The US Military vs. the Environment, With Gretchen Heefner
An American Prestige bonus interview.
The Nation Podcasts
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The US Military vs. the Environment w/ Gretchen Heefner | American Prestige
Danny and Derek speak with historian Gretchen Heefner about how the US military (unsuccessfully) set out to conquer extreme environments and what those efforts reveal about empire, climate, and power. They discuss the US Army training for a desert war that turned out to be mud, the Pentagon’s disastrous attempts to master Greenland’s ice, early blueprints for building on the moon, efforts to gather “environmental intelligence” across the globe, and other failed endeavors showing the limits of American military power.
Read Gretchen’s book Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How U.S. Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments now!
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Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance stand with Col. Susan Meyers, commander of the US military’s Pituffik Space Base, as they tour the base on March 28, 2025 in Pituffik, Greenland.
(Jim Watson / Pool / Getty Images)Danny and Derek speak with historian Gretchen Heefner about how the US military (unsuccessfully) set out to conquer extreme environments and what those efforts reveal about empire, climate, and power. They discuss the US Army training for a desert war that turned out to be fought in mud, the Pentagon’s disastrous attempts to master Greenland’s ice, early blueprints for building on the moon, efforts to gather “environmental intelligence” across the globe, and other failed endeavors showing the limits of American military power.
Read Gretchen’s book Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How U.S. Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments now!
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The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Can American Power Be Redeemed? w/ Shadi Hamid | American Prestige
Danny and Derek are joined by Shadi Hamid, columnist at The Washington Post and author of The Case for American Power, to talk about American hegemony and Hamid’s argument for it as a morally preferable and potentially reformable force in international politics. They discuss Gaza and the crisis of liberal internationalism, democracy and self-correction, American decline, China and Russia, intervention and restraint, the Middle East exception, Libya and “humanitarian war,”and whether it is possible to separate the “good” uses of American power from the bad.
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Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
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