians safe and fit to fight in case of invasion or, god forbid, nuclear armageddon. From duck and cover to the aesthetic of the Fallout video games, American popular culture is enmeshed in the history of its Civil Defense. But what, exactly, is Civil Defense. Where did it come from and do we still practice it today?

Here to help with this history is Alex Wellerstein. Wellerstein is a historian of science, secrecy, and nuclear weapons. He lectures on this and more at Stevens Institute of Technology. You may know him as the guy who created the nuke map, a website that allows you to simulate the effect of various nuclear weapons on an interactive map.

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 March 15, a shooter entered two Mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. He killed fifty and injured 50 more. He left behind a bizarre and meme-laden manifesto. In February, authorities arrested a Coast Guard lieutenant who had been stockpiling weapons in anticipation of kicking off a race war. When it comes to terrorism, America’s problems are overwhelmingly white and nationalist. In terms or raw numbers, it’s not even close.

With us here today to talk about our collective white nationalism problem is Robert Evans. Evans is a conflict journalist who has reported on the fighting in Ukraine and Mosul, the host of Behind the Bastards—a podcast that explores the origin stories of the worst people in history, and and author of fine articles at Bellingcat where he charts the growth of online fueled right-wing terrorism. It’s the subject of his forthcoming audiobook—The War on Everyone.

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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America is at war across the world, but it’s also at war at home. For decades, violent crime has been at record lows across the country—but that’s slowly changing as cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, and St. Louis see terrifying amounts of murders and gang violence. To make things worse, the way cops do their job in some of these cities looks more like counterinsurgency than it does community policing.

Here to help us unpack what’s going on is Patrick Burke, Burke is a freelance journalist who covered the war at home for War Is Boring, Al Jazeera and the Huffington Post  He’s also a former researcher at the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism.

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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We need to talk about Putin. Of all the leaders of state nobody is as maligned, studied, and over-analyzed as Russian President Vladimir Putin. He’s a KGB thug, he’s playing three dimensional chess while everyone else is playing checkers, and he’s turned a state into decline into a global superpower through information warfare. No one is as cunning as Putin.

But that’s not quite true. Here to help us dispel myths and set the record straightish is friend of the show Mark Galeotti. Galeotti is an expert on the Russian military, politics, and underworld, the author of many fine books and  an honorary professor at University of College London and a Senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

He’s got three books coming out this month. One is We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West Gets Him Wrong and another is Russian Political War: Moving Beyond the Hybrid.

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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War is a racket and damn, business is good. When it comes to the global arms trade, no one sells more weapons than the United States of America. The US controls about a third of the nearly 100 billion global arms trade. Its next closest competitor—Russia—doesn’t do even half the business America does. January 2019 was a record year for the defense industry—profits were up across the board. It was the best month for arms sales in a decade.

Here to help us understand the war racket is Amanda Macias. Macias is CNBC’s National Security Reporter. She specializes in the business of war. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us.

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 February 14, a 20-year old man drove a car packed with explosives into a bus full of Indian Central Reserve Police Forces. 40 of the police officers died in the attack. This happened in an Indian controlled portion of Kashmir and India responded by launching an air strike on a village in Pakistan. Things have escalated since then and, as so often happens in modern conflict, gotten confusing and muddied.

With us today to help untangle all this is Suchitra Vijayan. Vijayan is a writer, photographer, and lawyer. Her work has appeared in GQ, the Telegraph, and Foreign Policy. As a lawyer she worked for the United States war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia and Rwanda. As a journalist, she was embedded with NATO-led troops along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and is currently studying the conflict in Kashmir and India’s borderlands.

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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