New Books in Military History · Marshall Poe

Our Age of War: A Discussion with Author Robert Pape

·43 min·3 clips

Pape warns that a failed-state Iran could create a “loose nuke problem” involving enriched uranium and radiological weapons.

1. New Books in Military History features Paul Starobin speaking with Robert A. Pape about war, political violence, and the present international order. 2. Robert A. Pape is a University of Chicago political scientist whose books include Dying to Win and Bombing to Win, and Paul Starobin introduces him as a specialist in international security affairs. 3. The episode asks whether the 21st century is becoming an “age of war” and whether the more precise label is Pape’s “age of violent populism.” 4. Pape says he started The Escalation Trap before the war he expected began, and he frames the project as a longer argument about escalation. 5. He points to 2014 Crimea, the Donbass, Israel and Gaza, and Iran near the Straits of Hormuz as examples of connected escalation. 6. Pape argues that political violence has been normalizing through a ratchet effect, with periods of retreat followed by renewed increases. 7. He says expectations matter as much as behavior, because once violence feels normal, thresholds and tripwires become easier to cross. 8. Starobin asks whether the pattern is rooted in human nature or structure, and Pape answers by invoking Hobbes and Locke. 9. Pape describes Hobbes as emphasizing insecurity and the drive for power, while Locke adds that hurting others brings retaliation. 10. He presents the post-World War II order as a Lockean system built to reduce war, not to eliminate it. 11. Pape says that system has been “coming unglued” for almost 20 years, rather than collapsing in a single shock. 12. He argues that the United States is undergoing two historic changes: a shift from a white majority to a white minority, and a major wealth shift to the top 0.1%. 13. He says those changes make politics feel existential and help normalize radicalism on both the right and the left. 14. Pape extends the same logic to Europe, which he says is seeing similar social changes and more political violence in France and Britain. 15. He describes Donald Trump as a manifestation of these shifts and says Kamala Harris also represented them from the left. 16. He connects the domestic pattern to Republican divisions, including a 44% split in polling over the Iran war. 17. Pape says Trump’s anti-establishment coalition contains two strands: one that wants more use of American power, and another that opposes forever wars. 18. Starobin brings up Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, and a Munich speech about Western civilization, and Pape places those debates in a civilizational frame. 19. The interview has a fast, argumentative back-and-forth style, with Starobin pressing on first principles while Pape moves between political theory and military strategy. 20. Listeners interested in U.S. foreign policy, Iran, Israel, Trump, and political theory will get the most from it; listeners wanting a short, non-theoretical recap may skip it.

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