Carnegie Council Podcasts

Since the late 1970s, says George Packer, we've been living in a new era. The structures that supported ordinary Americans' ambitions, from government to business to schools, have stopped working on their behalf. Instead, people felt they were on their own. Some have thrived greatly and others have been left behind, with a rising sense of panic.

The recent revelations that the NSA is collecting cell phone and Internet data from millions of Americans has left many asking questions. Is this action necessary for America's national security? Should concerns about consumers' rights to privacy be considered?

"It's worth remembering that in the Cold War, the Berlin Wall fell, not under a barrage of artillery, but under hammers and bulldozers wielded by those whose minds had been changed by the ideas that constitute soft power."

In the name of the "war on terror," the U.S. is conducting covert warfare and targeted killings, and it dismisses the resulting deaths of innocent civilians as "collateral damage." What are the ethical and practical repercussions of these policies? Jeremy Scahill's blistering talk ranges from Iraq to Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

"More and more of the things that countries, nations, governments want to do for their citizens can't be done nationally. They have to reach out to others. So I think we're in a process of the uneasy interaction of these two. That gives me some hope for the future."

Joseph Nye asks: "If the United States starts out the 20th century as a second-tier power and it ends up the 20th century as the world's only superpower, did it matter who was president? Would it all have occurred or turned out the same way anyway, or did individual leaders make a big difference?"

Secret recordings have been a headache for some high-profile politicians. Many question the morality of the practice, especially when the media gets involved. Do public officials have a right to privacy? Is the value of these recordings too important to ignore?

While domestic injustices and the information revolution were key factors, Dr. Telhami argues it's impossible to understand the Arab uprisings without also referring to foreign policy. "The dignity that they sought to restore in these uprisings was not only about their relationship with the rulers, but was about their relationship with the rest of the world."

We have been guilty of overreaching abroad and underachieving at home, says Richard Haass, and these sins are really two sides of the national security coin. After all, "our capacity to act abroad is obviously directly limited and affected by the capacities we have created here at home, whether the capacities are military or economic or human."

With U.S. companies losing billions of dollars to intellectual property theft, mostly to China, some are suggesting that corporations fight back. Can the government do more? Is "threat based deterrence" from the private sector the answer?