Global Tantrum! with Steve Palley and Prof. Galen Jackson

A few days ago, half the internet went dark. A single botched DNS update inside Amazon Web Services—one bad line of code—took down everything from Slack and Starbucks to Roblox, Zoom, and Venmo. For most of a day, billions of dollars of global commerce and communication froze because a single server cluster in Northern Virginia couldn’t talk to the rest of the world. This wasn’t a cyber attack. It...

After two years of catastrophic war in Gaza, the guns are finally—maybe—falling silent. This week, Trump announced what he’s calling a historic ceasefire between Israel and Hamas: a 20-point plan featuring hostage exchanges, Israeli withdrawals from parts of Gaza, and an “international peace board” led by Trump himself and Tony Blair. Yes, that Tony Blair. If it holds, it will be the first sustain...

What if the 20th century’s three great struggles—World War I, World War II, and the Cold War—were all really about the same thing? That’s the argument in Hal Brands’ new book The Eurasian Century , which we dig into this week. Brands traces the warnings of early geopoliticians like Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan: never let a single power dominate Eurasia. History, he argues, proved them...

Remember when Barack Obama stood in Prague in 2009 and called for a world without nuclear weapons? That feels like another planet. Today, the United States faces an aggressive nuclear peer in Russia, with another antagonist racing towards full peer status in China—while North Korea and others expand their arsenals on the margins. The assumptions that guided policy for decades—stable deterrence, ma...

Nineteen Russian drones crossed into Polish territory this week, triggering a scramble of jets, the shutdown of airspace over the country’s east, and one drone crashing through the roof of a civilian home. No casualties, no explosions—but Warsaw was rattled enough to invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty , calling for urgent alliance consultations. That’s only the eighth such invocation in NATO’s 75...

We’ve seen enough to believe that the Xi Jinping - Vladimir Putin bromance has staying power. Heads of state (even neighboring ones like Russia and China) simply don’t officially visit with one another with the frequency these two have since Xi rose to power in 2012. Further, strongmen tend to eschew friends, much preferring toadies, supplicants and sycophants. The relationship must be real. The d...

Why, exactly, has the Trump Administration dispatched 2200 Marines, several guided missile destroyers, and at least one nuclear attack sub(!) towards the northern coast of Venezuela? Ostensibly to interdict drug traffickers based in Venezuela on their way to the United States… except that explanation makes no sense. The Coast Guard can do that. So what’s really going on? We don’t know for sure, bu...

Long one of the largest, most populated and most powerful states in the Middle East, Iran is a natural potential hegemon for the region, and indeed has enjoyed that title for centuries on end over its 2500-year-plus history. Its most recent attempts have come under the revolutionary banner of the Islamic Republic, established in 1979. The theocratic regime has grown brittle over time, but retains...

Unassuming, colorless, charisma-free, a cipher, a bureaucrat: early in his career, first at the KGB and then working for the city government of St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin was deceptively easy to ignore… even as he was climbing the ladder of post-Soviet chaos at lightning speed. It was this ephemeral quality that led the oligarchs that really controlled Russia to make him the second President o...

Profs. Brett Goldstein and Brett Benson, political scientists who are also members of Vanderbilt’s Wicked Problems Lab (yes, this is a real thing!), recently wrote in the New York Times about a Chinese company called GoLaxy that could be the next Cambridge Analytica … only an order of magnitude more powerful. That’s because this CCP-linked consultancy is deploying sophisticated generative AI techn...

Ah, the humble quadcopter: breaker of parkland reveries, disturber of neighborhood peace, deliverer of Amazon sundries… and destroyer of Russian invaders in eastern Ukraine. In a development absolutely nobody saw coming, Ukraine is now producing 2.5 million cheap, disposable drones a year to sub in for its dwindling manpower and beat back the Russians — who, for their own part, are ramping up thei...

This week, Steve and Galen are joined by Andrew Leber, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, to discuss the shifting geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East. The discussion kicks off with an analysis of the Israel-Iran conflict and how Gulf States like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are navigating their foreign policy in light of recent developments. They take a deep dive in...

Over the last few days, the Trump Administration ordered a pause on some military aid to Ukraine, including vital air defense materials, while Putin’s Russia conducted its largest bombardment of that country yet. And the backdrop for all of this was a NATO summit where NATO’s non-European members finally pledged to up their military spending past a long-agreed (but classically ignored) minimum of...

That was a perfect time to take two weeks off from podcasting! Not that we think there’s a cause-effect situation at play here, but it is remarkable how a big Israel-Iran-U.S. air war kicked off the day after we weren’t available to talk about it. Yes, the strikes were quick, and the whole thing died down in under two weeks… but in no way do we think this is over. For one thing, Iran still retains...

In this episode of Global Tantrum, we’re indulging our love of sports metaphors once again by conducting a Great Power Draft. We rank countries based on various metrics such as demographics, military capacity, technological prowess, and economic strength. We agree that the United States and China are 1-2 — no big surprise — but the consensus breaks down from there, because measuring power is very...

In this episode of Global Tantrum, Steve Palley and Professor Galen Jackson dive deep into the big-picture debate over unipolarity and US hegemony. Is the United States still the world's sole superpower, or are we entering a new era of bipolarity or multipolarity? Join us as we discuss: * What unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity mean in international relations * Whether the US still qualifi...

Last week, Ukraine and Russia entered direct talks for the first time since the early part of the war in 2022. A minor prisoner exchange has ensued, which is great — except that Russia hasn’t stopped punishment strikes against Ukraine’s cities. Meanwhile, the United States under Trump could wash its hands of the conflict at any time, leaving Ukraine in extremis with the unready Europeans holding t...

After recording our episode on the ongoing hostilities yesterday, we didn’t quite get around to editing and posting — but believe us when we say that nobody is happier than we are that this is the outcome! The talks took place directly between the two unhappy neighbors and were apparently brokered by the United States. It’s a good thing they stopped it here, because hostilities had reached a rolli...

This week, Steve and Galen discuss the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan. They discuss the recent terrorist attack in Kashmir, historical tensions, and the potential for dangerous nuclear escalation. The conversation touches on the political climates in both countries, the role of external powers like the United States and China, and the chilling concept of the stability-instability p...

In this episode of Global Tantrum, Steve and Galen discuss the latest developments in Iran's nuclear situation, diving into an in-depth analysis of Iran's current nuclear and conventional capabilities and the geopolitical implications of U.S.-Iran negotiations. They discuss recent articles from the New York Times, Israel's stance on military action, and Iran's economic struggles under harsh sancti...

In this episode of Global Tantrum, Steve and Galen dive into the escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait. They discuss the recent military activities of the People's Liberation Army Navy around Taiwan, the historical context of the China-Taiwan conflict, and the strategic implications for the United States and its allies. They explore possible future scenarios, including Taiwan's nuclear options...

In episode of Global Tantrum, Ryan Weldzius of Villanova University once again joins Steve and Galen to jump into the imposition of unprecedented tariffs by the Trump administration. The discussion covers the immediate global and domestic impacts, historical comparisons, and the potential for escalating trade wars and currency devaluations — the “Great Depression / WW2 Doom Loop,” if you will. The...

In this episode of Global Tantrum!, Steve and Galen welcome Assistant Professor Ryan Weldzius of Villanova to discuss the Trump Administration’s tariff plans. But before they do that, they have very little choice but to talk about Signalgate — a pure Global Tantrum! topic if ever there was one. After analyzing that dangerous piece of foolishness, they turn back to international political economy t...

In this episode of Global Tantrum, Steve and Galen delve into an in-depth analysis of grand strategy: from George Washington's isolationism to America's role as a global power post-World War II and post-Cold War primacy. The hosts explore how these strategies have influenced recent presidents, especially contrasting Donald Trump’s distinct shift towards disengagement and spheres of influence. They...

Steve and Galen dive into the wild world of extended nuclear deterrence on this episode of Global Tantrum! They tackle South Korea's recent statements about nuclear armament, the concept of extended deterrence, and the unpredictable twists and turns of US foreign policy. Will South Korea build the bomb? How would Japan and Taiwan react? And what about the infamous Age of Chaos? Tune in and find ou...