Power Problems

Rachel Metz, assistant professor of political science at George Washington University, explains why security assistance, one of the most ubiquitous programs in U.S. foreign policy, so often fails. She argues that bureaucratic interests, organizational processes, and perverse dynamics of civil-military relations discourage conditioning U.S. support for partner militaries. She also discusses the role of norms in the U.S. Army, the need for greater civilian oversight and management, why the policymakers need to be more selective about security assistance, and how U.S. political leaders have expanded the military’s roles and responsibilities to the detriment of an effective U.S. strategy. 

Show Notes

Rachel Tecott Metz; “The Cult of the Persuasive: Why U.S. Security Assistance Fails,” International Security 2022/2023; 47 (3): 95–135.

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Jonathan Kirshner, professor of political science and international studies at Boston College, discusses his most recent book, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics. Kirshner provides fundamental critiques of structural realism and offensive realism and argues for classical realism’s greater explanatory power and firmer theoretical underpinnings. He also covers rationalist explanations for war, the role of change and uncertainty in world politics, the rise of China, and why effective grand strategy requires a healthy politics, among other topics. 

Show Notes

Jonathan Kirshner, An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics, Princeton University Press, 2022.

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Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs, the nonprofit housed at the Eurasia Group, and host of the None of the Above podcast, argues that President Biden has not used the leverage US support provides over Israel in its war in Gaza and Ukraine in its war with Russia, prolonging the conflicts instead of imposing real conditions and pressing for negotiated resolutions. He discusses the recently passed aid bill, Israel’s planned attack on Rafah and Biden’s threat to withhold aid, and the politics within each party over Israel and Ukraine, as well as the American addiction to war and tendency to construe international conflicts in simplified Manichean terms, among other issues.

Show Notes

• Mark Hannah, “Biden needs to get real with Ukraine and Israel,” CNN, April 26, 2024
• Mark Hannah, “Straight Talk on the Country’s War Addiction,” New York Times, February 18, 2023
• Mark Hannah, “Why Is the Wartime Press Corps So Hawkish,” Foreign Policy, March 30, 2022

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David Sterman, senior policy analyst at New America’s Future Security Program, tracks U.S. counter-terrorism airstrikes, particularly with drones. He discusses the history of drone strikes in post-9/11 U.S. counter-terrorism policy from Bush to Biden, the issue of civilian casualties, Biden’s quiet use of drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia, the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the problems of threat inflation and secrecy in covert strikes, defining endless war, and reform proposals for how to rein in America’s unachievable objectives and make U.S. counter-terrorism operations more transparent. 

Show Notes

• David Sterman, “How Many People Does the US Assess it Killed in Somalia in 2023?,” NewAmerica.org, April 2, 2024
• David Sterman, “The United States Should Provide a Detailed Accounting of its Operations in Yemen,” NewAmerica.org, August 3, 2023
• David Sterman, “Endless War Challenges Analysis of Drone Strike Effectiveness,” Journal of National Security Law and Policy, May 6, 2023

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James Bosworth, founder of Hxagon and columnist at World Politics Review, discusses the various "push factors" throughout Latin America and the Caribbean driving the recent upsurge in migration to the US-Mexico border. He covers US-Mexico relations as well as gang violence, poor governance problems, and other instability in Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, and beyond. Bosworth also discusses the transnational network dynamics of criminal organizations throughout the region, including their involvement in human trafficking, and argues that only an internationally coordinated approach within the hemisphere can mitigate such problems. Finally, he explains why the US's drug war approach to the region is misguided and provides recommendations for how DC can better approach this hemisphere's problems.

Show Notes

• James Bosworth at World Politics Review

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Jon Hoffman, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and adjunct professor at George Mason University, argues for a fundamental reevaluation of the U.S.'s "special relationship" with Israel. He discusses the dire scale of Israel's siege of Gaza and why it qualifies as collective punishment, Israel's lack of clear military objectives in Gaza and plans to attack Rafah, and the widespread regional ramifications of the conflict. He also talks about the negative consequences of unwavering US support for Israel, the military-heavy US approach to the Middle East, the Abraham Accords and Biden's prospective normalization deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and explains what having a "normalized" U.S.-Israel relationship would look like.

Show Notes

Jon Hoffman bio

Jon Hoffman, "Israel is a Strategic Liability for the United States," ForeignPolicy.com, March 22, 2024

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Dale Copeland, professor of international relations at the University of Virginia and author of the new book A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy From the Revolution to the Rise of China, talks about his "dynamic realism" theory of great power war and peace, emphasizing the critical causal role of future trade expectations. Copeland discusses case studies from the American Revolutionary War to the Spanish-American War and the beginnings of the Cold War and then applies his theory to U.S.-China relations across a range of policy areas, with important insights into how to avert a catastrophic war. 

Show Notes

1. Dale Copeland bio
2. A World Safe for Commerce
3. Economic Interdependence and War
4. The Origins of Major War

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Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the lack of strategic focus in the Biden administration's foreign policy and argues that genuine prioritization requires retrenchment. The U.S. should draw down from Europe and the Middle East, he argues, and step away from formal security commitments there in order to avoid getting entangled in conflicts where U.S. interests are not vital. He also discusses Biden's maladroit approach to East Asian security, particularly Taiwan, the failure of his "democracy vs autocracy" rhetoric, and the prospects for a negotiated resolution to the war in Ukraine, among other topics. 

Show Notes

• Stephen Wertheim bio
• Stephen Wertheim, "Why America Can't Have it All," Foreign Affairs, February 14, 2024
• Stephen Wertheim, "Biden's Democracy-Defense Credo Does Not Serve U.S. Interests," The Atlantic, January 23, 2024

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Paul Poast, associate professor of political science at University of Chicago, discusses the concept of hegemony in international relations and puts forth several models to explain a state's willingness to take on the global responsibilities of a hegemon. He also explains hegemonic stability theory, analyzes the Biden administration's democracy vs autocracy rhetoric, and suggests the United States may be a hegemon in decline. 

Show Notes

• Paul Poast bio
• Paul Poast, "Don't Blame Lack of Will for the United States' Waning Hegemony," World Politics Review, January 26, 2024
• Paul Poast, "Biden's 'Defending Democracy' Agenda is All Talk," World Politics Review, February 2, 2024.

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Elite politics shape and constrain democratic leaders in decisions about the use of force and tend to induce a hawkish bias into war-time foreign policy. So says Columbia University professor Elizabeth N. Saunders in her forthcoming book The Insider's Game: How Elites Make War and Peace. She explores how elite politics influenced presidential decisions in U.S. wars including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond. She also discusses the problems of the public's rational ignorance of foreign policy and the tensions between an elite-centric foreign policy and democratic values, among other topics. 

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• Elizabeth N. Saunders bio
• Elizabeth N. Saunders, The Insider’s Game: How Elites Make War and Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024). Forthcoming. 
• Elizabeth N. Saunders, “Elites in the Making and Breaking of Foreign Policy,” Annual Review of Political Science 25 (May 2022): pp. 219-240.
• Chaim Kauffman, “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War,” International Security 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004): pp. 5-48.

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