The Study of Modern Warfare by Military Historian Victor Davis Hanson [video 34min]
Through the course of this interview, he addresses the issues surrounding the situation in Iraq and goes further into the state of military history as a discipline in universities, and finally, his opinions on the 2008 presidential candidates as prospective commanders-in-chief.
The interview begins, with comment from Peter Robinson: "A World War. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, military historian Elliot Cohen, critic and commentator Norman Podhoretz, all term the struggle against Islamic extremism: a new world war."
Is it a world war? That is the question. The answer is yes and no. Hanson believes that although the war is, according to history, a world war because its global scale. However, it is not the conventional warfare of World War I and World War II, with tanks and trenches. It is a new world war, a war against an enemy that does not possess this conventional technology of war.
For the range of topics covered in this interview, it is a succinct study in the application of military history in contemporary culture.
Hanson has written on subjects of history ranging from Greek to military to modern history. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.