The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

Xi Jinping and Donald Trump just met in South Korea, agreeing to suspend the most acute aspects of economic warfare for 12 months, lowering US tariffs on Chinese goods, and resuming Chinese purchases of US soybeans. But Dr. Van Jackson explains why the inter-imperialist rivalry between China and the US endures, why talk of a G2 is premature, and what needs to be done to address the structural sources of great-power competition. 

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Part II of our crossover episode with The Bang-Bang Podcast! Van and Lyle are joined by Sam Ratner, Policy Director at Win Without War, and Andy Facini, Communications Director at the Council on Strategic Risks, to discuss WarGames, John Badham’s Cold-War techno-thriller that accidentally foresaw the age of algorithmic warfare. What begins as a teenage prank—Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman breaking into what he thinks is a computer game—quickly becomes a meditation on automation, deterrence, and human judgment in systems built to annihilate. Together, the group unpacks how WarGames’ “WOPR” supercomputer prefigures today’s AI decision-making, where machines l...

Free crossover episode with The Bang-Bang Podcast! Van and Lyle are joined by Sam Ratner, Policy Director at Win Without War, and Andy Facini, Communications Director at the Council on Strategic Risks, to discuss WarGames, John Badham’s Cold-War techno-thriller that accidentally foresaw the age of algorithmic warfare.

What begins as a teenage prank—Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman breaking into what he thinks is a computer game—quickly becomes a meditation on automation, deterrence, and human judgment in systems built to annihilate. Together, the group unpacks how WarGames’ “WOPR” supercomputer prefigures today’s AI decision-making, where machines learn t...

The RAND Corporation just cut 11% of staff--which is a further sign of a crisis of capital accumulation. The CIA is maybe rethinking China. The Trump administration is accelerating decoupling from China. Progressives and antiwar organizations send an open letter to Trump about detente with China. Graham Platner's tattoo is getting way too much attention, and also the reason he'll beat Susan Collins. Steve Bannon says Trump will be president in 2028, despite being unconstitutional.

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What it means that the Department of War just revoked the press credentials for more than 100 media outlets. Why the China trade crisis is a self-imposed Cuban Missile Crisis that could nuke the global economy (China has predictable control of critical minerals). Trump's covert action authorization against Venezuela is part of Monroe Doctrine 2.0. Why the criminal charges against Ashley Tellis signal a more perilous age for foreign policy analysts. And what Gaza ceasefire does and does not mean. And why everyone but Matt looks forward to pumpkin-spice latte season. 

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Jamie Merchant, author of Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline, wants you to stop thinking like a policymaker! He joins the pod to talk about a new essay he has in The Brooklyn Rail about the decline and decay of the "progressive managerial state." Van and Jamie also discuss their shared critique of the book Trade Wars Are Class Wars, the contradiction of Trump's tariffs, their mixed evaluation of Adam Tooze, why international relations as a discipline appears to be in terminal decline, the ideological conflicts within MAGA and what it has to do with a crisis of capital...

Pete Hegseth's fat-generals theory of war is a stabbed-in-the-back myth meant to justify brutality. Trump's NSPM-7 is very explicitly a war on anyone who advocates for peace, democracy, and equality. The government shutdown is being used as a war on Democrats and liberal democracy. The Gaza Sumud Flotilla gets targeted by Israel, in violation of international law--why don't modern states protect their citizens anymore? Trump wants to make a soybean deal with China--the makings of a new detente, but with corrupt, elite-serving foundations. 

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Why are both the left and the right opposed to the "liberal international order?" What are different schools of right-wing thought about the world, what makes the global far right a counter-order movement, and what, if anything, does it have in common with progressive foreign policy. Dr. Van Jackson, a scholar of international relations, explains the competing global visions of left and right in this live lecture you don't want to miss. This is part two of a two-part lecture on the politics of global order. 

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What was the "Liberal International Order," and why did people start calling it the "Rules-Based International Order?" Why do experts debate its meaning? What good has it been? How liberal was the Liberal International Order? And why is it over? Dr. Van Jackson, a scholar of international relations, explains in this live lecture you don't want to miss. This is part one of a two-part lecture on the politics of global order. 

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How do territorial disputes in the South China Sea impact biodiversity? Madelyn MacMurray joins the podcast to discuss how militarized fishing fleets deplete fish stocks – and why that matters to the world. 

Read Madelyn’s most recent piece: Militarized Commons: How Territorial Competition is Weaponizing Fisheries and Destroying the South China Sea: https://www.stimson.org/2025/territorial-competition-weaponizing-fisheries-south-china-sea/ 

And check out her team’s most recent report on the same topic, here: Policy Roadmap: Addressing IUU Fishing in Southeast Asia: https://www.stimson.org/2025/policy-roadmap-addressing-iuu-fishing-in-southeast-asia/ 

Follow Madelyn on X, if you’re still there: https://x.c...

Explaining how designating Antifa a terrorist organization and cancelling Jimmy Kimmel are part of the same emergency politics: A primer on securitization theory in the Trump presidency. White nationalist oligarchy is stealing your money and causing a recession: Here's how and why. The US TikTok deal with China could be the model for a new grand bargain, albeit a corrupt one. And the US National Defense Strategy is still targeting China. 

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On Charlie Kirk's horrific assassination and why Ezra Klein's hand-wringing shows that, contrary to his protestations, he in fact embraces some political violence. Trump and Pete Hegseth rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. The Pentagon starts shifting from Indo-Pacific to Asia-Pacific, which has the fingerprints of Elbridge Colby all over it (and I’m not mad at that!). Israel attacks US ally Qatar--what that says about war, expansionism, and revisionist foreign policy. ICE raids a Hyundai-LG factory in Georgia, exposing South Korea to white supremacist statecraft. 

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What is progressive foreign policy and what are its roots? The New Left’s struggles against racism, militarism, and imperialism were the real origins of what we call progressive foreign policy today. In this special oral history episode, I tell the story of progressive foreign policy and where it could be headed. Key moments in that history include:

Opposition to Cold War liberalism;

Advocacy for the Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s;

How Democratic Party foreign policy became so hawkish during the Global War on Terror and the Obama presidency;

The ro...

The real price of Trump's military occupation of Washington, DC. Trump's war on George Soros and Alex Soros is a war on the Democratic Party. US "gray zone" covert action in Greenland is foreign malign influence against Denmark. Should the US state nationalize the defense industry? And MAGA's contradiction on China is not the rift it appears as. 

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Tulsi Gabbard is waging a war on intelligence, in more ways than one. 37 national security technocrats have had their clearances revoked, which is its own form of imperial blowback. State Department fires Shahed Ghoreishi for having a heart (and not being a white Christian nationalist). Also, what’s happened to Asian security scholars and policymakers?

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Co-host Matt Duss makes a guest appearance on Hasan Piker's Twitch stream! Van, Matt, and Julia talk about the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, which has all the makings of either failure or an imperialist peace. Scott Bessent lies about tariffs, economic recession, and America's fake "sovereign wealth fund." Tony Blinken's blood-covered op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. And Trump's military occupation of Washington, D.C. 

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The rupture between the Pentagon and the think tank technocrats. The next clash of civilizations will be between the Global North and the Global South. Why ICE is now recruiting white supremacists and fascists. Palestine Action are not terrorists; they're trying to oppose state terrorism. 

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Dr. Van Jackson spoke as part of a live teach-in webinar for Roots Action and Defuse Nuclear War. He's joined on his panel by Emma Claire Foley, William Hartung, and Taylor Barnes. Together they explain what American militarism looks like under Trump 2.0; what makes Trump foreign policy imperialist; why it's being driven by both a crisis of capitalism and the Washington pursuit of primacy; how US militarism is affecting local communities in America; and what some groups are doing to fight back. 

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The tables have turned! In this crossover episode, Dr. Van Jackson gets interviewed by Jacob Shapiro of The Jacob Shapiro Podcast. Together they cover the enter landscape of geopolitics from a critical perspective: why the MAGA project of white nationalist social democracy cannot work; why Israeli primacy, not oil, explains US militarism in the Middle East; why the US doesn't want to fight the Houthis; how Japan failed to understand American politics; and the beginnings of a post-American Korean Peninsula. 

Jacob Shapiro Podcast: https://youtu.be/Ar6-f0OVAss?si=-0mrKcLjpUCRdj7P 

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Award-winning journalist, author, and lifelong New Yorker Spencer Ackerman joins the show to talk about the world from a New York point of view: The importance of NYC-DSA and the Zohran Mamdani mayoral campaign; how New York's oligarchs used unfounded claims of anti-semitism to protect class privilege; ICE's preparations to do mass extraordinary renditions; how Donald Trump's presidency has become the Global War on Terror that he used to mock George W. Bush for; and why US Central Command's new viceroy inflates the Iran threat (it's for Israel). 

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Van joined David Parsons of The Nostalgia Trap--literally Van’s favorite pod--in a delicious freak out about ICE arresting local college professors, MAGA's Jeffrey Epstein fissures, Andrew Cuomo aiming to spoil Mamdani's victory in NYC, Trump sending weapons to Ukraine, and the overall Third Reich vibes that America is currently giving. As the ever-rising waters of tyranny begin to splash onto our windowsills, what are any of us supposed to be doing?

Subscribe to the Nostalgia Trap: https://www.patreon.com/nostalgiatrap

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Free episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. The question of “Which side are you on?” haunted me (Van Jackson) intermittently throughout the long Global War on Terror. It was a beat that I would hear during occasional moments of consciousness, which I tried to suppress or rationalize away…until I no longer could.

On my other show, The Bang-Bang Podcast, I ended up having a surprising conversation with our guest, George Dardess. Before we started the actual episode, we talked at length about memoirs and stories of conversion.

George is an expert in the lost art of...

Ross Douthat confronts Peter Thiel with the possibility that he is the anti-Christ. Zohran Mamdani shows a model for politics that the media fears. The Democrats' Project 2029 is a farce that shows leaders of the party don't actually want to win. Fascist public policy is here, and it's class war. According to Gallup, even most Americans think US hegemony sucks. The Pentagon's Elbridge Colby just halted missile shipments to Ukraine so that the US can more readily fight a war against China that it just can't win. Why European elites are embarrassing themselves. 

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Free cross-over episode with the Bang-Bang Podcast. In this finale to our Andor series, Van and Lyle are joined by returning guest Paul Adlerstein and—making his first appearance on the pod—Matt Duss, former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders and current executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.

The conversation spans the closing arc of Andor Season 2 and Rogue One, treating them as one long meditation on revolutionary grief, sacrifice, and strategy. We reflect on Kleya Marki’s backstory, Deedra Meero’s karmic consignment to the labor camps, and the quiet closure of Bix C...

Van Jackson, Julia Gledhill, and Matt Duss confronting all things fascism at home and war with Iran abroad: Tucker Carlson roasting Ted Cruz over Israel and Iran is a bit too enjoyable…and says a lot about the fissures within the MAGA movement. America is already in Israel’s war with Iran. The promise and limits of the “No Kings” protests across the country. Why Democrats need a peace agenda. And why JD Vance loves his imperial president.

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The Trump administration's troop deployments to California are in defense of surging ICE raids against farm workers and immigrant communities across the state--a straightforward project of white supremacy meant to discipline the entire American labor force. But Antonio De Loera--communications director for the legendary United Farm Workers (UFW) union--also sees this as a larger war on American identity, America's claim to global primacy, and even America's humanity. Van and Antonio talk about how the United Auto Workers union helped birth UFW, working on the Julian Castro for president campaign in 2019, serving as a special assistant to Secretary of State...

Inside Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb—a tactically brilliant drone operation against Russian bombers...but does it change anything? Why Palantir is a civil liberties nightmare. The bureaucracy of a white supremacist foreign policy—inside Rubio’s restructuring of the State Department. Elon Musk and the fractures in the oligarch coalition. And South Korea’s Bernie Sanders—the global (gendered) context of Lee Jae-myung’s stunning victory.

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Dr. Van Jackson was invited to speak at the first Security of Micronesia Group, hosted by the Pacific Center for Island Security in Guam.

I debuted a number of new arguments here, covering how to think about China’s desire for “strategic space” in the Pacific and its surplus labor problem compared with US declining hegemony and Washington’s desire for exclusionary control of the Pacific. I also try to explain why the Micronesian region’s “sovereignty deficit” imperils its neighboring regions of Polynesia and Melanesia, as well as why strategic autonomy is the only solution that addresses ever...

Free full-episode cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Van (minus Lyle) is joined by historian David Austin Walsh to explore episodes 10-12 of Andor’s first-season finale. Their conversation focuses on Andor’s embrace of revolution and the surprising political realism of the show’s portrayal of labor exploitation and social uprisings. Van and David also discuss liberalism’s failure to inspire meaningful change in the real world—why has no electoral politician in our lifetime ever roused our souls like Marva did in episode’s 12’s revolt on the planet Ferrix? What might that say about the rise of fascism in the...

Why is the US unlikely to have a manufacturing revival, and who would benefit if it did? What happens to the rest of the world when the US tries to reshore manufacturing? What makes national security and labor power antagonistic to each other? What problems does worker-to-worker organizing solve? Why has organized labor been in decline since 1979? What's the relationship between social movements like Black Lives Matter and labor militancy? And what is the prospect that Shawn Fain's idea of a general strike in 2028 actually happens? Many questions, many answers as labor historian Dr. Eric Blanc joins Dr. Van...

Katrina vanden Heuvel--editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine--joins Dr. Van Jackson to talk about: Europe's far right; the failure of centrist parties in the UK, France, and Germany; the trouble with European rearmament; Trump's and MAGA's effects on European politics; and the struggle of Europe's fractured left-wing political movements. 

Katrina's report with Robert Borosage, "Report From Europe: The Center Does Not Hold": https://www.thenation.com/article/world/european-union-right-left-parties-democracy/ 

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Covering the latest in the India-Pakistan military conflict and its nuclear risk; the US tentative ceasefire with the Houthis marks another lost war; why China's tech breakthroughs make arms-racing self-defeating for the US; the shape of a post-American Asia beginning to emerge; what a fascist budget looks like; why Stephen Miller is like that; the Trump administration is trying to export its "war on woke" to Stockholm, and it's failing; and more! 

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Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Van and Lyle kick off their Andor series with Slate culture editor Jenny G. Zhang, diving into the show’s slow-burn opening arc where imperial bootlickers, jealous love interests, and rebels in the making collide on the Outer Rim. They discuss what makes Andor—a property of the Star Wars universe—feel different than its franchise kin, from its social realism to its psychological bite. If The Battle of Algiers looms large, so does Parable of the Sower, especially the show’s landscape of authoritarian company towns and the simmering hints of a revolu...

What's wrong with trying to be a Washington insider these days? How different is nuclear thinking under Trump compared to previous Democratic and Republican presidencies? Is Trump's "golden dome" idea just a grift (yes)? What's the best way to raise public consciousness about the danger of nuclear weapons? And what role could film and pop culture play in building mass support for arms control and nuclear disarmament? Dr. Van Jackson sits down with Emma Claire Foley--an anti-nuclear expert--to discuss her new essay in The Baffler magazine, "Probably Oblivion." 

Emma Claire's piece in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/l...

Free preview cross-over with the Bang-Bang Podcast. Long before the Patriot Act, long before “See Something, Say Something,” long before 9/11—there was The Siege. Released in 1998, this Bruce Willis–Denzel Washington vehicle depicts a post–terror attack New York placed under martial law. The city is bombed, neighborhoods are surveilled, and Arab and Muslim men are rounded up en masse, held indefinitely in cages under the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet, in perhaps the most jarring twist of all, the whole thing was co-written by Lawrence Wright, the celebrated journalist behind the GWOT-era classic, The Looming Tower.

In this episo...

In this episode, Dr. Van Jackson appears as a guest on A Public Affair, a radio show with a live call-in segment. The conversation ended up being deliciously wide-ranging, including: Why the oligarchs who back Trump want an economic recession; What tariffs are good for, and how Trump’s tariffs impact both global trade and domestic labor; What separates Biden’s economic nationalism from Trump’s “zombie economic nationalism,” and why both are bad but Trump’s is much worse; The value of the #TakeDownTesla movement; What Arundhati Roy teaches us about civil disobedience; Why the general strike is civil societ...

The tech billionaires who are part of the Trump-MAGA coalition have repeatedly boosted the same collection of books that they think explain international relations. Dr. Van Jackson--a professor of international relations--explains why these books are not only bad books, but also books with a pessimistic, zero-sum, ethnonationalist, and militarist outlook on the world. 

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Live on location from Wellington Harbor (outdoors)! How did tariffs in the 1930s lead to World War II in Asia? How big of a deal is the China-Japan-South Korea coordinated response to Trump's tariffs? Why are tariffs part of economic nationalism, and why is economic nationalism a gift to to the far right? Why has China become the primary scapegoat of Trump's global tariff project? And what's Singapore's prime minister got to say about the way the world is changing? Dr. Van Jackson explores the many facets of our economic crisis and the emerging post-American world.

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Why did the US lose manufacturing jobs? What's the problem with Donald Trump's global tariff plan? Why is housing unaffordable in the US? Why are most of us economically insecure? And why is wage work so precarious? Dr. Van Jackson explains everything that's wrong with capitalism today in three charts, and offers some simple solutions to the problem of class war. 

For the charts referenced in this episode, check out the YouTube version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpOJU4qdS5c

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Dr. Van Jackson appeared in a guest lecture at the Catholic University of America with Prof. Andrew Yeo. They talk about progressivism and the restraint movement, Dr. Jackson's working-class origins, what's wrong with Washington, what to make of the Biden administration’s “foreign policy for the middle class,” and what progressives really think about Donald Trump's foreign policy. 
 

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