The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

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...

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 for...

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...

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...

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-li...

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...

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, a...

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-directin...

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. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com Third Nuclear Age artic...

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) weap...

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...

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: htt...

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 an...

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? C...

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 s...

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 pr...

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-P...

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://w...

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 ran...

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...

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/... Buy...

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...

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://newrep...

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 Pris...

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...