Power Problems

President Joe Biden claimed he would defend human rights around the world, but his track record paints a different picture, especially in the Middle East. Quincy Institute senior fellow Annelle Sheline discusses how U.S. policies in the region have protected oppressive leaders while undermining American interests.

Show Notes

• Annelle Sheline bio
• Annelle Sheline, “House Passes Measure Ending U.S. Support for Saudi War in Yemen,” Responsible Statecraft, September 23, 2021
• Annelle Sheline and Steven Simon, “Reset Overdue: Remaking U.S.-Saudi Relations,” Quincy Brief no. 6, October 2020

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Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. He discusses 20 years of failed post-9/11 national security policies, the strategy of global military dominance, and the ongoing the battle of ideas on the U.S. role in the world.

Show Notes:

• Stephen Wertheim bio
• Stephen Wertheim, “The Ever-Ready Answer for Failure in Afghanistan: More War,” The Washington Post, 
• Stephen Wertheim, “Delusions of Dominance: Biden Can’t Restore American Primacy – And Shouldn’t Try,” Foreign Affairs, January 25, 2021.

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U.S. Naval War College professor Peter Dombrowski argues that the most pressing problems Americans face are internal domestic challenges and non-military risks like pandemics and climate change. But national security policy devotes disproportionate time and resources to confronting inflated threats from external actors. He joins the show to discuss the problems with an overly militarized grand strategy that has failed to properly identify or prioritize threats.

Show Notes

• Peter Dombrowski bio
• Simon Reich and Peter Dombrowski, The End of Grand Strategy: U.S. Maritime Operations in the Twenty-First Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
• Peter Dombrowski and Simon Reich, “Does Donald Trump Have a Grand Strategy?” International Affairs 93, no. 5, (September 2017): pp. 1013-1037.

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The chaos that accompanied the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan does not negate the wisdom of bringing the war to an end, despite protestations in Washington about U.S. credibility and the "sustainability" of endless war. Benjamin H. Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, weighs in. 

Show Notes 

• Benjamin H. Friedman bio
• Benjamin H. Friedman, “Exiting Afghanistan: Ending America’s Longest War,” Defense Priorities, August 2019.

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The now-popular "ending endless wars" slogan has generated more political rhetoric than real policy changes. David Sterman, senior policy analyst at New America, helps define the concept of "endless war" as a strategy based on unachievable objectives and offers practical policy solutions for a substantive shift away from the War on Terror. 

Show Notes

• David Sterman bio
• David Sterman, “Defining Endless Wars: The First Step Towards Ending Them,” New America, January 26, 2021.
• Peter Bergen, David Sterman, and Melissa Salyk-Virk, “America’s Counterterrorism Wars: Tracking the United States’s Drone Strikes and Other Operations in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya,” New America, June 17, 2021.

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Boston University’s Joshua Shifrinson weighs in on a new critique of the restraint school in U.S. foreign policy debates and explains why the strategy proposed by some liberal internationalists to confront a rising China - a strategy he terms "neo-primacy" - is bound to fail.

Show Notes

• Joshua Shifrinson bio
• Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, “Neo-Primacy and the Pitfalls of US Strategy Toward China” The Washington Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 2019): pp. 65-83.
• Bruce W. Jettleson, “Be Wary of China Threat Inflation,” Foreign Policy, July 30, 2021.
•  Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Misplaced Restraint: The Quincy Coalition Versus Liberal Internationalism,” Survival 63, no. 4 (2021): pp. 7-32.

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9/11 set the course for U.S. national security policy in the 21st century, often with counterproductive results. Cato Institute senior fellow Justin Logan explains how post-9/11 foreign policy went off the rails and thrust America into disastrous elective wars and wasteful spending sprees. The lack of accountability for those who carried out such failures bodes ill for the future.

1. Justin Logan bio
2. Justin Logan, “The Case for Withdrawing from the Middle East,” Defense Priorities, September 2020. 
3. Justin Logan, “Why Wait Five to 10 Years to Leave?” Responsible Statecraft, June 24, 2021.
4. Jane K. Cramer and A. Trevor Thrall, Why Did the United States Invade Iraq? (London: Routledge, 2012).

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As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, the Biden administration is retaining some presence nearby. Tactics are shifting, but U.S. intervention looks far from over. Cato research fellow Sahar Khan discusses the debate over building bases in Pakistan and the role of U.S. security contractors in the so-called Forever War.

Show Notes

• Sahar Khan bio
• Sahar Khan, “Double Game: Why Pakistan Supports Militants and Resists U.S. Pressure to Stop,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 849, September 20, 2018.
• Imran Khan, “Imran Khan: Pakistan is Ready to be a Partner for Peace in Afghanistan, but We Will Not Host U.S. Bases,” Washington Post, June 21, 2021.

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Many realists assume that national leaders are rational. But are they? University of Southern California professor Brian Rathbun draws on classical realism to argue that realpolitik is a demanding psychological standard that is less prevalent than often assumed. Constructive diplomacy obligates policymakers, therefore, to better account for both their own subjective biases and those of other states.

Show Notes

• Brian Rathbun bio
• Brian Rathbun, Reasoning of State: Realists, Romantics and Rationality in International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
• Brian C. Rathbun, Diplomacy’s Value: Creating Security in 1920s Europe and the Contemporary Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
• Brian Rathbun, “The Reality of Realpolitik: What Bismarck Rationality Reveals about International Politics,” International Security 43, no. 1 (Summer 2018): 7-55.

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has erupted again, but the politics in both Israel and the United States on this longstanding issue appear to be undergoing change. Jeremy Pressman, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut and an expert on the conflict, explains the historical context of the recent outbreak in violence, argues the cycle of military force undermines the objectives of both sides, and discusses the current tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Show Notes

• Jeremy Pressman bio
• Jeremy Pressman,The Sword is Not Enough: Arabs, Israelis, and the Limits of Military Force(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2020).
• Jeremy Pressman, “Visions in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba?”Quarterly Journal: International Security28. no. 2, (Fall 2003): 5-43.

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