Always at War

In the latest Always at War, Courtney and Alex are joined again by historian and Quincy Institute non-resident fellow Daniel Bessner to talk about his new book, Imperialist Realism.

Daniel walks us through what the American empire actually looks like today and the three-part psychological structure — cynicism, "missionism," and what he calls tragic guilt — that makes empire always seem like the "best" choice for American policymakers. Along the way, the trio dissects the many cultural reflections of Americans' begrudging acceptance of our empire, including the Marvel movies, and discuss what it might actually take for a future president to take on the national security state.

Links
Imperialist Realism (book): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Imperialist-Realism/Daniel-Bessner/9781803414805 
Danny's Substack: https://imperialistrealism.substack.com
American Prestige (Danny's podcast with Derek Davison): https://americanprestigepod.com

Timestamps
0:00 – Intro
2:58 – Daniel Bessner joins + his new book, Imperialist Realism
5:21 – Do Americans actually think of the US as an empire?
9:18 – What the US empire looks like
12:42 – Is this really a moment of imperial retrenchment?
17:28 – Why hasn't the Iran war escalated 
23:48 – Structure of feeling vs. ideology
26:31 – The three pillars of imperialist realism
29:21 – Reckoning with US hegemony in pop culture: the Marvel movies and Captain America
33:12 – Is this a post-9/11 phenomenon, or older than that?
35:53 – How Trump breaks the mold
44:01 – Has the empire become self-perpetuating?
46:43 – Can someone use the imperial presidency to end the empire?
54:51 – Why is the United States always at war?

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
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Anthropic's Claude has been used in Pentagon targeting — including the Iran strike that killed more than 150 civilians. Non-state actors like the Houthis have used Claude to help build guided weapons. And the AI industry is racing to embed itself deeper into the military-industrial complex, with no sign of slowing down.

At the same time, the same executives warning that AI could wipe out humanity within a decade — echoed by Anthropic's own safety lead — are lobbying against regulation so their companies can "win" the AI race against China. Courtney and Alex dig into what's actually driving the extinction-panic op-eds flooding the discourse, and why the doomsday framing conveniently never seems to slow down deployment.

That same "national security" logic doesn't stop at the water's edge. It's the justification behind warrantless AI license-plate tracking at home, and behind Anthropic's own hiring push for a "pre-crime" role built to flag activists. Are we prepared for the kind of danger this actually creates — like the AI chatbot error that nearly triggered a US-China crisis this spring?

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex sit down with Tori Bateman, the Quincy Institute's Director of Advocacy, to talk about her work trying to end Washington's addiction to endless war.

Tori splits her time between two audiences that need almost opposite treatment. Grassroots constituents already know what they want: fewer wars and lower costs for Americans. Capitol Hill staffers are buried in acronyms and process fights and need to be pulled back to the bigger question of whether U.S. grand strategy is even working. Her job is translating between the two. Her two-person team turns dense research and reporting into something a member of Congress can act on and something a constituent can call about.

We get into the machine she's up against — the military-industrial complex — and how they've made it very difficult for members of Congress to vote against war spending in their backyards. We trace why the War Powers Resolution, a Nixon-era tool meant to let Congress pull troops back from unauthorized wars, has produced more than twenty votes over the past year without ending a single conflict. Most have failed outright, and the one that passed was dismissed by the administration as non-binding. Tori walks us through why political timing, not conviction, often decides how war powers votes shake out. 

We also get into the outsized power of a single phone call. Tori describes a Hill staffer who had fifty constituents ask about Section 219, the U.S.-Israel Defense Cooperation Initiative buried inside the NDAA, before he even knew what it was — proof that constituents have more power than most people assume.

The episode closes on the show's classic question: why is the United States always at war? Tori's answer sounds right to me: "It's easier to break stuff than it is to build things."

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex sit down with Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick — authors of the new book Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power — to understand how a concentrated network of pro-Israel donors and organizations became the most formidable special interest in Washington, and how it helped push  the United States toward war with Iran.

BUY THE BOOK:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/israel-s-lobby-america-in-the-grip-of-a-foreign-power-eli-clifton/16ed5a856e6a2af0?ean=9781668210840&affiliate=95814

Together, they trace the seismic changes since Mearsheimer and Walt's landmark 2006 book, including the emergence of a more complex, multipolar world which gives presidents little structural cover to resist lobby pressure, Citizens United, which opened the door to massive outside spending by a tiny group of plutocrats, and an Israeli government that has moved steadily further right.

Eli and Ian walk through how the lobby has evolved from defending Israeli policies to suppressing American dissent: suing universities into submission, pushing to deport green card holders who criticize Israel, and enlisting the Trump administration to enforce its agenda.

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio  justified the needless and costly Iran War by saying the US "identified that the Israelis were gonna do it... so we figured we had to do it" — that's the lobby's vision of American foreign policy made plain.

Buy Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power: https://bookshop.org/p/books/israel-s-lobby-america-in-the-grip-of-a-foreign-power-eli-clifton/16ed5a856e6a2af0?ean=9781668210840&affiliate=95814

 Track pro-Israel super PAC spending in real time: israelslobby.com

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex sit down with QI Senior Research Fellow Khaled Elgindy — former adviser to the Palestinian leadership on permanent status negotiations with Israel and author of Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump — to understand why America's constant interventions in the Israel-Palestine peace process have been doomed to failure. 

Khaled walks Courtney and Alex through decades of US-brokered peace processes from Oslo to Annapolis — when the US consistently avoided the hard questions on settlements, occupation, and Jerusalem, bent the rules for Israel, put the pressure on Palestinians, and called it diplomacy. Today, that blind spot has only grown: the current administration just reneged on its own Gaza ceasefire deal rather than hold Israel to a reciprocal agreement, while settler violence in the West Bank hits its worst levels since 1967 and settlement expansion reaches record highs.

Read Khaled's latest piece in Responsible Statecraft: "Bored of Peace: Why Is Trump Undermining His Own Gaza Plan?" — https://responsiblestatecraft.org/hamas-disarmament/

Pick up his book, Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump: https://bookshop.org/p/books/blind-spot-america-and-the-palestinians-from-balfour-to-trump-khaled-elgindy/db594b89289c62a1?ean=9780815731559&bkshp-astro=t 

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex examine Israel's $1 billion campaign to shape global opinion and policy toward Israel with the researcher who's done the work to expose it: QI Fellow Nick Cleveland-Stout.

Nick's new paper, "The Eighth Front: Inside Israel's $1 Billion Influence Campaign," is the most detailed accounting yet of Israel's changing approach to winning hearts and minds after the genocide in Gaza. Nick walks Courtney and Alex through his new research, and traces how hundreds of millions of dollars flow from Israel's Foreign Ministry through a network of American firms to influence operations that target you. For decades, the Israeli government relied on AIPAC and allied American organizations to advance its interests in America. After Gaza, even the formidable Israel Lobby can't stop the erosion in US support for Israel — so Israel's hasbara budget for 2026 now tops $750 million.

Nick explains how Clock Tower X — the firm run by Trump's former digital campaign director Brad Parscale — won the largest active Israeli foreign agent contract in the United States ($46.5 million) to run a nationwide texting campaign, buy into Salem Media's Christian conservative programming, and even build a network of fake websites designed to manipulate training data for AI chatbots.

But can this investment in winning our hearts and minds actually overcome the what's driven a sea-change in US opinion on Israel — Americans actually seeing what happens when our government underwrites Israeli war crimes and military aggression? 

READ NICK'S NEW RESEARCH: https://quincyinst.org/research/the-eighth-front-inside-israels-1-billion-influence-campaign/

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Why is America seemingly always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

###
Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex sit down with Almut Rochowanski, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and longtime grassroots activist who spent nearly two decades working with civil society organizers across Russia, Ukraine, and the former Soviet Union.

Almut walks Courtney and Alex through the "NGO-industrial complex": how grant cycles, donor priorities, and Western funding structures can hollow out genuine grassroots organizing and replace it with a top-down relationship between funders and "beneficiaries." She traces this history back to the suffragists and anti-militarist reformers of the nineteenth century, whose organic, mass-membership movements look almost nothing like some of the professionalized, donor-dependent NGO sector of today. Along the way, the conversation covers both the real possibilities and promises of foreign aid and why some funding is well-intentioned but structurally corrosive. The episode closes with an excellent look at why, in her view, no country has a monopoly on militarism — it's a story that's played out across empires throughout history, and right now America is the one with its hand on the rudder. 

CHECK OUT ALMUT'S SUBSTACK, DISCOMFORT ZONE: https://discomfortzone.substack.com/

SUPPORT QI'S FIRST AMENDMENT FUND: https://givingtools.com/give/939

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

SUPPORT QI'S FIRST AMENDMENT FUND: https://givingtools.com/give/939
CHECK OUT TRITA'S SUBSTACK: https://tritaparsi.substack.com/

In the latest episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex sit down with Quincy Institute co-founder and Executive Vice President Trita Parsi, an expert on Iran and US-Iranian relations. Trita has spent years warning Washington against a disastrous war with Iran — and now, he's speaking out in favor of the US diplomatic efforts to end it. 

Trita's effective advocacy has made him a target of very same neoconservative voices who pushed for this war in the first place — he explains to Courtney and Alex why Laura Loomer, the Free Press, and other hawkish voices are pushing for his deportation, and why Washington's war party sees the Quincy Institute as such a threat. Trita also breaks down why he's increasingly bullish the US-Iran MOU can hold, what makes the Trump team's efforts to restrain Israel different from Biden's, and why a new Middle East security architecture percolating right now — without America at the center — is a massive vindication of the restraint approach to the Middle East.

After the interview, Courtney and Alex take a quick look at the Wall Street Journal editorial board's latest pro-war screed, and explain why the op-ed class is getting more desperate (hint: it's because they're losing!)

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

On this episode of Always at War, Courtney and Alex expose the secret plan to end US military grant aid to Israel while permanently shielding US military support for Israel from congressional oversight — and from you.

First, they break down Section 224, a provision buried in the annual defense spending bill that would fuse US and Israeli military sectors — weapons procurement, production, AI, biotech, and more — replacing transparent military aid with an unprecedented military-to-military partnership that Congress and the public can no longer scrutinize or stop.

Next, they follow the money: from a Washington Post op-ed written by a VC investor with millions at stake in Israeli military startups, to AIPAC's bad-faith attacks on critics, to the neoconservative blueprint — traced back to the Iraq War-era "Clean Break" memo — that has been quietly driving this merger for decades.

Finally, they reveal Section 622, a companion bill introduced by Senator Tom Cotton that would legally require the president to share US intelligence with Israel — even as the Defense Department has raised its counterintelligence threat assessment of Israel to its highest level ever.

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org

This week, we're bringing you a special episode in collaboration with our friends at Trip the Beltway Fantastic!

Your hosts Courtney and Alex joined Kelley Vlahos, Editor-in-Chief of Responsible Statecraft, on her podcast to break down the recent will-they/won't-they diplomacy between Washington and Tehran. The trio dissects the rhetoric pushed by prominent pro-war figures—particularly the dangerous notion that America should "negotiate while fighting"—and examines how this mindset transforms diplomacy into a tool for escalation rather than an off-ramp for peace.

They also explore the partisan dynamics that complicate peace efforts, noting prominent Democratic critiques of diplomacy to end this and other wars, as well as the entrenched culture of the Washington foreign policy "blob" recently showcased at the Munk debate. Finally, the conversation returns to the central theme of Always at War: uncovering the specific incentives, myths, and financial interests that keep the United States trapped in a cycle of endless conflict

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Why is America always at war? Join the Quincy Institute’s Courtney Rawlings and Alex Jordan as they expose the monied interests, outdated ideologies, and entrenched powers that have driven the U.S. to wage nearly 400 wars and interventions. 

They’ll be joined by journalists, advocates, and experts to uncover who profits from America’s endless conflicts, and to imagine how we can build a better, more peaceful U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about the Quincy Institute: quincyinst.org
Contact the show: [email protected]

Show art by Justin Hantz

###
Quincy Institute is an independent, nonprofit think tank. 
Help fund our research: https://quincyinst.org/donations/
Read our reporting: https://ResponsibleStatecraft.org   
Twitter: https://x.com/QuincyInst
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/quincyinst   
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/quincyinst  
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com//quincyinst  
Website: https://quincyinst.org