‘Nuclear War? Yawn!’

A cold peace on the horizon?

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The Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is underway, but what would it take to bring these two nations to the negotiating table? Foreign-policy scholar Walter Russell Mead joins Dispatch Executive Editor Adam O’Neal to share insights from his recent trip to Ukraine. They discuss:

-The normalcy of life in war

-What a “successful” counteroffensive looks like

-Opportunities for the U.S.

-The end of the Russian empire and a new nation

-(Unrealistic) theories of victory

-Engaging with nuclear adversaries

-How to get to the negotiating table

Show Notes:

-Watch: Adam O’Neal interviews Walter Russell Mead

–Walter Russell Mead’s page at Hudson Institute

–The Arc of a Covenant available online

-Walter Russell Mead’s page at Wall Street Journal

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Comments (13)
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  1. Payette

    Excellent discussion. Please consider doing an update podcast in the fall!

    I'm glad the Cold War was discussed. During the Cuban missile crisis, I was in grade school. I remember my father leaving work early to come pick me up from school. I can't say that the long view makes me yawn at the thought of nuclear war. At least back then it appeared that the Soviets understood how catastrophic it would be (to everyone) to use a nuclear weapon.

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  2. Avatar photostaff-badge-circle
    Ryan Brown staff-badge Staff

    Hello, all. We are aware of the issue on Google Podcasts and are working with Google to fix this. Something is going wrong on the Google side of things. But we hope this will be resolved ASAP. Thank you for your patience.

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    Billehrich85

    As with the previous two, this episode is not showing up in my Google Podcasts feed (the same is true for AO).

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    1. Luke W

      Same here - I just wrote to them about it.

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    2. Seth

      Same for me. I just looked in Spotify, and there are three new episodes that I can't see in Google Podcasts.

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    Seth B

    Excellent work from interviewee and interviewer alike.

    And thank you, Mr. Meade, for recommending Noel Coward's "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans", to which I'll include a link for others who might be curious:

    https://youtu.be/wveW9Tw2JKE

    That one was new to me. I imagine it must have been in the back of Tom Lehrer's mind when he wrote the "MLF Lullaby" two decades later, with its immortal lines

    Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
    But that couldn't happen again.
    We taught them a lesson in 1918,
    And they've hardly bothered us since then...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfGCrI8Q-0M&pp=ygUWbWxmIGx1bGxhYnkgdG9tIGxlaHJlcg

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    1. Payette

      Good! Thank you for the links.

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    Cthocas

    I believe this is the first podcast I've heard from Adam O'Neal. He was an excellent host for an excellent conversation.

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  6. Rob

    A note for whoever wrote the show description. It's not "the Ukraine", it's just "Ukraine". "The Ukraine" is a term favored by Putin and the Russians because it makes Ukraine sound like just a region instead of a valid country.

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  7. T.C

    It's Monday June 26th, and after a week, the dispatch podcast is still not updating to Google podcast app.

    Just give in and self-host an RSS feed for the dispatch podcast. Don't make your paying customers go through a subscription service like itunes, or Spotify that keeps track of how often they listen to the dispatch versus national review versus The Manhattan institute.

    Don't offload the maintenance of a direct RSS feed onto a service provider that will just collect the same information as the subscription services.

    Just self host an RSS feed, that points to your own servers, something like
    Thedispatch.com/podcasts/dispatchpodcast/rss ... Hell, go really old school, and make it an ATOM feed instead of an RSS feed

    But whatever you do, don't sit around for a week not fixing it!

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      Pastorfbt

      Actually the Remnant showed up on Google Podcasts on Saturday as it should. However the newest Dispatch episode did not. I don't want to tell you guys how to spend your money but...

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        Pastorfbt

        By the way this is really good content!

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      Adaam James Levin-Areddy staff-badge Editor

      Sadly there's an ongoing issue with Google Podcasts not catching certain RSS feeds. At the moment this seems to be affecting multiple podcasts. We've been working (with Google) on getting this sorted for a few days. Unfortunately, things take time to update on Google's end, but we're also attempting alternative solutions. We hope the feeds will be refreshed soon. In the meantime, our feeds seem to be normally available on most other players, including the one hosted on our site.

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