What Does 250 Years Of War Teach Us About American Strategy?

What can 250 years of American military history teach us about today’s challenges? Hoover senior fellow Michael Boskin talks with Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon, author of To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution, about how American military strategy has evolved from the Revolution and the Civil War through two world wars, the Cold War, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Boskin and O’Hanlon examine where American strategy has succeeded, where it has fallen short, and why deterrence, containment, and alliances have often proved as important as battlefield victories. They also consider what those lessons mean for today’s challenges, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, China and Taiwan, NATO, emerging military technologies, defense spending, and O’Hanlon’s case for “resolute restraint” in American foreign policy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael O’Hanlon is the inaugural holder of the Philip H. Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy and director of research in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy and budgets, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He is a senior fellow and directs the Strobe Talbott Center on Security, Strategy, and Technology. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and Columbia University, a Lampert Scholar at Colgate University, and a former member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board from 2021 to 2025. His newest book, timed to coincide with the nation’s 250th birthday, is To Dare Mighty Things: U.S. Defense Strategy Since the Revolution (Yale Press, 2026).