Get the Ricochet app

Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Become a member.

Tired of the toxicity of social media? Why not join Ricochet for just $5/month? Think of it as an online bar. Come in, have a drink, hang out, say whatever you want. But don’t badger, bully, or berate the other drinkers. That's our only rule.

‘Cocktails From Hell,’ With Col. Austin Bay

Subscribe to 3 Whisky Happy HourSubscribe

This week's special guest is Col. Austin Bay, author of a lively new book on foreign affairs and grand strategy, Cocktails From Hell: Five Complex Wars Shaping the 21st Century. Austin Bay has an extraordinary biography, including earning a Bronze Star for his service in the Iraq War. But that is only the beginning. Austin is the author or co-author of more than a dozen books (including a novel or two), a widely syndicated columnist on military and foreign affairs for Creators Syndicate, associate editor at StrategyPage, a frequent guest on TV and radio, and a fellow blogger for our friends at Instapundit. Did I also mention he plays jazz piano and has a Ph.D in English literature from Columbia?

Our leisurely conversation covers a lot of ground, including China, Iran, North Korea and the Congo (yes—the Congo), as well as some detours into the legacy of Andy Marshall, the great strategic thinker who passed away recently. (Marshall had the nickname "Yoda" around the Pentagon.) And since the book title refers to cocktails, we get Austin's favorite recipe as a bonus.

Transition music today was picked to fit the general theme: "The Permanent Way" by Big, Big Train (since the nature of strategic things are permanent in their essential nature, no matter what century it is); "Better Weather" by Good Old War; and "Army" by Ben Folds Five.

Host:
Steve Hayward

Discussion (1)

  • Texmoor@Texmoor

    Great interview! I look forward to checking out his book.

    Maybe it's just me but COL Bay sounded liked Jimmy Stewart with a serious cigar habit. I wish I could have taken a class with him at UT.