The Secrets of Statecraft

Elliott Abrams has had the ear of Republican presidents from Reagan to Trump. Here is what he told them...

Former Deputy National Security Adviser and China expert Matt Pottinger takes a clear-eyed view of the threats to peace in Asia.

Tom Gross is an influential British journalist and Middle East commentator who provides cutting-edge analysis on the unfolding Israel-Gaza struggle.

Robert O’Brien has had a large number of demanding jobs, but none more so than being President Trump’s national security advisor.

The rabbi of America’s oldest Jewish congregation discusses his new book, Providence and Power.

Mike McFaul, President Obama’s ambassador to Moscow, drew on history to discover what makes Putin tick.

Former prime minister of Australia Tony Abbott is in characteristically forthright form when discussing the past, present, and future of Western institutions.

Lord (Charles) Powell recalls his service as Margaret Thatcher’s closest advisor during her three historic premierships.

Lord (George) Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO, talks about steering the organization through some of its most perilous moments.

The longest serving foreign minister in Australian history, Alexander Downer used his past experience to navigate a series of major crises, including 9/11.

The Oscar-winning creator of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey speaks about history, creativity and noblesse oblige. 

Over a quarter of a century separated William P. Barr’s terms as the 77th and also the 85th Attorney General of the United States, serving under two very different presidents.

Bret Stephens, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times journalist, on the influence of the past on himself, his family, the Jewish people, and America.

Former US Ambassador to the UN and National Security Adviser John Bolton considers the global challenges to the West.

British historian and biographer Nick Thomas-Symonds MP is in Sir Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet and will play a key role in any future Labour government.  Here he speaks about the giants of Labour Party history: Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Aneurin Bevan, and Harold Wilson.

Sir Trevor Phillips is the founder of the Policy Exchange’s History Matters project, the UK chairman of the Index on Censorship, and was longest-serving equalities commissioner in British history. Here he gives his characteristically trenchant views on the subjects of history, race, and free speech.

British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has written a new history of the World, which analyzes the last 10,000 years of global events through the prism of famous (and often infamous) families.

Michael Gove is that rare thing in politics, a genuine intellectual who is also a very effective politician. One of the longest-serving conservative cabinet ministers, he has served under four prime ministers and twice stood for the premiership himself, but his real metier is as a Tory thinker.

Karl Rove started his career as a political consultant, eventually helping George W. Bush get elected Governor of Texas and later, President of the United States. In this conversation, Rove discusses his rise through the business of politics, his days in the White House, and his current career as a historian.  

David Cameron was well prepared to be the British prime minister from 2010 to 2016, after receiving a first-class education at the hands of top historians. He explores how much his schooling in history affected the decisions he took when called upon to make it. 

Understanding the psyche of Russia and the Russians has bewildered Westerners for generations; foremost expert Stephen Kotkin gives some penetrating insights into how to do it.

Distinguished combat commander Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster speaks about his time as President Trump's National Security Adviser, American mistakes during the Vietnam War, his belief in learning from the past to help to think strategically about the present, and finally he discusses what the Biden Administration is getting wrong and right about the Russo-Ukrainian War.

From murderous Jim Crow–era Birmingham, Alabama, via the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, to the defeat of Soviet Communism, the past has had a powerful influence over the worldview of Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former national security advisor and secretary of state. She also comments on the life and career of the late Mikhail Gorbachev.

Sir Richard Dearlove was Chief of Operations of MI6 from 1996 to 1999, and its Chief - known as 'C' - from 1999 to 2004. He speaks of the effect of Kim Philby's treachery on the Service, Cold War victories against the KGB, James Bond and John Le Carré, and the rosy prospects for British Intelligence post-Brexit.

On the occasion of her unprecedented platinum jubilee, Queen Elizabeth’s biographer and star Daily Mail reporter Robert Hardman discusses her use of soft power in Britain’s unwritten constitution.

Ronald Reagan was famously known as the Great Communicator. But who helped the Great Communicator communicate? One of them was Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Robinson, who wrote Reagan's “Tear Down This Wall” speech — one of the most famous speeches of the twentieth century. If you have ever been asked to deliver a speech in public (or even if you haven’t), listen to a master of the genre Peter Robinson speak of the humor, honesty, and honing involved in writing over 150 speeches for a U.S. President. 

In his struggle against the FARC guerrilla movement and his efforts to transform Colombia economically, President Iván Duque has had advisors at his side who include Simon Bolivar and Winston Churchill.

In this episode of Secrets of Statecraft, actual historian Andrew Roberts talks to humorist and self-appointed “historian” Christopher Buckley about the faux pas and its celebrated and checkered past. This episode is brimming with witty repartee and hilarious anecdotes featuring several historically significant figures, and not one faux pas (that we know about ).

John O’Sullivan runs the Danube Institute in Budapest, Hungary. From this vantage point (Hungary shares a common border with Ukraine), he has special insights on the conflict across the border in Ukraine and on the use of statecraft to find a resolution to the conflict. 

A surprising aspect of human nature during warfare is its immutability over the millennia, as classical scholar and Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson shows in our discussion about the Peloponnesian War and the Roman Empire. He illustrates what 5th Century BC Greece can tell us about invasions, charismatic leadership, national honor and courageous resistance today.

An important part of statecraft is learning from the past, and in my first podcast I ask General David Petraeus, who commanded the US-led coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan and was director of the CIA, what he learned about the Vietnam War from his PhD studies at Princeton that helped him in the war against terror.