After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

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Mario and Tom 

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Episode 16: Sacred Cows, Institutional Orthodoxies

Kishore Mahbubani, author of last year's "Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy," is an academic and diplomat, serving as Singapore's delegate to the UN for over ten years. On this week's episode of After the 'End of History' we introduce his work on the stakes of China's rise, which presents an "inevitable but avoidable" clash vis a vis American hegemony. It should be clear by the end of this week's discussion -- the first part of three -- that he answers his title's question with a resounding yes, challenging the institutional orthodoxies of American foreign policy thought.

Mahbubani believes that America lacks the strategic vision necessary to engage an undeniably rising China in a rational and geopolitically productive manner. But, perhaps more damning, it also behaves inflexibly, failing to temper its ingrained "exceptionalist" thinking to concede a second-place or even equal position of economic, military and political power in the world. This failure to make "U-Turns," among other problems in American foreign policy with respect to China, provides the basis of our discussion this week.

Our material for this series of conversations also includes a debate between Mahbubani and John Mearsheimer. The third part will consider the recent economic work of Pettis & Klein, whose acclaimed "Trade Wars are Class Wars"  helps makes sense of the rise of inequality in the age of globalization, a question that places China's steady integration into the international market front and center. 

Thanks to Jason King, who provides the music that you hear on After the 'End of History.'  

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