New Books in National Security Podcast
1) Aaron Bateman. "Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative" (MIT Press, 2024)
A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond. In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked ...Show More
2) Jonathan Sumption, "The Challenges of Democracy: And the Rule of Law" (Profile Books, 2026)
Across the globe, democracy is in crisis - in the UK alone, it has been rocked by Brexit, the pandemic and successive attempts by governments to bypass legal norms. But how did this happen, and where...Show More
3) Filip Kovacevic, "KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
KGB Literati: Spy Fiction and State Security in the Soviet Union (University of Toronto Press, 2025) offers a first-ever glimpse into the mysterious and long-ignored world and work of Soviet spies- an...Show More
4) Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the campaign against the Islamic State beginn...Show More
Samuel Helfont, "The Iraq Wars: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
1:02:15 | Dec 24th, 2025
5) Erik Lin-Greenberg, "The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)
In The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft (Cornell UP, 2025), Erik Lin-Greenberg shows that drones are rewriting the rules of international security, but not in ways one would expect. E...Show More
6) Julian Schmid, "Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)
Marvel, DC and US Security: The Superhero Genre and Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Edinburgh UP, 2025) by Dr. Julian Schmid considers how the long-standing superhero genre has been reinvi...Show More
7) Magda Long et. al., "Covert Action: National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention (Georgetown UP, 2025)
Covert action is generally understood as unacknowledged interference by one state in the affairs of another state or non-state actor to affect change. This definition, inspired from the US approach, d...Show More
8) Nina Wilén, "Securitizing the Sahel: Analyzing External Interventions and Their Consequences" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Sahel has become a focal point of international security interventions, with external actors providing extensive security force assistance (SFA) to local military, police, and paramilitary forces....Show More
9) 13.5 - John Holmwood
In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke with Professor John Holmwood about the UK’s Prevent policy, part of the Counter Terror Strategy concerned with radicalisation. We discussed the tr...Show More
10) John Jackson, "Special Advocates in the Adversarial System" (Routledge, 2020)
Special Advocates in the Adversarial System (Routledge, 2020) uncovers the little known phenomenon of Special Advocates who represent the best interests of an excluded party in closed trials. Professo...Show More
John Jackson, "Special Advocates in the Adversarial System" (Routledge, 2020)
1:13:25 | Nov 14th, 2025