Ep 129: Frank Gavin on Nuclear Strategy and Ukraine (War in Ukraine #2)

School of War

Frank Gavin, the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS and contributor to War in Ukraine: Conflict, Strategy, and the Return of a Fractured World, joins the show to talk about nuclear strategy and the war in Ukraine.

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Times

• 01:36 Introduction

• 01:53 What are nuclear weapons for?

• 04:15 Pervasive but not used

• 09:53 Invasion insurance

• 17:58 Better to be near-nuclear

• 22:26 How might Putin use nuclear weapons?

• 26:04 Learning by doing

• 33:48 “It’s all happening at once”

• 41:31 Rattling the saber works

• 48:04 “We will get them back”

• 50:07 History and Strategy

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