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Radio War Nerd EP #100 — Africa War Reporting with Jeffrey Gettleman + Call-In Questions (Patreon)

Published:
2017-09-06 20:21:26
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

Guest: Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times correspondent & author

The War Nerd celebrates the show's 100th episode by answering calls from RWN newsletter subscribers . . . Afterwards, we talk to the New York Times' longtime East Africa correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman about war reporting in hot zones from Ogaden and South Sudan to eastern Congo; Kenya elections & ethnic violence; what it's like to get kidnapped; and his new book Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War & Survival . . . 

Total time: 2:51:12

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

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Comments

Aaron R

Wow my favorite episode in my huge backlog so far.

Tom Nolan

I’m here after hearing the latest episode with Ryan grim.

Aiden

And… yikes. Saccharine indeed

Henry Hamilton

That was amazing. Congratulations to both of you on the 100th episode. As someone else has said, best $10 I spend each month.

Avery

I tried to use John's aircraft carrier article in an argument with a fellow war nerd, and he claimed fiercely that aircraft carriers will always win in conventional war, as long as they have stealth on their side. He had some logic about why they are very stealthy objects. Also, since I was late with my call-in, I guess that means you're going to play it on future show, and there will be an extremely sleep deprived, 4am me congratulating you on 100 shows and making an incoherent, bad joke for over a minute. Please delete it if you can. But regardless, congratulations!

big microbe

Maybe they paint the aircraft carrier with that "Dazzle" pattern, that stuff'll blend right in with the ocean...

Mark Morales

The best explanation I've heard for the fall of Spain is that they spent too much of their money on wars. For their entire golden age, it was constant war against the French, the English, the Ottomans, North Africans, the Dutch, and even the Swedes in the Thirty Years' War. It was the wars that combined with inflation to produce their constant bankruptcies, and that

Mark Morales

prevented them from doing anything productive with the obscene amounts of money coming in.

Richard Kim

Spanish decline is a fascinating topic for a future show. I’m only a dilettante on the topic but here are some stuff to keep in mind in order to avoid falling for popular explanations. One, the inflation (known as the Price revolution among historians) was Europe-wide so Spain was hardly the only one affected. Two, while Spanish trade and production did not develop as well as that of England or the Netherlands, attributing this to Spanish entrepreneurs preferring to invest in high-yield long-term government bonds rather than domestic industries is inadequate because plenty of foreigners also held those same bonds. Three, you often hear that Spain went bankrupt multiple times during Philip II’s reign, but what few realize is that Spain never defaulted on its long-term loans, only on its short-term loans. And there’s been some recent research that concluded that defaults on these short-term loans happened when there were unpredictable financial shocks that left the Spanish crown temporarily unable to meet a scheduled payment. By calling bankruptcy, Spain wasn’t completely defaulting on its loans, but it was more akin to renegotiating payment schedules. The last thing Spain would have wanted to do was completely alienate the European financiers that it relied heavily upon. As such, the so-called bankruptcies don’t quite reflect Spain’s inability to pay, but rather illiquidity of funds, which is why bankers found lending money to Spain profitable overall and continued to do so despite these periodic bankruptcies. Four, Spain did fight many prohibitively expensive wars, but the same could be said about other European powers. Great Britain in particular racked up enormous amounts of debt in the 18th century right at the time it was becoming a major global power so you can’t simply say that high debts leads to decline. For example, compare Britain’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 74% in the 18th century to that of Castile in the late 16th century, which was more around 50%. Some of the more recent explanations for Spain’s decline approach the problem from institutional angle, in which Spain’s so-called “absolute monarchy” made up for an incoherent and inefficient ruling state. There was a tendency for larger and larger portion of society to buy their way into nobility and earn tax exempt status, leaving most of the burden on the least able to pay. The Spanish state was largely unable to overturn this problem and it failed to centralize to the same degree as their European neighbours. One study shows that both the total and per-capita tax revenue in Spain stagnated and declined from the mid-16th century, whereas France and England saw large increases. Of course there are other approaches, too. Much of Spain’s so-called spectacular military victories like the Battle of Lepanto, Battle of Pavia, or Battle of Muhlberg failed to result in any real long-term gains. Demographically, Castile, the core of the Spanish empire, saw a decline in the 17th century. And culturally, the Spanish empire failed to give temporarily acquired European territories like Portugal, Netherlands, or Naples any reason to want to stay in the empire, thereby resulting in the loss of those territories (there were also revolts in Aragon and Catalonia but Spain managed to hang onto them at least). It’s pretty interesting to read about how the Spaniards themselves felt about their decline which they called the “desengaño” (disenchantment). They certainly weren’t out of ideas on how to reform their society, but there was a failure to implement these ideas successfully. Seems a little reminiscent to contemporary America, where an active minority has plenty of ideas to fix the country, but more and more of the populace are just kind of becoming disillusioned with everything.

Benjamin Glover

Massive congrats you two, and Brendan for bringing the thunder with his audio engineering skills

Henry

Plus there was a general climatic crisis in the 1600s combined with unrest in Portugal and Catalonia.

michiganpizza

Congratulations on your 100th episode! Hope you guys are financially more comfortable now. The community really appreciates your work and I always wanted to help beyond books (also preordered the 'War Nerd Iliad') and magazine subscriptions. Glad that there are now platforms to make this possible. An episode with Yves Smith would be awesome! (And speaking of MSM narratives... The Libya and Syria examples make him sound especially clueless. Great contrast for a centennial episode.)

radiowarnerd

Thanks! If the Q & A format works, we'll stick with it.

radiowarnerd

OK, we'll try to delete it. Don't kill us if we forget. PS your friend has a real future in stand-up comedy.

radiowarnerd

Yeah, Brendan is the key. He makes us sound almost human.

radiowarnerd

Thanks for your support. It's certainly made our life a lot easier. We're working to get Yves on the show.

Irish Partizan

Great show guys and I'm glad to support it. Btw, what is the name of your theme tune and can I download it anywhere?

Joel

Honestly don't know to how to describe the episode except to say it was lovely. The first part felt extremely intimate and honest and the interview was fighting and informative. Just.. great?

Christopher Rao

In keeping with the importance of patreon to pay for true journalism, what about a web page dedicated to the ways in which various other entities have been funded - and the positions taken. John and Mark have blown my mind time and again exposing the funding of Malcolm Gladwell, ACLU, VICE news, etc. But these powerful figures fight hard to keep things hidden, so it's sometimes tough to find. A cheat sheet of shame would be cool :)

Karl

Just as a small side note, there's also a half hour time zone in Australia; Adelaide (and the rest of South Australia fwiw) is a half hour behind the eastern states, because Reasons.

Patrick Reilly

Must I be the one to mention Newfoundland???

Ghu Ribun

How do you insert proper links like that? I'm jealous!

Fabian Destouches

<xa href="www.siteyouwanttolinkto">Name of your Link.</xa> Remove the Xs

Lukas Pfannenstiel

John and Mark: I'm late to comment but congrats for passing the century mark with RWN and for the continued success of the show. I've been really intrigued by Mark's comments in the past couple of shows about the collapse of the USSR being largely a voluntary act by the Soviet elites, and I'd love to hear more about it (I suppose it counts as "war" - related in the sense that it marked the formal end of the Cold War) . For such a significant historical event, I don't think most people know much about the nuts and bolts of why it happened when it did. Anyway, that's my two cents. I. Really look forward to the next 100 episodes.

Ryan McCarthy

So, how about getting Cmdr Peacock on the show? Seriously, see if Jeffrey can get you in touch wit him and if he wants to talk about his experience

Ben Hosen

Another great episode and congrats, I'm glad this took off enough to be worthwhile for you guys. Also glad that you seem to enjoy it. (Mentally picture para after para of rambling praise, w/ emphasis on the interviews and the people & books you've steered me towards.) Both replies to the question about youthful RW ideas & Mark's reply to the question about Marxism in particular were excellent and thought provoking. (Even if "I find your lack of faith disturbing", lol.) Another 100 please!

Stefan

Hi, great episode - congrats on nbr. 100. I could have misunderstood but in answering one of the subscriber questions it sounded like a downplaying of the increasingly key role of space-based military capabilities, and an ongoing militarization of space. Maybe that can be a subject for an upcoming program? (And recently the US House passed a bill to require the Pentagon to establish a separate "Space Corps" in the Air Force.)

Alexius

I thought this episode was very powerful and moving, especially when you two were discussing your ideological backgrounds. It made me think of a book I read in college called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, that allowed to me to finally understand why a large amount of people may have different views and political motivations than I do. I think you two would really enjoy it. A part that really stuck with me was when Haidt said he only understood American conservatism while studying abroad in India and being immersed in that culture.

Emilia Leese

I am catching up. Finally listened to this today. You know my interest in certain African countries. And this was very very good and thought provoking with respect to many questions and issue we face daily. Thanks for jumping in re Rwanda. That was important to clarify. Still the best money I spend every month.

eh

Since there was some discussion about Swedish early modern armies I thought I'd chime in. I'll admit I've only read one real book on the subject but the Swedish army went semiprofessional in the late 17th c under Karl XI, where every administrative unit was expected to supply a certain number of soldiers, who were provided with a plot of land and a natura wage in exchange for showing up for drills several times a year and wartime service. This was an extension of a system that had existed in part of the country before, but was universalized due to the high cost of hiring mercenaries and the problems caused by high mortality rates among poorly trained peasant conscripts in a nation with a low population.

eh

There's some talk about the relative independence of Swedish peasants enabling this, but I honestly don't know if this is nationalist mythology or holds up to an actual comparison with other nations. At the very least the absolute contempt for conscripts in tsarist Russia presumably is linked to the strength of the institution of serfdom.