This past Saturday I met Aaron MacLean, host of the School of War podcast. Aaron is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Before that, he worked on Capitol Hill as senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton and served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010. Following his time in the operating forces, he was assigned to the faculty of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching.
I borrowed the résumé above from Aaron’s FDD bio, but I can testify on my own say-so that he is an impressive gentleman. If you love military history, I think you will love his podcast. Aaron describes it as follows:
This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras.The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, or conflict; the conduct of policy in the course of a major international incident; the work of a famous strategist; the nature of a famous weapon; or the legacy of an important military commander or political leader.
Speaking with Aaron on Saturday, I found that he seemed to be particularly interested in issues of leadership and command. Scrolling through his more than 100 School of War podcasts at the link above, I went back to his tenth episode on Xenophon’s Anabasis with Shane Brennan, co-editor of The Landmark Xenophon’s Anabasis and author of Xenophon’s Anabasis: A Socratic History.
I love Xenophon, the Anabasis, and the edition published by Cornell University Press with the translation by Wayne Ambler and introduction by Eric Buzzetti. Aaron’s podcast with Brennan presents an excellent discussion of this thrilling book. Now I am persuaded that I have to order the Landmark edition as well.
Aaron provides this preview of coming podcast attractions on X.
With @AppleTV's Masters of the Air coming next week, the next 2 episodes of School of War are about the show and the strategic bombing campaign over Europe.
Writer/exec producer John Orloff joins next Tuesday; & the week after, Don Miller, author of the book Masters of the Air.— Aaron MacLean (@AaronBMacLean) January 19, 2024
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.