The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

What separates conservatives from reactionaries, and where do they converge? What are the politics inherent to counterinsurgency strategy? What does the popularity of counter-insurgency in the 21st century say about Democratic Party politics? How does small-war thinking unify counter-revolutionary monarchies with Edwardian imperialism with anti-communism? And where does David Petraeus fit into these questions?

All that and more in this wide-ranging conversation with Joseph Mackay, anchored in his award-winning book, The Counter-Insurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History.

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What made Daniel Ellsberg—the famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower—different from today’s public intellectuals? How has the think tank environment in Washington changed over the decades? Why were the Pentagon Papers such a big deal? Why is foreign policy change so difficult? And how does progressive foreign policy fit into the story of Washington’s intellectual stagnation?

I sat down with Matthew Petti to discuss a new essay he had on the life of Daniel Ellsberg, the death of the old-style think tank, and so much more.

Matthew’s Newsletter: https://www.pettimatthew.com

Un-Di...

After George Floyd’s police murder and the Black Lives Matter movement explosion in 2020, the field of international relations rushed to engage the topic of race after ignoring it for half a century. When they did, they largely acted as if early generations of international-relations scholars hadn’t engaged with or theorized the topic. But they had. In this episode, Van sits down with Robbie Shilliam, a multidisciplinary IR scholar and postcolonial theorist, to talk about:

What made Hans Morgenthau a theorist of race relations, not just international relations;

Why the field of IR has a ra...

In this episode, Van sits down with Adom Getachew to talk about W.E.B. Du Bois’s life and Du Bois-ian thought as a prism for making sense of the world, including: The global color line and its limits for understanding IR; Du Bois’s complicated attitude toward violence versus pacifism; strategies for trying to make change as a public intellectual; how he viewed World War I, and how that view changed with time; his blind spots on gender equality and empire—especially imperial Japan; how Du Bois viewed capitalism and Marxism; why the Cold War is the reason...

Have you ever wondered about the political economy of movie-making?

Like, why are Hollywood movies globally hegemonic, and why is South Korea its only rival, and why are most foreign countries mere backlots for American studios?

What does it have to do with the Netflix-Hulu-Amazon-Disney+ streaming model?

Why are the WGA and SAG-AFTRA on strike? What kind of solidarities unite American writers and actors with Korean writers and actors?

And what is the future of film?

Some really big questions, and US foreign policy plays a role in answering...

I just gave a talk to a section of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs—a great group of a couple dozen Gen Z’ers, at a nice little bar in Wellington. What started out as shooting the shit about foreign policy turned into a live show of the podcast.

In this live show, I put three propositions on the table—Un-Diplomatic regulars will be at least somewhat familiar with all these themes: 1) Sino-US rivalry is not a struggle for hegemony or domination; 2) US grand strategy is one of primacy, and the requirements of primacy today confli...

This episode doesn’t just have a theme, it has a thesis. Have you wondered how precisely the Pentagon manages to siphon so much taxpayer money year after year? How the military-industrial-congressional complex functions in practice? Why US primacy is so expensive yet perpetually in crisis? This episode with William Hartung and Julia Gledhill is something of a tutorial for understanding Pentagon bloat and corruption—which are deeply intertwined. US defense strategy has been hot garbage for, well, as long as I’ve been alive. It’s never been well conceived, sets impossible standards that it uses to request evermore...

In this cross-over episode with the Security Dilemma podcast, Van speaks with Patrick Fox and John Allen Gay of the John Quincy Adams Society about a range of issues: dissident thinking and intellectual diversity in foreign policy; how to think about China and deterrence; what’s wrong with a "foreign policy for the middle class”; fissures in the progressive movement on foreign policy; and more! 

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Subscribe to the Security Dilemma Podcast: https://jqas.org/security-dilemma/

John Quincy Adams Society: https://jqas.org

Part II of my conversation with Jonathan Kirshner about his new book, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics. Kirshner explains how classical realists think about the “national interest"; distinctions between realist and progressive political economy; what he doesn’t like about the “Thucydides’ Trap,”; the poverty of offensive realism; and how classical realism understands everything from British appeasement of Hitler to the Vietnam War.

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Part I of my two-part conversation with Jonathan Kirshner about his new book, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics. Kirshner explains why classical realism is a misunderstood intellectual tradition. We get into: Why realism recruits dead people into their intellectual tradition; what we can learn from Thucydides, and why an armchair understanding of the Peloponnesian War does more harm than good; why realist pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy; why international relations has somewhat lost its way; how we should think about the “national interest"; and distinctions between realist and progressive political economy.

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What's the difference between centered and de-centered international orders? How do small states navigate geopolitics without becoming pawns? What does it look like to have a world in which there is no hegemon, and how is it sustained? And why was 15th century maritime Southeast Asia a different international order than the Sino-centric "tributary system" in what is now Northeast Asia? Dr. Manjeet Pardesi joins the show to share new research that sheds light on all these questions and more. A tour-de-force of historical international relations, what it means to take a relational view of world politics, and small-state...

What's wrong with liberal hegemony? What does it mean for New Zealand to have an "independent foreign policy?" Why did New Zealand's Prime Minister recently visit China? And why are the interests of New Zealand's leading dairy supplier far from the same thing as the interests of the nation? In this cross-over episode, Van sits down with the good folks at the 1 of 200 Podcast to discuss an unusual intersection of US foreign policy pathologies with those of New Zealand.

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Listen to the 1 of 200 Podcast: https://www.1of200...

Van sat down with China watcher Carla Freeman (US Institute of Peace) to explore this thing Xi Jinping announced last year called the “Global Security Initiative,” which turned into a larger discussion about how China thinks about security and international order generally. The catalyst was a piece she wrote with Alex Stephenson. We get into: What China’s “relational” thinking about world politics really means in practice; How Chinese security thinking affects the global South; How US choices affects Sino-Russian ties; How Made in China 2025 looks in hindsight; The aspects of international order China likes most; and more!

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Opposition parties carried the day in Thailand's recent multiparty elections on May 14. The Move Forward Party, led by Pita Limjaroenrat, and Phue Thai party of Thaksin Shinawatra's family, won a sizeable majority, with the military's coalition parties losing resoundly. What does the recent election mean for the country's path forward? Will the military's election commission let the opposition form a government, or will it stage another coup like in 2014? Has Thai society finally moved on from the Yellow Shirt-Red Shirt divide that paralyzed the country's politics for the past two decades? Hunter Marston sits down with ANU professor Greg R...

What does it mean to write with not just logos but pathos? How has racial violence in America shaped the identity of Asian-Americans? Why is the "model minority" myth so problematic? And what possibilities emerge from recognizing that people of different nationalities share a common repression? Van speaks with Gaiutra Bahadur about her experience growing up around anti-Indian racism in New Jersey and how that sheds light on all these questions and more.

Gauitra's essay, "Unmaking Asian Exceptionalism": https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/unmaking-asian-exceptionalism-bahadur/

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The award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, Nick Turse, has done some deep investigations at the intersection of Southeast Asia; the intellectual bankruptcy of US geopoliticking; and Henry Kissinger’s direct role in the slaughter of 150,000 civilians in Cambodia.  A wild story and some great journalism. Van Jackson sat down with Nick to talk about it all. They also swap anecdotes about their personal run-ins with Kissinger. A must-listen.

Nick’s story in The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/kissinger-phone-call-transcripts/

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What makes neoconservatives different from Cold War liberals? Why did Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" lament the end of the Cold War? What's classical liberalism? And how do liberals like Fukuyama size up our current historical moment? Dr. Daniel Bessner joins the pod for all that and more. 

Bessner on Fukuyama: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/francis-fukuyama-liberalism-discontents/

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Subscribe to the American Prestige podcast: https://www.americanprestigepod.com

How does the narrative of a Blue Pacific complicate strategic narratives about the "Indo-Pacific?" How do the nations of the Pacific Islands region think about security? What role does the Pacific Islands Forum play in regional security? Why do most Pacific states try so hard to avoid "choosing" between the United States and China? And what would Pacific governments do if Guam determined it wanted to be its own independent nation? Van Jackson sits down with Sandra Tarte (University of the South Pacific) to discuss all that and more.

"Bringing the Blue Pacific and Indo-Pacific Narratives Together...

From a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia to becoming a “foreign policy person,” and how to publish your first book. Can authoritarian countries practice meritocracy? How can we make sense of good governance and public trust in authoritarian governments like Vietnam when support for western democracies seems to be at an all-time low? How China’s rise has challenged democracy’s global appeal, and what does it mean if the United States reverts to MAGA autocracy? Hunter Marston speaks to Charles Dunst about his new book, Defeating the Dictators: How Democracy Can Prevail in the Age of the Strongman.

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Why is it that we're spending more money and resources than ever on this thing we call “national security,” and yet not only does the world feel perpetually insecure; it feels like insecurity is getting worse for most of us? That's what the new organization Security in Context sets out to address. Van Jackson is part of bridging the gap between policy and critical scholars, and will be co-directing Security in Context's project on Multipolarity, Great-Power Competition, and the Global South. This is his short interview with their podcast host, Anita Fuentes, talking about his background, how his view of s...

What is multipolarity?  Is the unipolar moment totally over? What is a great power?How do nukes fit into these questions? And how do the left, the right, and the restrainers metabolise these questions? Dr. Benjamin Zala and Dr. Van Jackson talk about all this and more in Part II of their conversation.

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Third Nuclear Age article by Andrew Futter and Ben Zala: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-international-security/article/strategic-nonnuclear-weapons-and-the-onset-of-a-third-nuclear-age/91EEB3B77D348252815F9F7B59DB8A32

Thinking clearly about China's n...

What is the nuclear revolution and why can't we agree on it? What is the Third Nuclear Age, why is it problematic as a concept, and what special dangers or opportunities might it hold? How important is multipolarity, and what counts as a pole? What counts as "emerging technologies" and how do they affect the risks of nuclear war? Is arms control possible in advanced conventional (non-nuclear) weaponry? And why is China expanding its nuclear arsenal? Dr. Benjamin Zala and Dr. Van Jackson talk about all this and more in the first of two episodes on the topic.

The legendary New Leftist and historian Michael Kazin joins the pod to talk about his recent essay in Dissent, "Reject the Left-Right Alliance in Ukraine." We also talk he ended up on the New Left, socialism in the Democratic Party, why he supported Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, the politics of being anti-war, the role of World War I in leftist historical memory, and his recent book What It Took To Win: A History of the Democratic Party.

Dissent Essay: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/reject-the-left-right-alliance-against-ukraine

What It Took To Win Book: https://us...

What Fareed Zakaria doesn't get about the dollar supremacy debate. Why American exceptionalists can't see Asian arms-racing clearly. Why AUKUS is controversial, in Australia, New Zealand, and across Asia. A Rorschach test on the corrosive US-Saudi Arabia relationship. And what the battle against LGBTQ persecution in Uganda says about all of us.

Fareed Zakaria's dollar supremacy debate segment: https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1640058728752840707 

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com 

Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/undiplomatic

Ben Zala's Tweet: https://twitter.com/DrBeeZee/status/1640598052254924803

Matthew Sussex in Th...

How do African Americans view America's role in the world?  What does it mean when Black Americans say the US should "keep out" of foreign interventions?  What explains Black Republican hawkishness?  What is the Suge Knight theory of national inclusion?  Does Kanye West have anything to do with Democrats losing Black voters, or it Democratic Party hawkishness?  Van sits down to discuss all this and more with Dr. Christopher Shell. 

Report on How Black Americans Feel About the Possible Use of Military Force in Ukraine and Taiwan: https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/02/21/how-black-americans-feel-about-possible-use-of-military-force-in-ukraine-and-taiwan-pub-89066

Report on How Do Black...

For the pod's first movie night, Van, Colette Shade, and Matt Duss discuss the 1998 cult political comedy, Bulworth. Did Bulworth presage Bernie Sanders? Where are the Bulworth Democrats today? How did the War on Terror set back the progressive movement 20 years? Why do reactionaries sometimes find hip-hop attractive? What does it say that politicians aren't safe among the people they represent? Could a movie like this be made today? 

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com 

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Watch Bulworth: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/bulworth 

We're trying to do more to spotlight interesting journal article-based academic research in a non-boring way. So today Van sits down with Dr. Samantha Leigh Payne to talk about her new history on fears of an Atlantic revolution in the Reconstruction Era.  How did the US civil war alter global power politics? What role did the US civil war play in the abolition of slavery elsewhere? What role did slaves themselves play in the revolutionary potential of that post-civil war moment? And what role is their for violence in progressive world making?

Sam's article, "'A General Insurrection i...

Kate and Hunter are back with Van. What's up with the "Rage Against the War Machine" protests? Is it really antiwar? Working class versus middle class--what's the diff? Cambodia versus economic statecraft. Biden's parochial progressivism. Congressional competency on foreign policy. And the nonsensical, unaccountable, dictator-loving Biden doctrine for the Middle East. Also this episode: a quick primer on racial capitalism!

Ryan Morgan Tweet: https://twitter.com/ryanheadedsouth/status/1624536732182904837?t=uCCF0KcAD7K4xoEzSCmJug&s=19

Andrew Nachemson Tweet: https://twitter.com/ANachemson/status/1624723853363773440

Leonard Bernardo: https://twitter.com/leonardbenardo1/status/1627867024591360001

Olufemi Taiwo...

Van does battle with voices ranging from John Mearsheimer and Robert Kagan to Joseph Nye and Hillary Clinton in this book launch at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy for his book, Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace. Must listen! 

Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoVm4MrK4aU&t=412s

Buy Pacific Power Paradox: https://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Power-Paradox-American-Statecraft/dp/0300257287/ref=sr_1_1?crid=KE1Q04ZJVROB&keywords=pacific+power+paradox&qid=1676789479&sprefix=%2Caps%2C759&sr=8-1

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com

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Part II of Van's interview with Dr. Matthew Specter, discussing his new book, The Atlantic Realists. Was Hans Morgenthau a Leftist? Is great-power competition just offensive realism? Is realism a resource for progressives or cosmopolitans? Tun in to find out!

Buy the Book: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28906 

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com 

Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/undiplomatic

Van's interview with Dr. Matthew Specter discusses his new book, The Atlantic Realists. They get into the diverse understandings of the realist tradition, trace its roots to imperial competition in the 19th century, the bizzare intellectual inspirations the Nazis found in US history, whether realism is useful for progressives and the left, and some surprising history about a cast of characters ranging from Hans Morgenthau to Alfred Thayer Mahan to Carl Schmitt. 

Buy the Book: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28906 

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com 

Buy Me a Coffee: https://www...

What is the real nature of the "China problem?" How did Sino-US detente and collaboration become great-power competition and rivalry? What did Obama's pivot to Asia have to do with all of it? And why did Van end up a critic of the national security state? In this special cross-over episode with the Realignment Podcast, Van goes into all that and more.

Realignment Podcast Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCY1cQJ1-uk&t=180s

Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com

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...

What is empathy, and why is it important in making strategy? Why is "strategic empathy" so problematic? Can empathy be institutionalized? How did neoliberals steer empathy wrong? Dr. Claire Yorke sits down with Van to chat about all that and more. 

Claire Yorke on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClaireYorke 

Claire's review essay on empathy and strategy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...

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Does Southeast Asia matter? How does SE Asia view and respond to great power competition, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and tensions in the Taiwan Strait? And how can the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) work to solve the crisis in Myanmar in 2023 under Indonesia’s chairmanship? With regular co-host Hunter Marston to discuss these issues are special guests Elina Noor (Asia Society Policy Institute, Washington, DC), Evan Laksmana (National University of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy), and friend of the pod Sebastian Strangio (The Diplomat).

Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com...

How's Biden doing on foreign policy?  Where is the "Biden doctrine" going wrong?  Matt Duss and Stephen Wertheim--leading voices in progressive foreign policy--come on the pod to hit all the issues with Van and Kate--Ukraine-Russia, a disastrous defense strategy, Iran, Saudi-Yemen war, China, Afghanistan and counter-terrorism, and more. 

Matt and Stephen's essay in The New Republic: https://newrepublic.com/article/169598/better-biden-doctrine

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In Part II of Van's sit-down w/ Professor Daniel Immerwahr (author of How to Hide an Empire), they talk about Daniel's recent chapter about the politics and ideology of George Lucas's Star Wars. Was the Galactic Republic really an empire the entire time? What made Star Wars a Vietnam movie? What's the deal with the Ewok? And what's wrong with Lucas's version of anti-imperialism?

Are We Really Prisoners of Geography?: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/10/are-we-really-prisoners-of-geography-maps-geopolitics

Ideology in US Foreign Relations (the volume containing "Galactic Vietnam"): https://cup.columbia.edu/book/ideology-in-u-s-foreign-relations/9780231201810

Why do geopoliticians blow off climate change and environmental degradation?  Is geography really an insurmountable force?  What do "geopolitical risk consultants" really do?  And what should we make of the fact that geopolitics has its origins in imperialism?  What did Nazis, in particular, see appealing in geopolitics?  Van sits down w/ Professor Daniel Immerwahr (author of How to Hide an Empire) to discuss a new essay in The Guardian long reads section. They also talk about Daniel's recent chapter about the politics and ideology of George Lucas's Star Wars.  

Are We Really Prisoners of Geography?: https://www.thegua...

What does war and violence abroad do to politics at home?  Why were early Cold War intellectuals obsessed with who "lost China?" And what did the realists of the 1940s and 1950s believe about not just the limits of American power but how US hegemony might be the road to fascism in America?  John Delury sits down with Van to discuss all that and more as part of his new book, Agents of Subversion: The Fate of John T. Downey and the CIA's Covert War in China. 

Buy the book: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765971/agents-of-subversion/

In this interview episode, Van sits down with Professor Jeanne Morefield to discuss critiques of liberalism and empire. Why does liberalism seem to always be obsessed with crisis and triumphalism, often at once? What is the shared DNA of Edwardian imperialism, neoconservatism, and liberal internationalism? Why has G. John Ikenberry's theoretical project of liberal hegemony recently pivoted from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt as the standard bearer? And isn't liberal hegemony just a ruling class ideology? Lots of controversy on the table. 

Jeanne's latest book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442260283/Unsettling-the-World-Edward-Said-and-Political-Theory 

Empires without Imperialism book: https://ww...

In this interview episode, Van sits down with Professor Jeanne Morefield to discuss critiques of liberalism and empire. Why does liberalism seem to always be obsessed with crisis and triumphalism, often at once? What is the shared DNA of Edwardian imperialism, neoconservatism, and liberal internationalism? Why has G. John Ikenberry's theoretical project of liberal hegemony recently pivoted from Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt as the standard bearer? And isn't liberal hegemony just a ruling class ideology? Lots of controversy on the table. 

Jeanne's latest book: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442260283/Unsettling-the-World-Edward-Said-and-Political-Theory 

Empires without Imperialism book: https://ww...