Crashing the War Party

This week we talk about time running out for Washington to seal the Iran deal and why the talks have seemingly stalled. George Washington University PhD candidate Sina Azodi  discusses how lifting the IRGC terrorism designation has become a key sticking point in the debate, and how political pressures on Biden get worse as the midterm elections loom. In our first segment, Kelley and Daniel compare...

It usually takes a crisis to show who your real friends are. Writer Mitchell Plitnick joins us to talk about how Middle East despots are suddenly jockeying to make sure their own interests are protected if not enhanced in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Even Israel, which gets $3 billion in US taxpayer dollars each year, is threading needles to avoid hurting its own relationship with Mos...

As the mainstream media pumps out report after report on military developments in Ukraine, Washington lawmakers use those headlines to call for more weapons and assistance to Kyiv. Military technology journalist  Kelsey Atherton breaks down some of the mythology surrounding no-fly zones, drones, and other popular "magic bullets" that people think could save the day in Ukraine. In the first segment...

This week Ben Friedman, policy director for Defense Priorities , joins Dan and Kelley to talk about the ongoing struggle of restraint amid the mainstream push for an aggressive response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He talks about recent decisions to send more U.S. weapons to Kiev, and efforts by hawks in the U.S. to do more, including imposing a no-fly zone and sending Polish fighter aircra...

Soldier, whistleblower, veteran, and peace advocate Matthew Hoh tells us what it was like to realize that the Afghanistan mission was a failure and that everyone around him knew it — but kept it going for 20 years anyway. Hoh resigned his post as a State Department official in 2009 making space for other dissenters inside the government to criticize the war policy, though the U.S. role in that war...

During his State of the Union address this week, President Biden announced that the global community of democracies was facing off against Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the international rules-based order is stronger than ever. We talk to Sarah Leah Whitson , executive director of DAWN (which was founded by Jamal Khashoggi, murdered by killers tied to U.S. friends in the Saudi governme...

In this special edition of the podcast, Kelley & Dan talk about Vladimir Putin's move to send 'peacekeepers' into Eastern Ukraine after he recognized the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states in a fiery speech on Sunday. Will Washington and Kyiv hold back and not take the bait, or will pro-war hawks and humanitarian interventionists push us closer to war and global econo...

Longtime author and Cato Institute  Ted Carpenter joins us this week to talk about how the US-Russia-Ukraine crisis is an illustration of Cold War American military primacy and hegemony. If there is a conflagration in upcoming days and months it will be in no small part because of poor decisions made by U.S policymakers, pushed by establishment thinking and interests, over the last two decades, sa...

As Kim Jong Un continues testing missiles and South Korea warns of a crisis, it seems just like old times. But why? The Biden Administration has not yet restarted serious talks with North Korea and demands of denuclearization is always the mountain standing in the way. The Quincy Institute's Jess Lee joins Kelley & Dan this week to talk about what needs to be done to change the thinking in Washing...

This week, Kelley and Dan talk with researcher and Bourse & Bazaar Foundation founder  Esfandyar Batmanghelidj , who has been digging deep into the issue of U.S. sanctions on Iran and how they have been driving inflation and mostly impacting the middle and working households there. More importantly, he discusses whether or not U.S. sanctions are even successful in bringing Tehran to heel. In the f...

The more people are talking about the cockeyed foreign policy of this country, the better. This week Dan and Kelley join Kyle Anzalone  and Connor Freeman  (both at the Libertarian Institute) to chat about their own podcast "Conflicts of Interest," and how they each came to dedicate their energies to challenging establishment orthodoxy and opposing U.S. military policies overseas. We talk about th...

If you talk to anyone this week they’ll say that Russia may be closer than ever to invading Ukraine. But why? President Vladimir Putin has drawn a red line over further NATO expansion but Washington isn’t budging, leading to the critical standoff we see today. Joshua Shifrinson , associate professor at Boston University and author of Rising Titans, Falling Giants: How Great Powers Exploit Power Sh...

All of the taxpayer-funded security assistance — including US troops, arms and advisors — given to African countries in the name of "counterterrorism" over the last 20 years has only resulted in more coups, more violence, and more terrorists. This week we talk to Elizabeth Shackelford , a former career diplomat with the U.S. State Department and author of The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in...

The U.S. is on a mission to contain China and it hopes to accomplish this by forging enough agreements with and among partners and allies to create a security hedge against Beijing. The problem is, Washington seems to be tone-deaf and doesn't get it that a number of countries, particularly in Southeast Asia, have no interest in getting on board the anti-China train. Sarang Shidore, director of stu...

We celebrate our last episode of 2021 with Robert Wright — author of   The Moral Animal  , BloggingheadsTV podcaster, and publisher of the popular Nonzero newsletter.   We discuss the continued U.S. military operations in Syria, the spiraling tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, neocons, and humanitarian interventionists. A virtual holiday grab bag!  In the first segment, Kelley & Da...

Lyle Goldstein, author of   Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry , and director of Asian engagement at Defense Priorities , breaks down the fragile dynamics in Russia over the Ukraine issue, and blames in part, NATO expansion and Washington rhetoric for pushing the boundaries and putting Ukraine itself in "the crosshairs." What would happen if Russia invaded? Goldstei...

This week, Stephanie Savell, researcher and co-founder of Brown University's Costs of War Project, joins us to talk about her study of how U.S. military assistance — ostensibly for counterterrorism — has created more terrorists and killed untold more people over the last 20 years. She also talks about how Costs of War became an essential tool for measuring not only the financial toll, but the huma...

This week we had the privilege of talking to author and columnist  Peter Van Buren, who served with the State Department in Iraq and experienced such a traumatic eye-opener he became a whistleblower and full-time critic of U.S. war policy ever since. We discuss the New York Times investigation of a 2019 bombing of women and children by a secret U.S. special forces unit in Syria, and the delusion t...

Chris Preble, director of the New American Engagement Initiative , joins us this week with some optimistic news: the age of American hegemony may be over, but there are amazing benefits to this new reality! For one, there's plenty of evidence that the so-called "rules-based order" will be just fine without Washington meddling in every problem, planting a troop in every country, or serving as the s...

Longtime insider critic Col. Doug Macgregor schools us on what the military's real motives are as it continues to hype up the threats and build up for WWIII in the South China Sea. He talks about how the generals — there are way too many of them — turned out to be far less capable, less competent, and over-estimated than anyone gave them credit for in the last 20 years. In the first segment, Dan a...

This week on the show, Dan and Kelley are joined by Danny Davis , who as a career Army soldier and officer, risked it all in 2012 to publish a searing essay taking the generals to task for lying about conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and painting a rosy picture about what we know now was an unwinnable war. We talk about that,  the Army's pivot to Asia, and increasing Washington chatter arou...

This week, Quincy Institute scholar, author and journalist Anatol Lieven talks to us from Sochi, Russia, where he was a speaker this week at the 18th annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. We talk about the mixed messages the administration is giving out on NATO, and the persisting tensions between Washington and Moscow, and hopes for some semblance of cooperation over Ukraine and nuclear m...

This week, Assal Rad, senior research fellow a the National Iranian American Council, joins us to talk about why the JCPOA (Iran nuke deal) talks have faltered, if not killed completely by a lack of interest, Washington politics, and no effort taken by the Biden administration to put down the whip and admit the US was wrong to get out of it in the first place. We also discuss the limits of sanctio...

We have the pleasure of talking with longtime author and reporter Andrew Cockburn about his new book, “Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine” How are we ever going to scale back our overseas and endless military commitments when it is so damn profitable for the defense industry and the political, parasitical culture around it? Andrew talks candidly about the “living organism” h...

Samuel Moyn, author of "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War," joins Dan and Kelley to talk about how well-intentioned efforts over the last 75 years to make war "less lethal" has legitimized and made war more palatable, therefore protracting conflict rather than shutting it down. He talks about criticisms of his thesis by anti-war advocates and liberal interventionists...