Shashank Joshi
speaker
307 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 22 Jul
Shashank Joshi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
When I started this role in 2018,
The biggest questions were over Donald Trump's handling of North Korea, and there seemed like a very real risk of war, perhaps even nuclear war, on the Korean peninsula.
That calmed down, and then of course we saw the great withdrawal from Afghanistan in twenty twenty-one, the debarkle of American troops leaving in chaotic fashion out of Kabul.
And I did remember thinking at the time, God, that was busy, but at least next year we'll be a little bit calmer.
At the time Vladimir Putin's armies were slowly building up on the edges of Ukraine, and that is what would come to dominate the rest of my time in this job.
On top of that, of course, have been the incredibly destructive post-October 7th wars in the Middle East, in Lebanon, in Gaza, in Iran, alongside an array of lesser, though often similarly bloody ones around the world.
There was a great military historian, Michael Howard, and he once observed that the profession of the soldier was unique, he said, in that he may have to exercise it only once in a lifetime, indeed that often.
It was as if a professional swimmer had to spend his life practicing on dry land, for an Olympic championship, on which the fortunes of his entire nation depended.
The soldier therefore turns to the wars of others, past and present, to discern the future.
For after all allowances have been made for historical differences, wars still resemble each other more than they resemble any other human activity.
That's always stuck with me because I think it tells us why we look at these wars around us.
Beyond the importance of documenting them and understanding the human experience, they teach us about what could be to come and what could happen elsewhere.
There's been a big change in how we consume, interpret, talk about war.
I think of America's current leadership, for instance, which sometimes appears to revel in conflict and in war.
Donald Trump talks about torpedoing Iranian ships as being fun.
We have seen the Department of War release these slick music videos which blend Hollywood clips with battlefield footage.
In a way that really glorifies that.
I'm also fascinated by this profusion of first-person view drone footage from Ukraine.
From fire.
Depicting the terrified or resigned faces of cornered Russian or Ukrainian soldiers.
Showing 141–160 of 307 · page 8 of 16
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