Part I: Classical Realism Versus International Relations, Interview w/ Jonathan Kirshner | Ep. 163

Live Event! US Foreign Policy and the 2024 Elections | Ep. 179: Out of the maybe 20 live events I spoke at in the US recently, only one—one!—was actually recorded and you’re about to hear it. About this Event: From the War on Terror to the militarization of the Pacific, and from imperial competition with China to US support for Israeli atrocities in Palestine, the US quest for primacy has devastating consequences globally, and a corrosive impact domestically. Join us for a free flowing conversation about the consequences of endless wars and militarism, rethinking US foreign policy and the implications for the upcoming 2024 elections. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

84 min listen

Chinese Capitalism v. Debt Geopolitics w/ Shahar Hameiri | Ep. 178: Why is “debt-trap diplomacy” nothing more than an anti-China meme? Why is the geopolitical interpretation of Chinese overseas lending wrong, and what does that suggest about US/Western estimates of China’s intentions? Why do Chinese firms hate writing down unpayable debts? And why do smaller developing nations rarely benefit from international financial competition? I sat down with the great Shahar Hameiri to discuss all that and more in the latest episode of the pod. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

59 min listen

The Possibilities of Progressive Worldmaking | Ep. 177: This interview with the Review of Democracy podcast is the deepest dive to date on Van Jackson’s book, Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

47 min listen

Guam, War, and the Non-Sovereign Pacific, w/ Kenneth Gofigan Kuper | Ep. 176: What does Guam’s political status say about US strategic thought? What strategic choices does Guam have if it were allowed self-determination? What does America’s imperial relations with Guam have in common with the rest of the Non-Sovereign Pacific? And why does the existence of a Non-Sovereign Pacific region make both the Pacific and the great powers less secure? I assure you, you’ve never heard a foreign policy conversation like this. A hilarious, personal, and highly edifying conversation at the intersection of social justice and defense strategy, with Dr. Ken Kuper from the University of Guam. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

64 min listen

Inequality, IR Theory, and the Imperial Blind Spot | Ep. 175: This episode is unusual, more like part of a mini-lecture series. I was asked to give a talk recently on inequality, development, and IR theory for an audience that skews quite young. I’ve chopped it up to just bring out the highlights, but we hit many topics that might be of interest: —Why IR paradigms are not especially useful for making sense of inequality. —Why it sucks to be poor, no matter what flag you live under. —Capitalism v. Marxism, and by proxy, modernization theory v. dependency theory. —Why the East Asian development model is at its end. —Why it can be useful to think of political economy as a capitalist world system. —Why redistribution is the only alternative to revolution if you want to reduce inequality. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

23 min listen

The Left Debates Foreign Policy! | Ep. 174: What’s wrong with liberal internationalism? What alternatives do socialists and progressives offer? Is voting more (or less) than a defensive tactic? Is the Democratic Party beyond redemption? Is China a force for good or evil in the world? Van went on the 1 of 200 podcast to have a really real debate about everything on the left’s mind at the moment. They talk about his new book--Grand Strategies of the Left--but couch it in a larger conversation on left perspectives about foreign policy. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

95 min listen

Silicon Valley’s Galactic Colony Fetish, w/ Alina Utrata | Ep. 173: How do the space-colony visions of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos meaningfully differ? What does a company like Space-X have in common with the old imperial company-states, like the British East India Company? And why are billionaire bros obsessed with “political exit” projects like seasteading and galactic escapism? We tackle all that and more with Alina Utrata, a scholar whose new article in American Political Science Review called, “Engineering Territory: Space and Colonies in Silicon Valley” is a banger. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

54 min listen

The Reactionary Worldmaking of Counter-Insurgency, w/ Joseph Mackay | Ep. 172: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

58 min listen

Death of the Think-Tanker w/ Matthew Petti | Ep. 171: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

61 min listen

Robbie Shilliam on Frontier Imperialism and Post-BLM International Relations | Ep. 170: 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 racial blind spot in the first place; Why IR’s leading journals, editors, and scholars re-engaged racial questions after 2020 but without drawing on what the discipline’s own canonical thinkers had to say about race; Why the Gen Z and Millennial generation of scholars are possibly built differently when it comes by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

59 min listen

Adom Getachew: W.E.B. Du Bois’s International Thought | Ep. 169: 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 I (and probably you) never learned about Du Bois in school. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

64 min listen

The Writers' Strike, Global Film, and Entertainment Multipolarity, w/ Kevin Fox | Ep. 168: 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? Some really big questions, and US foreign policy plays a role in answering them, remarkably. I sat down with writer/director/producer/editor Kevin Fox to discuss. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

60 min listen

Live Show! China, US Grand Strategy, and the Inequality Problem | Ep. 167: 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 conflict with the requirements of peace in Asia and the Pacific; 3) The root-cause of our problems with China is inequality—at multiple levels, but especially within China. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

60 min listen

Fighting Pentagon Graft, w/ William Hartung and Julia Gledhill: 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 funds when it fails to meet them, and heightens the very threats it aims to guard against. As we discuss in this episode, a key cause of this strategic ineptitude is Pentagon graft and the ability to buy its way out of the kinds of tradeoffs that would impose discipline on strategy-making. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

61 min listen

Dissident Thinking, Foreign Policy for the Middle Class, and Progressive Fissures Around Militarism | Ep. 165: 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! by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

52 min listen

Part II: Classical Realism Versus International Relations, Interview w/ Jonathan Kirshner | Ep. 164: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

32 min listen

Rethinking International Order: 15th Century Maritime Asia and Today w/ Manjeet Pardesi | Ep. 162: 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 strategies in Asia. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

60 min listen

American Hegemony v. New Zealand's 'Independent' Foreign Policy | Ep. 161: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

59 min listen

How China Thinks About Asian Security Order, w/ Carla Freeman | Ep. 160: 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! by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

41 min listen

Where is Thailand Now? w/ Aim Sinpeng and Greg Raymond: 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 Raymond and University of Sydney professor Aim Sinpeng to discuss Thailand's democratic crossroads. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

65 min listen

Unmaking Asian Exceptionalism, w/ Gaiutra Bahadur | Ep. 158: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

55 min listen

Kissinger's Cambodia Killings, w/ Nick Turse | Ep. 157: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

37 min listen

Is Fukuyama Liberalism the 'End of History?' w/ Daniel Bessner | Ep. 156: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

37 min listen

Narrating the Pacific in Indo-Pacific, w/ Sandra Tarte | Ep. 155: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

37 min listen

Democracy Over Authoritarianism w/ Charles Dunst | Ep. 154: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

64 min listen

Solving the Security Puzzle with Security in Context | Ep. 153: 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 security evolved, and why he's part of Security in Context. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

18 min listen

Part II: On a Third Nuclear Age and Multipolar Order w/ Benjamin Zala | Ep. 152: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

59 min listen

Part I: On a Third Nuclear Age and Multipolar Order w/ Benjamin Zala | Ep. 151: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

58 min listen

Michael Kazin! The Democratic Party, Leftism, and Global Policy | Ep. 150: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

62 min listen

AUKUS, Arms-Racing, and the Dollar Supremacy Debate | Ep. 149: 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. by The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

58 min listen

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Part I: Classical Realism Versus International Relations, Interview w/ Jonathan Kirshner | Ep. 163

Part I: Classical Realism Versus International Relations, Interview w/ Jonathan Kirshner | Ep. 163

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