
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


The United States’ historical advantages cause its people to misperceive international affairs, according to Why America Misunderstands the World: National Experience and Roots of Misperception. The author, Paul Pillar, who spent most of his career interpreting foreign actions at the CIA, argues that intelligence analysis has limited impact on how U.S. policy-makers look at the world. American culture, which comes from historical experience, instead plays the leading role.
That experience has been exceptionally fortunate, Pillar writes. Geographic remoteness from threatening rivals, abundant resources, and a liberal consensus produced great wealth, safety, power and political stability. Americans often take these blessings for granted, Pillar argues, or as proof of innate superiority.
One result is underestimation of the difficulties foreign nations face in achieving security, prosperity and unity. Another is overestimation of U.S. power to correct foreign troubles. We tend, according to Pillar, toward a Manichean worldview, where the goodness of U.S. action is taken as obvious, nationalistic resistance to it is surprising, and hostile actors’ unity and aggression is routinely exaggerated.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
From the publisher's feed
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

971 Listeners

2,814 Listeners

4,273 Listeners

2,447 Listeners

29 Listeners

1,514 Listeners

2,889 Listeners

980 Listeners

1,400 Listeners

90 Listeners

2,031 Listeners

976 Listeners

737 Listeners

3,925 Listeners

3,342 Listeners

696 Listeners

176 Listeners