Radio War Nerd EP #586 — Air Power & The Escalation Trap, feat. Robert Pape
Guest: Robert Pape
Recorded: March 3, 2026
We talk to air war expert Robert Pape about the strategic failures of air wars in the age of precision weapons, the escalation trap the failure presents, and how it relates to the US-Israeli war on Iran.
Subscribe to Prof. Pape's substack, Escalation Trap.
Buy his book Bombing To Win: Air Power & Coercion in War
Follow Prof. Pape on Twitter.
Total time: 1:01:09
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Buy & review John Dolan's new book, They Should Have Been Hanged: War Nerd Essays on the U.S. Civil War
Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd
Sound production by Telescope Audio
Comments (87)
Couldn’t tell you how many times I was assigned to read Professor Pape during my IS undergrad days. Great episode.
Nvjh
I admire Marks enduring fondness for Naipaul
“Imagine if Iran sprinkled some uranium onto drones going to Riyadh.” He need not imagine, American using depleted Uranium munitions in BOTH gulf wars?
accusation = confession, imperial ideology is a mental illness, straight up freudian repression & projection. bet you he can't even comprehend the irony cuz if he did then the cognitive dissonance might kill him.
The part at the end about Iran doing "international terrorism" just oof. What a chud.
He’s an ass. I overall appreciated the interview but this guy sucks and his continuous humble brags about being involved with the evilest people on earth were nauseating.
It seems to me the only lesson the US learned from the Gulf War is that they need to control domestic morale through propaganda (and possibly, control of elections) rather than any sort of tactical or strategic change. Effectively controlling the repercussions from ‘the long game’ talked about in this episode
Only thing is, are they even trying with the propaganda war anymore? With Venezuela and Iran they are barely even going out of their way to justify or explain strategy, even by US empire standards haha .
THERE'S A LIBERAL CALLED FOUCAULT LMFAO
enjoying the interview a lot, but had to pause it as my sides were starting to hurt too much after I heard that it's sort of endearing in a 'this is what Europeans imagine cowboys are like'-sort of way great guest and great respectful poker faces throughout the interview Mark and John
James Wright on Harding made me think of American Mercury--Mencken and Nathan moved over to it after getting fired from The Smart Set for wanting to publish a satirical column after the president died, apparently they felt he was being treated too reverentially in death.
1968-73 Vietnam was a sterling example of air power deployed in victory ( not GVN tho)
My name is Curtis LeMay and I’m openly woke
Curtis LeGay
This rocks
Foucault rolling in his grave being called a liberal
Tbf there are definitely circles and instances where he can be called a liberal. It's just definitely not the American conception of liberalism. Or even the modern day European sensibility regarding it. His entire ideological bend just doesn't really exist anymore but hey that's not anything to do with him. Not his fault Europe is basically doing hitlers plan for unity and America has decided that Reagan was too woke
Great interview. Imo, ignore the misguided people getting unnecessarily upset about how the guests worldview doesnt align perfectly with theirs.
I’m a little surprised at those comments, over the years Mark and John have had great conversations with subject-matter experts they might not necessarily always agree with on everything.
Probably should wait to see how the "shahad drone vs. patriot missle" situation plays out before worrying about uranium and suicide vests.
Wish this guy would Foucault off. Good interview all the same. His perspective on air power is correct and interesting. Shame that all of the presidents and military personnel he’s apparently advised don’t seem to listen to him.
Interesting point at the end about the tilt of the gulf states and the instability within them. Instead of using the IRGC to attack the US through Mexico, they are probably much better placed to be used in the gulf states to sew unrest there. Those states are what are really up for grabs in this war long term. Will their populations of migrant workers remain dormant for the duration of this conflict? I’m not so sure.
I’d love to hear what Annibale has to say about the air war in WWII. My understanding is that the current historical consensus is that strategic bombing had mixed results, and was proven to have the opposite effect on German morale than was once thought.
I’ve been thinking the same thing
Great interview
Agree.
Those sleeper cells have been sleeping since Reagan. Somebody might want to go and check on them.
I know everybody pissed off at US war state right now, but the show is called radio war nerd, not radio anti-imperialism. They interview people inside the system regularly
Fantastic episode. Please have this guy on again.
Politics is always a tricky thing for a war nerd because in addition to war being evil, we’re also doing it wrong.
Good insight here, though I consider the Professor to be much more on the “bad guy” side compared to the countries and regimes that he considers to be bad.
I did chuckle at the way he phrased that but I sort of interpreted it as having air quotes as in that's the conflict framing. Although I'm sure, given his institutional status, that he does consider the empire to be the good guys generally, which of course doesn't invalidate his assessment of air power's effectiveness.
I don't understand people getting upset by this guest - the old adage of perfect being the enemy of good is in full view here.
Yeah. I mean, you have to go to the source, and a a viewer, its always your responsibility to consider a fuller context. At the end of the day, the only question is, does this person have legitimacy and integrity in terms of the message they convey.
Cyrus ep or Ashlar needed
Always kind of annoying you know Mark and John familiarise themselves with a guest's work and the guest doesn't know RWN audience at all
tbh that's probably a good thing; if he knew his audience would be a bunch of anti-imperialist malcontents he may not have taken the interview
What a ghoul.
Wild to be literate enough to write and book and still stupid enough to believe that there were totally Iranian assassination attempts that just aren't giving the details on. He should have said that at the start of the interview and saved me an hour.
So if that 3-5 min segment was cut out, you would have thought this was a good interview? Wild
great ep. I do think there’s way too many “regimes” dropping on this though. It’s tine to listen to Iranians, like your past guest. A “regime” is a government that’s in our targets
Foucault got fisted by reality, among others, in Iran.
Even with the killing of that one cartel leader, I will automatically dismiss as atomically and unremittingly braindead anyone who suggests terrorists will or could cross the Mexican border. The biggest security factor keeping terrorists from using the border is the combined might and paranoia of the cartels themselves. No group has more to lose than the cartels if anyone ever got through and it’s not even close. So, fuck all that noise. Until we go to war with them for real, they will keep anyone out better than DHS etc. ever could.
Yeh that was kind if weird. Plus was he implying the iranian regime sent over all the terrorists before trump got elected ? Seems retarded if so. But the interview was still solid imo.
I agree that Wright is one of the great hit and miss poets. "I have wasted my life" is so brilliant because he leaves it completely ambiguous if its meant in a positive or negative sense. It just kind of hangs there beautifully
Khamenei was 86, dying of cancer, and got to go out like Imam Husayn for his people. I don't get why him staying at his home is such a mystery for people
With his family though? His wife and a 2 year old granddaughter (if true)
Kind of unbelievable to suggest that Iran is the actor likeliest to push the nuclear button, and would do so to target… Riyadh? Good interview overall but this guy is as blinkered by his proximity to the US state as anyone he presumes to criticize.
You should do a series on the Kosovo War(maybe a co-production with tenepod?), there are so many lies still in circulation about it and is extremely relevant for so many things happening right now
So you just let him blow smoke unchallenged at minute 53 huh?
What did you want to challenge him on
Honestly this is the best case for an interview that the “audience” may disagree with “ideologically”
The poem (loosely defined) that's been sticking in my head all week, given the news, is from Paul Simon's "Gumboots" (Rhythm of the Saints, 1986): "Believing I had supernatural powers, I slammed into a brick wall / I said, 'Hey, is this my problem? Is this my fault?'"
Loved the episode! Realky good. You briefly talked about Iran not deploying terrorism like they migjt have done in the 80s. But wouldn't that destroy the advantage that the have with regards to the domestic politics dimension in the US and Israel? In think the guest stated that as one of the factors for iran as well. Also international sympathy for Iran would take a massive hit i should think
Really good
Excellent interview and a very helpful addition to what will certainly be a series on this war. Perhaps the next War Nerd book will be entitled, "Trump's Folly or Why Children Are Not Allowed to Play With Matches," or "Idiots, Anvils, and Explosives." Napoleon is supposed to have said, "You can do many things with a bayonet, except sit on one." Replace "bayonet" with --air power-- and the quote still works.
Great episode. Robert Pape is a legend (for people who say things like Robert Pape is a legend). His book “dying to win: the strategic logic of suicide terrorism” is also a great read. IdPol warriors in the comments: unfortunately right-wing war nerds are sometimes (rarely) on the money! His framework holds, forget the rest.
This guest is kind of like macgregor; good on Russia, horrible on everything else
The point of gutting international terrorism intelligence is because trump wants to focus on hunting American thought-criminals. The only schism in MAGA is the one between people who want trump to bomb Iran and the ones that want trump to bomb Michigan.
I love y’all but I have to ask, guys… are aircraft carriers actually better defended than you’ve said they are over the years? Does the USA’s missile interception technology make up for them being huge floating targets?
I think this falls more into the category of “do you want to escalate to the point where you sink a small city”
Such a great interview, thanks
Not to be one of those “avengers assemble” ass commenters, but I wonder what a desert storm collaboration with Prof. Pape and Col. Wilkerson would look like
Great guest and enlightening episode. I can’t help but notice a dearth of information coming out in our media about this massively consequential event either. Perhaps another sign things aren’t going exactly “to plan”? I am also interested in seeing how the princedoms around the gulf react to these events as well. It’s not just helping Israel, but considering reports that US troops fled the bases to local civilian hotel rooms and all of our anti missile defenses are being used to protect Israel, it begs to question what kind of bargain these guys really signed up for.
WAPO fired all their ME correspondents a week or two prior. Oops. I think the US media has fired and closed so many of their foreign offices that they're effectively relying on the BBC and twitter randos for foreign coverage at this point. They're at the point of covering events live from....Arlington, Virginia.
Get this man on for more shows- there is a depth of knowledge about every conflict since desert storm that is begging to be recorded
That absolutely flew by, great interview. I appreciated the guest's efforts to offer the likely strategic war-planning perspectives of both sides
*ahem* it FLEW by
Im sorry did this supposedly "serious" guest insinuate that Iran snuck terrorists over the border with the help of the Mexican "Cartels". This guy watched the shitty Sicario sequel and confused that for reality. Oh my god, he just brought up dirty bombs, they dont work as a radiological weapon. This guy needs to stop watching movies.
not defending his natsec chauvinist worldview but what do you mean dirty bombs don't work as radiological weapons? seems pretty straightforward that if you spread radioactive material over an area it will harm people in that area, what am i missing?
Legitimately very interesting guest. It is remarkable to me to have such a robust knowledge of the US imperial military strategy, its hubris and duplicity, and yet still think it’s a cause worthy of advising and at least tacitly supporting
It's the academic type! Like the moment when he thinks he's introducing Foucault to the war nerds: I've seen that exact scene play out with other academics. He seems knowledgeable, just constrained.
Really good interview. The guest seems very knowledgeable and ill definitely check out his writing. It was very grating to hear someone refer to adversaries of the US empire as "The bad guys" and claiming that post revolution iran was much worse than under the Shah is just preposterous. Or pretending that there is any validity to the idea that iran is planning to kill trump (and therefore its good trump is hostile to south america bc theres iranians in mexico?) rather than that being something he made up whole cloth to warmonger/grift/make himself important in the media etc Especially from someone that according to himself had "adviced every US administration since 9/11" on military matters and therefore is, if not directly involved in war crimes and the immiseration of millions, certainly worked very closely with war criminals. I get that Mark and John don't want to drive off potential guests by being overly hostile but I would have liked a little bit more pushback I feel like Danny and Derek from American Prestige often get a good balance of disagreeing with the guest while still keeping the conversation going (not always but usually)
American Exception does a good job of this too, his interviews with people who know the machine from the inside are always enlightening. Larry Wilkerson said we’d be at war with Iran by Xmas like a year ago, he wasn’t far off.
Great episode. Thank you.
Thanks as always, lovely and terrifying interview in equal measure. I can't stop listening to Butthole Surfers - Jet Fighter in relation to all this, the sentiment just feels on point somehow. https://youtu.be/N7oo-Ynds3Q?si=oSr7Bvr0_aq8nqwE
great song, stood out on their otherwise weakest album
Thanks
Appreciate the effort y'all are putting into the show , including guests from another perspective.
that was an extroardinary interview; this guy has a really comprehensive approach to thinking about strategy & he's an incredibly clear communicator, i gotta check out his writing
You guys always get great guests. I suppose you'll be very busy over the next few weeks.
Incredible episode!
I don’t understand what they think makes the Iranian government an order of magnitude weaker than Assad was? Assad held on by a thread and a prayer for a decade of bombing and intense pressure from irregular forces below. A state I have always assumed to be much stronger and much more secure is going to fall in a couple of months? I appreciate this analysis a lot. It just seems so obvious that this isn’t going to achieve its goals unless we send in the Marines. Maybe we’ll do that, but I don’t think the US political environment supports it.
What would the tiny Marine Corp do in the 90m country?
I heard Iran bagged another today and they’re getting radar lock on F35s. I wonder when Iran is gonna put a couple missile destroyers at the bottom of the sea
Why did you just credulously accept the claim that Iran had anything to do with attempts in Trump’s life? More of that kind of gullibility and you’ll be telling me Iran is days away from having a nuke.