The DSR Network

In Sochi, Russia, Iran and Turkey got together to divvy up parts of the Middle East. It was eerily similar to a meeting 780 miles and 72 years earlier...in Yalta, where the allied powers met to discuss the face of post-War Europe. But this time: no USA. America was sidelined...as it has been worldwide since the beginning of this administration. On this episode of Deep State Radio, Kori Schake of S...

What are Deep State Radio nerds thankful for this Thanksgiving? We poll our experts and we get just the responses you would expect. One said he is thankful we have not had a nuclear war with North Korea...yet. Of course, many said they were grateful for Robert Mueller. And while others mentioned being grateful for all the faceless bureaucrats of the Deep State themselves...almost all of our expert...

You may think election meddling is as Russian as borscht but it is also as American as apple pie. We have been doing it for years. The question is do new technologies me more of the same or do they suggest entirely new threats, deeper threats that may make democracy harder and harder to protect? And with an eye toward that future we have to ask: what tools do we need to protect ourselves, our inst...

With Trump just back from an Asia trip that ran the gamut of outcomes from negligible to awful, the question turns again to what's going on with U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, we take a look at the gutting of the State Department and the president's pronouncement that "l'etat c'est moi." (Was that him or Louis XIV? I always get them confused. Suffice it to say it was someone whose tastes ran t...

The President is returning from Asia. He says it was the greatest trip there since Marco Polo. His defenders note that he didn't start screwing up too badly until a few days in. But then again, once he started screwing up...he really went to work flip flopping on trade with China, kissing up to Putin, insulting Kim Jong Un, making nice with the murderer who currently runs the Philippines, insultin...

Robert Mueller is approaching the Trump investigation as one would approach the wrong-doing of a crime family. And why not? Money-laundering, lying to the Feds, and dealing with pretty unsavory characters are par for the course. What is more, the architects of all this are another crime family, that of Vladimir Putin. And some of the other regimes the Trumps like the best also seem to have embrace...

In honor of Trump's visit to Asia, the Deep State Radio gang take a look at the problems that are haunting him back home. Susan Hennessey of Lawfare, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown and Ed Luce of the Financial Times join with host David Rothkopf to explore the implications of the latest revelations of wrong-doing in Team Trump and what we have learned about how Robert Mueller is closing in on the presi...

President Trump embarks on a 12 day, five nation trip to Asia at a moment he has never been weaker...and when the stakes are very high. With a perilous situation in North Korea, simmering trade disputes and a newly ascendant and assertive China, the agenda will be full. But will Trump have the ability to act? Will he even be inclined to hold press conferences or will he fear all public questions w...

9 months into his administration, Donald Trump has entered a political crisis unlike any other. With the indictments of his campaign chairman and his deputy and the guilty plea of one of his campaign foreign policy advisors, Trump has not just sustained deep political wounds, he has also begun to see precisely how special counsel Robert Mueller intends to make his case against the president's team...

It seems impossible, but on this episode of Deep State Radio, our indomitable team of Kori Schake of Stanford, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown, Ed Luce of the Financial Times and host, David Rothkopf, of the nearest pizzeria, manage to have an entire conversation without mentioning the president of the Untied States. Well, ok, that's a lie. But he's never really the subject of a conversation that focuse...

The current political dust-up over the President's mishandling of expressing his sympathies (or his interpretation of what sympathies would be like if he were capable of healthy human emotions) is revealing a bigger problem in American life. It is very hard to have an honest, open conversation about our military affairs because any critic of the military is immediately deemed buy their opponents t...

In this episode of Deep State Radio, a discussion about the state of the rudderless, visionless Middle East (and America's rudderless, visionless foreign policy) leads Rosa Brooks to frame that the core idea behind modern US foreign policy should be "strategic muddling through." Our panel of Rosa, Kori Schake, MacKenize Eaglen, and host, David Rothkopf, discuss. While all agree its how most of we...

Is the president leading a nullification of the power of the federal government from within--appointing enemies of departments to head departments and deconstructing the international system America has worked 75 years to build? Is it all part of some philosophical commitment to nihilism? Anarchy? Is it all an accident? Or is it democracy in action, the American electorate getting wanted they want...

In a recent interview with Forbes, President Trump said he didn't feel any obligation to honor deals struck by representatives of the United States during past administrations. His track record shows this is one area in which he is not just talk. He withdrew from TPP and the Paris Accords, is renegotiating NAFTA and may blow it up, has speculated at pulling out of a trade deal with South Korea and...

How did we get here? How did we get to the Secretary of State calling the president a moron and the Republican Head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee saying he needed adult supervision and had us possibly heading for World War III? Certainly Donald Trump had something to do with it? But what about the rest of us? Despite his whining is the media actually going too easy on him? What about t...

n this episode of Deep State Radio guests Susan Glasser of Politico, Laura Rosenberger of the German Marshall Fund and regulars Kori Schake of Stanford and Rosa Brooks of some deep silo somewhere consider the recent struggles toward self determination in Catalonia, Kurdistan, Scotland...and California. Then they embark on a tour of some of the biggest recent foreign policy headlines including the...

Is the president playing three-dimensional chess with the world by constantly offering different policies with different tone and apparently different objectives from the rest of his team including his most senior cabinet members? Are we all too limited to understand the giant intellect of this man who sees the universe with a sort of depth and clarity reserved for the Stephen Hawkings and Albert...

In this episode of Deep State Radio we journey from Kurdistan to the ski slopes of Afghanistan, from senior proms in Kabul to Iraq, from Catalonia to China. In short, Tom Ricks, Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks and David Rothkopf look at some of the most complicated foreign policy challenges the world has to offer and dish up solutions and the kind of insights upon which the denizens of the Deep State hav...

We could say a lot about this episode of Deep State Radio but there is really nothing more that needs to be said beyond the fact that this discussion featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning military historian and author of "Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom" Tom Ricks, Stanford's Kori Schake, Georgetown's Rosa Brooks, the New York Times' David Sanger and host David Rothkopf, columnist for the Was...

Trump's unguided missile of a UN speech was not the only thing flying around the Deep State this week. On this episode of Deep State Radio, the heart of our line up, Kori Schake of Stanford University, Rosa. Brooks of Georgetown University and host, David Rothkopf, consider the state of the Trump-Russia investigation, the reasons for the presidents appetite for really big, manly military equipment...

It's UNGA week, the big party for the world's leaders as they come to NYC for the opening of the UN General Assembly. Of course, this year is marked by the fact that it's Donald Trump's first UNGA as president of the United States...and that could be the reason so many of the world's most important leaders are not attending. But plenty of folks will be watching because Trump is, after all, Trump....

It's the one question everyone in the world has on their minds--other than will Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson really run for president in 2020. And that is where will Johnson's predecessor as commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, engage in his first shooting war? North Korea is seen as perhaps the most frightening candidate...but also, according to our experts, it is probably not the most likely. Iran see...

Donald and Melania Trump presided over 9/11 remembrance ceremonies on Monday for the first time as president. Trump seemed awkward and his language was stilted. He does not do compassion well. But Trump is not so far removed from 9/11 as you might think--despite his failure to donate from his charities to its victims or his need to resort to lies to pretend he was close to those victims. No, he an...

Donald Trump ends the DACA program. He tacitly supports white supremacists. He goes after Muslims. He wants a wall. He attacks the courts. He can’t get anything done but can’t stop talking about it. He’s a mess. But he’s not just our mess. When the guy who holds the job of “leader of the free world” cedes the moral high ground, is incompetent, and actively undermines our values and those of our al...

Donald Trump has taken establishing foolish redlines into the 21st Century with the use of social media. In the case of North Korea, he is threatening devastating outcomes if they go one inch further…and then they do…and do it again…and he doesn’t act. Is he all talk? Or is he the irrational maniac he seems to be, the kind who could trigger a catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula? Our loyal band of...