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What can history’s great armies teach us about the bond between a nation and its military? In a recent podcast we explored this question with Sir Barney White-Spunner, whose new book Nations in Arms: Five Armies That Made Europe examines how five pivotal armies not only won battles but also transformed the societies they served. It’s an “incredibly timely” study, as today’s world reminds us that war can re-emerge even after decades of peace. White-Spunner argues that governments must “fundamentally re-think their relationship with armies and soldiers” in light of modern threats. By looking at five case studies – from…
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What can the Roman legions of Constantine, the Ottoman forces of Mehmet the Conqueror, and the US Army of World War II teach us about modern military power?In this timely episode of the Explaining History Podcast, I speak with former senior British officer and acclaimed military historian Barney White-Spunner about his forthcoming book Nation In Arms (out 14 August). Drawing from five pivotal armies that helped shape the European continent—the Roman, Ottoman, New Model, Prussian, and American—Wh
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To understand the complex dynamics that shaped the modern Middle East, few guides are as insightful as the British historian and author, James Barr. His books, including A Line in the Sand and the one we’ll focus on now, Lords of the Desert, are essential reading for anyone wanting to look behind the curtain of 20th-century geopolitics. Barr, much like the legendary journalist Robert Fisk, has a talent for cutting through official narratives to reveal the raw, often cynical, power struggles that truly drove events. Lords of the Desert picks up this story, charting the fierce, often hidden, rivalry between…
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At the heart of Britain’s war time alliance was a deep wariness at what the outcome of the war would portend. Churchill was desperate for the USA to enter the war and Roosevelt saw the struggle against fascism as vital to America’s security, but the US president like Wilson before him imagined a world without European empires. In this episode we examine James Barr’s excellent book Lords of the Desert and explore the origins of wartime Anglo American rivalries in the Middle East.Newsflash: You ca
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Ongoing and invisible crimes against humanity What comes to mind when you hear the term “economic sanctions”? For many, it sounds like a clean, non-violent, and measured response to a rogue nation’s behaviour. It’s often presented by news outlets and politicians as a firm but fair disciplinary tool—the global community taking away a misbehaving country’s toys. It’s the civilized alternative to bombs and bullets. But what if this perception is completely wrong? What if the sanitized language of foreign policy masks a brutal reality of unimaginable structural violence? A landmark study from the world-renowned medical journal, The Lancet, has pulled back…
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In this episode, we tear away the euphemisms and expose a grim reality: sanctions kill. Drawing on a 2025 study from The Lancet Global Health, we show how economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other powers are responsible for up to 777,000 deaths each year, with children and the elderly most at risk.We trace the history of sanctions from the League of Nations to Iraq, Venezuela, Iran, and beyond. We compare sanctions to siege warfare—and ask why a practice this deadly continues to be framed
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How did neoliberalism go from fringe idea to ruling ideology in the United States? In this deep-dive episode of Explaining History, we trace the hidden rise of America’s most influential right-wing think tanks—Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute and more—from their birth in the 1970s oil-crisis chaos to their role in dismantling the New Deal order.You’ll discover:• The 1971 Powell Memo that sparked a billionaire-funded “war of ideas”.• How a handful of corporate dynasties (K
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Britain’s Austerity TrapWhy is one of the world’s richest countries still behaving like it’s broke?In this episode of Explaining History, we dive into Yanis Varoufakis’s searing critique of Britain’s ongoing austerity dilemma under the new Labour government. Despite hopes for change, Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces the same iron cage of fiscal rules, banker subsidies, and Treasury orthodoxy that has strangled public spending for decades.We unpack the hidden costs of so-called “zombie austerity,”
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The extent to which western soft power and legal and moral authority has been shredded by Gaza is lost upon British, American and European populations for the most part, but across the global south a new movement appears to be coalescing around South Africa and Columbia. In Europe, Ireland and Spain have joined with them and sixteen other global south countries to form the Hague Group, dedicated to upholding international law as it relates to Gaza. This, until quite recently, was inconceivable a
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Warfare had to be re-propagandised in the 20th Century, particularly in the western world, as a moral crusade. Mass democracy determined that leaders needed to present war as a manichean struggle between freedom and tyranny. The end of the Tsarist regime and the intervention of a liberal American president in the First World War was an ideal opportunity to re-invent conflict as moral crusade in the defence of freedom. The arguments that British, American and other NATO leaders present in the 21s
Explaining History Podcast
Month: July 2025
July 2025
/ War