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Richard Hanania's Newsletter
Hosted by Richard Hanania · EN
Foreign policy, American politics, and social science
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In Praise of Trump's Leader-Decapitation Strategy
Mar 7Tap to summarizeIn the Boston Globe, I have a new article arguing that what I call Trump’s “leader-decapitation strategy” is working. Killing bad people is an achievable goal that the US is good at and probably has positive effects on the world. We should do it more often, and do much less of many other aspects of foreign policy. I also discuss how all this might go terribly wrong. As always, you can read it over there or below.Every time the United States uses force abroad or looks as if it is about to, opponents of intervention bring up Afghanistan and Iraq. Both wars started out with narrowly defined objectives as part of the war on terror but ended up causing chaos on the ground and costing thousands of American lives.Yet if the approximately decade and a half after 9/11 seemed to discredit interventionism, the period that began with the first Trump administration has shown the degree to which many of the assumptions of anti-interventionists have been misguided. What we need going forward is a synthesis, which takes the real lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan while also appreciating that there are instances where American power can be used for good by removing certain leaders. So far, it appears that the president has arrived at such an approach, and there are initial indications that what we might call Trump’s leader-decapitation strategy is working.Consider the arguments that have in recent years been used to caution against striking Iran. After Trump assassinated Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020, Bernie Sanders warned that the president was on the brink of starting a conflict that could cause thousands of deaths and cost trillions of dollars. Joe Biden said that Trump had “just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.” On Twitter and TikTok, talk of “World War III” went viral. In actuality, the Iranians fired a few missiles at American bases and did little else in response. A few years later, Iran’s main foreign proxy, Hezbollah, was knocked out of commission as the Israelis assassinated one after another of its leaders in Lebanon. Israel’s northern border has remained relatively stable since. Read more
Transcribe →Labor Freedom Is the Best Explanation for the US-Europe Income Gap
Mar 2Tap to summarizeThis is the third part in my series of articles against labor unions. See Part I clarifying concepts and showing how unions practically always require government coercion, meaning that they cannot be justified in a classical liberal framework. Part II relies on basic economic principles to explain why unions are a terrible way to help workers. After publishing those two pieces, I got distracted by other things and it’s now been 17 months. Sorry for keeping everyone waiting. The impetus to finally write this article came from seeing the excellent essay “Why Europe Doesn’t Have a Tesla,” by Peter Garicano in Works in Progress (see also this podcast). In fact, it’s so good that I think he’s done much of the work for me, so I’m going to post large excerpts and share some additional thoughts. One reason I hesitated to finish the third part of the series was that I wanted to write that labor laws are a large part of the explanation as to why the US is so much wealthier than Europe. This has always been a hunch, but I didn’t know if I could sufficiently prove it. Garicano’s article has helped convince me that I am correct, and if anything I underestimated the degree to which labor laws hold Europe back. Before I start, I want to note two things. First, I now realize that in the earlier articles of this series I focused too narrowly on labor unions. They’re very bad, but the issue is actually broader and is really about having a free market in labor. You could have a country with no unions but that nonetheless enacts worker protections that are terrible for individual liberty and growth. Labor unions are a mechanism through which countries get bad policy. But governments often do many of the same things through legislation. It’s important to be anti-labor union, but you should just as strongly be against worker protections that mimic what unions do. The Frenchman who understood why labor protections were bad.Second, I arrive at the view that the free market in labor is key to the US-Europe wealth gap partly through a process of elimination. Americans do much better than Europeans, but the US is not clearly economically freer in most areas. For example, Heritage’s 2025 index of economic freedom puts it behind eleven European countries. The US is ranked 27th in the world in overall economic freedom, but 3rd in labor freedom. Given the degree to which the US has surpassed other major nations, perhaps indexes like this are underweighting the importance of this one particular category. America is far from a capitalist paradise; particularly in housing and allowing people to build, we do a pretty poor job. Having read Garicano’s article helped me realize how massive the gap in labor freedom is between the US and Europe. Imagine if the entire force of government policy was put toward enforcing a status quo bias in other contexts: government created every possible financial incentive to keep people in the same homes; made sure they continually drive the same cars or buy vehicles from the same companies; or put up an endless number of barriers in the way of them switching grocery stores or banks. Everyone would realize that such policies represent the height of economic illiteracy and would be bound to have all kinds of unintended consequences. Yet we treat labor as different, even though the underlying economic principles are exactly the same. Garicano begins:In recent decades, Europe has fallen behind the United States. In 2000, incomes in the original six members of the European Union were just 10 percent behind Americans. Today, they are 20 percent lower. One factor behind this has been the lack of innovation in European business. To a striking extent, Europe lacks tech giants like Google, Meta and Amazon. But even in industries in which it has traditionally excelled, like carmaking, Europe has failed to keep up. Tesla is now worth more than the next nine largest carmakers in the world put together. Six American cities are now served by robotaxis made by Waymo. Understanding why Europe doesn’t have Google is important. Understanding why it doesn’t have a Tesla is existential.There are many partial explanations: high energy prices, expensive housing, excessive proceduralism, high taxes, extractive interest groups, and politicians with a penchant for degrowth. But all of these problems are true of California as well [emphasis added], which is n...
Transcribe →What's Next in Iran? w/Graeme Wood of The Atlantic
Mar 1Tap to summarizeGraeme Wood (X account), a staff writer for The Atlantic who has reported extensively on the Middle East, joins me on the livestream to discuss the bombing of Iran and what comes next. This is a busy day for him, so I appreciate Graeme making time and fighting through his cough. Just yesterday, he published a well-timed profile of former regime official Jaber Rajabi, who argues that all you need to do is eliminate around ten people for the government to crumble. Well, as of this recording, reports are that the US and Israel may have taken out the top 5-10 members of the regime, with Khamenei confirmed dead. So it appears that we are testing that theory in real time. We discuss Rajabi’s theory of the regime, and whether it is plausible. The conversation also covers Trump’s decision-making, whether the Iranians could have done anything to avoid this outcome, the logic of attacking the Gulf Arabs, the state of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and the roles of the Europeans and Russians. At the end, I ask Graeme who else to follow to be informed on the situation, and he recommends Karim Sadjapour and Arash Azizi. I wonder whether, if this intervention works out well, as Venezuela has so far, there may start to be some sense among foreign policy elites in Washington that perhaps Trump has a point in his approach to hostile regimes. I think that while Iraq and Afghanistan were understood to discredit interventionism, it’s anti-interventionism that has had a bad last few years. I lay out some thoughts here on a proper synthesis incorporating all the lessons learned over previous decades, which converges on the view that while trying to do social engineering through force has failed, simply killing bad people and being pragmatic about what comes next makes sense as an approach to American foreign policy. Read more
Transcribe →Anglo Deaths of Despair, North Korean Intranet, Lauren Southern Memoir, and More
Feb 27Tap to summarizeThis month, I did a video interview with the Free Press as part of their series on people who’ve changed their minds, and also wrote an article on how I decided it was a mistake to vote for Trump. In the video, you’ll see that I was squinting, which I didn’t realize I was doing. I think it was because the interviewer was really far away, and I’m nearsighted, so I was trying to make up for that. Anyway, next time I’m in a similar situation I’ll just open my eyes all the way and not care whether I can actually see the person well.For UnHerd, I published an article on cutting back on my phone use. I can now distribute copies of my upcoming book. If you are a journalist, podcast host, or someone who might review it or bring attention to it in some way, reach out and I can get you a PDF. If you want to enter into the ACX book review contest, also be in touch. I can’t give a copy to everyone who asks, but I will probably share if I have good reason to think you’ll actually enter the contest, like if you’re a professional writer or at least have participated in contests like this before. You can read about the book here, and order it here. Below, I review Lauren Southern’s new memoir This Is Not Real Life, and have links on topics including the North Korean intranet, the last days of Assad, findings on Neanderthals mating with human women, and more. 1. You might have heard that the murder rate has gone down because we've gotten better at saving people. Yet Jeff Asher says there's no evidence of such an effect over the last 15 years. Go back further, and the data becomes iffy and it's hard to say. One countervailing force of better medical technology is that guns on the street have apparently gotten more powerful. See also Scott Alexander’s post on this. 2. Lyman on Gulf Arab fertility. I recently found out that the TFR numbers for these countries that you can look up online include foreign residents. But they’re somewhere in the range of 40% to 90% of the population of each state! So you need to dig a bit to have any kind of citizen fertility estimate. Lyman says that UAE and possibly Kuwait are still at around 3 and therefore doing remarkably well given their levels of development. Why is this? Lyman puts forth a theory that UAE just functions so well that…citizens feel like things are working and have more kids as a result of this optimism? Perhaps. But not really a testable theory. The idea that it’s just Islam works better. Muslims are overperformers everywhere. Granted, the Gulf Arabs are much bigger overperformers than other Muslims, so it’s not just Islam, but it’s no secret that this region of the world practices a stricter form of the religion. Anyway, I hope Lyman is right about governance, because if he is, that means there are transferable lessons that can be applied elsewhere. I’m intrigued by his idea that Israel and UAE are two countries that started focusing on fertility before it fell below replacement, and this helped maintain a positive equilibrium. Read more
Transcribe →Wild Teen or "Survivor"?
Feb 26Tap to summarizeZoë Booth (X, Substack) is the Content Director for Quillette and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast. Amid all the talk about Epstein, she mentioned to me that when she was 15–16, she had sexual relationships with older men, yet did not consider herself to have experienced pedophilia. I wanted to talk about it, so I invited her on to stream. Funnily enough, the guys got mad at her when she stopped being woke. Yet despite the financial and cultural incentives to do so, she refuses to identify as a “victim” or “survivor.” We also discuss age gap relationships, gooning, safetyism, neuroticism, the evils of locking up female teachers for having relationships with male students, and the causes of actual pedophilia. As you can hear, the Squatty Potty guy is on my mind today. I argue that society is pushing to make heterosexuality resemble lesbianism. This is what ties together pedo hysteria and opposition to age gaps and power disparities within couples. Near the end, we move on to other topics like immigration to Australia, Zoë’s upcoming marriage, testosterone and hormone replacement therapy, Bryan Johnson and how he makes me root for death, and having kids. A fun conversation, and obviously an enjoyable viewing experience too. Read more
Transcribe →Why Low Human Capital Obsesses over Pedophilia
Feb 23Tap to summarizeI’ve always had a low opinion of Dave Smith, and for a long time have believed that pedo hysteria is out of control. Last week, however, I saw a clip of Smith posted by Michael Tracey that still left me quite surprised, and reinforced my view that there is something spiritually and intellectually rotten here that is worth analyzing and working to discredit. In the five-minute video, Smith informs his audience that it is bad enough when a 25-year-old man has sex with a 15-year-old woman, which should lead to prison. But he then says it is clearly much worse when a 55-year-old man has sex with an 18-year-old. One can maybe debate whether the age of consent should be say 18, 19, or 20. But he’s not interested in splitting hairs. The normal male response is to want to kill anyone who would engage in such “pedophilia,” and also just to be safe, kill anyone who would split hairs over the behavior of the offender. So here we have an argument that not only should the age of consent probably be raised, but violence is a normal and healthy reaction toward anyone who takes the opposite view, or in any way expresses skepticism about the possibility that legal adults should not be allowed to enter into whatever kind of relationships they want. You can watch Tracey and me respond to this video and others here. I’ve previously said that the real target of pedo hysteria is age gap relationships, and here we have a major influencer saying that age gap relationships between adults are so offensive that the thought of their existence should fill us all with murderous rage. I realized while watching this video how central pedo hysteria is to low quality influencer discourse, and also that the derangement goes much further than I thought. Pedophilia is defined broadly, declared to be everywhere, and put at the center of our politics. Having spent a lot of time in academia and among educated elites, very few consider pedophilia to be a major societal concern. But for Low Human Capital movements, it is central. Before the Epstein craze, you had QAnon, which understands the entirety of the Trump phenomenon as a cosmic struggle against Satanic pedophiles. Note this started completely organically and unlike most political movements was not responding to signals coming from elites – at least ones whose meanings weren’t completely imagined, anyway. In Hillbilly Elegy, JD Vance discusses how his poor and dysfunctional relatives lived in constant fear of their kids getting molested. He tells about the time he got lost at a funeral service.When I failed to appear in the crowd of mourners leaving the church, Mamaw and Papaw grew suspicious. There were perverts even in Jackson, they told me, who wanted to stick sticks up your butt and “blow on your pecker” as much as the perverts in Ohio or Indiana or California. Papaw hatched a plan: There were only two exits to Deaton’s, and no one had driven away yet. Papaw ran to the car and grabbed a .44 Magnum for himself and a .38 Special for Mamaw. They manned the exits to the funeral home and checked every car. When they encountered an old friend, they explained the situation and enlisted help. When they met someone else, they searched the cars like goddamned DEA agents.Ok, I guess. Think about how strange this is. Pedophilia is a crime, but so are trespassing, robbery, aggravated assault, and murder. Yet nobody builds a political identity around hatred of any of these other crimes while expanding its definition. The idea that our society goes soft on pedophiles is insane. There is so little pedophilia that Jeffrey Epstein had sexual contact with post-pubescent girls two decades ago, and this story is currently dominating political headlines. I’ve seen TikTok videos where ex-cons talk about how child molesters are considered the lowest of the low in prison, and nobody finds it strange how men who have sexual relations with 14-year-old girls are in many cases considered worse than murderers. Had Epstein been convicted of killing someone and served his sentence, there would be less outrage directed at those who stayed friends with him than there currently is.American society seems prone to always be moralizing about sex. Maybe this is part of our Puritan inheritance. As women have gained the freedom to be more openly promiscuous and homosexuality has been destigmatized on the grounds of individual liberty, more attention has shifted to focusing on the forms of behavior that one can argue do not involve consent, and so are still potential targets. It’s a Low Human Capital obsession in particular because losers feel the need to look down on someone else. While elites can take comfort in having prestigious jobs and being more intelligent and harder working than others, those ...
Transcribe →The Judiciary as the Last Bastion of Intellectual Conservatism
Feb 20Tap to summarizeI just did a livestream during which I read through the decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. To get the full benefit of this stream, you should watch the video, as I highlight text as I read. I share some thoughts about reading judicial decisions as a general matter, and Supreme Court justices functioning as philosopher kings. Topics addressed throughout the video include the logic of the IEEPA, the major questions doctrine, how much you should read into these opinions the justices’ views of the underlying policy, and the extent to which Trump can achieve the same results through different statutory authority. I argue that by changing the status quo, the Supreme Court has made the lives of Trump officials much more difficult. I also explain why the judiciary is the one part of conservatism beyond the president’s ability to shape at will. In the first administration, Trump regretted most of his major appointments. Right-wing media has also been remade in his image, as has Heritage. This time around, he can have all new people in the executive branch, but he’s still stuck with those he put on the courts in the first administration. Moreover, judges go through more of an academic process to get where they are. This leads to some thoughts on the wisdom of lifetime appointments under the Constitution, as we are never one election away from a crazy person getting into power and dismantling norms and institutions. Even if Trump wants judges now who will pledge unending loyalty, there’s no way for him to enforce any promises that are implicitly or explicitly made.I reflect on whether and how the existence of an individual as flawed as Trump changes the entire process of statutory interpretation. It seems possible to me that Kavanaugh’s dissent is correct that Congress in 1977 meant to give the president some power to implement tariffs. But they never imagined unlimited tariffs for an unlimited period of time without any procedural safeguards, enacted by a president this emotionally immature and economically illiterate. If they had foreseen someone like Trump, they probably would have explicitly limited the power to place tariffs in the IEEPA. If this is true, what does statutory intent actually mean? A lot of things are probably like this, where our laws, norms, and institutions assume a certain amount of good faith that no longer exists in the Trump era. This raises deep questions about the nature of democracy and how to protect the parts of our system that need to be preserved.Note: If you would like to get this podcast through a regular podcast app, go to richardhanania.com on a browser on your device (it doesn’t work in the app), log in to Substack, and click on the tab for either the Hanania Show or the H&H Podcast. Select the episode you want, and then choose one of Apple, Spotify, etc. under “Listen on” to your right. You’ll be able to add the show through an RSS feed, after which you will get new episodes, either free or paid depending on what kind of subscriber you are, through whichever platform you use. Read more
Transcribe →The Problem with "White Culture"
Feb 17Tap to summarizeLast week in a Senate confirmation hearing, we saw what happens when the Based Ritual collides with real world politics. Jeremy Carl, nominated to a top State Department post, was asked about some of his positions on anti-white discrimination and threats faced by “white culture.” It did not go well. When asked what white culture meant, Carl stumbled around, mentioning baseball, football, hot dogs, burgers, and the Scots-Irish. Not even those sympathetic toward his views thought he did a good job articulating them. But we have seen some try to make the case that, even if Jeremy was not the best representative for the position, white culture does exist, no less than American black or Hispanic culture does, and it is being discriminated against. This whole debate is pretty annoying, because it seems as if we’re fighting over words to hide what is a more substantive disagreement over ideas and empirical propositions. Sure, you can say “white culture” exists. You can group people together and divide them into whatever categories you want. Here is a list of cultures you can say I arguably belong to: AmericanArab-AmericanPalestinian-AmericanJordanian-AmericanArab AmericanPerson of colorWhiteGentile (non-Jew)ChicagoanCalifornianEducated eliteMidwesternerWest CoasterWesterner (as in Western civilization)LibertarianMaleHeterosexualAsperger’sEnglish speakerI could go on. We don’t have to ask which of these cultures are real and which are made up. It’s like trying to decide which races are real, or how many languages there are. These are human-made categories that we are free to accept or reject as they overlap and exist on continuous spectrums.Yet the process of accepting or rejecting a certain identity communicates something about my place in the world and how I perceive it. I could be a “person of color” or “white” in the American context, but which I choose clearly tells you something about my politics. If I go around calling myself a “Gentile,” I’m probably cheekily communicating that I believe in Jewish conspiracies controlling the world. So the question is, what exactly are “white culture” enthusiasts trying to communicate? If someone says that he is proud to be an Italian-American, it means that he enjoys quoting mob movies and his grandmother’s lasagna. There is nothing threatening or morally objectionable about this. But if the same person tells me he is proud to be a white American, he’s probably a fascist. It is rational to assume that such a person has a zero-sum view of the world, thinks that the 2020 election was stolen, and loved what Trump was doing in Minneapolis, meaning that he supports authoritarian means through which to achieve demographic goals. If you’re non-white, you have nothing to fear from an American of Irish descent who has an overly enthusiastic St Patrick’s Day, but you know that the guy who cares about white identity is coming for your family. This doesn’t mean that “white culture” does not exist. Rather, only that it is a fundamentally unhealthy identity in the American context. This is in part because identities usually require some kind of parity to be seen as sportsmanlike. Imagine if East Asian countries decided to form a bloc to push around Africans. Most mentally healthy people would recoil from this, regardless of whether you can say East Asian culture exists. This is also why we look with suspicion toward attempts to organize around male or heterosexual identity. White Americans are a majority of the country, and collectively have so much power and influence that no macro-race can come anywhere close to competing. American identity is fine because the “other” in this context is usually powerful nation-states. Yet while invoking American nationalism in a competition with China is seen as an acceptable way to behave, to place tariffs on Swaziland because Trump thinks they are one of the countries that is “ripping us off” is grotesque. Whiteness is the American default, and Americanism is becoming the global default. To worry about “white culture” being under threat in 2026 is like living in fear that Christianity is going to disappear at the height of the Middle Ages. If you’re a white American, people in every corner of the globe speak your language, practice your religion, wear your clothes, follow your politics, and generally accept your framing of reality. Most white America...
Transcribe →Thoughts on Elite Versus Populist Libertarianism
Feb 16Tap to summarizeI think that libertarianism is generally closer to the truth than any other political philosophy held by a substantial number of people. It is also the case that libertarianism attracts a lot of individuals inclined toward grifting, conspiratorial thinking, bigotry, and authoritarianism. For example, Angela McArdle, until recently the chairwoman of the Libertarian Party, is basically a right-wing culture warrior, down to her full embrace of what ICE has been doing in Minneapolis, and rantings about the Epstein files. The Mises Caucus, a faction of the Libertarian Party as far as I can tell, has over 150,000 followers on X. It often posts about Pizzagate and the deep state stealing elections. It’s basically a nonstop firehose of based signalling and MAGA nonsense. There’s also a major influencer named “The Redheaded Libertarian,” who spends more time showing cleavage and talking about the crimes of pedophile elites than the ways in which prices allow for an efficient distribution of resources through the aggregation of information. Compare these figures with libertarians at the Cato Institute or in the economics departments of places like the University of Chicago and George Mason University. We can divide libertarians into two categories: elites and populists. Compared to their populist counterparts, elite libertarians tend to be more socially liberal, less favorably disposed toward foreign dictatorships, non-conspiratorial in their thinking, and anti-woke when it is tied to statist projects but less horrified by tolerance as a cultural phenomenon. Not all populist libertarians are influencers. One might put Hans-Hermann Hoppe in this category for claiming to have put together a case for restrictive immigration policies based on libertarian principles. He’s also written a book on how democracy has failed to protect individual rights. Ironically, populist libertarians are more likely to be explicit defenders of authoritarianism, even though their ideas have very little appeal among elites, while elite libertarians are more attached to democratic norms and processes. Richard Hanania's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Most libertarian-leaning members of Congress, or those who talk about liberty in classical liberal terms, can also be considered populists. The Freedom Caucus, which on paper at least organizes around the idea of cutting spending and smaller government, puts its weight behind funding DHS and protecting ICE agents from scrutiny or legal accountability. It recently called on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act “if Democrat-run Sanctuary Cities continue enabling Communist agitators assaulting ICE and federal law enforcement.” No matter what you think of this position, it is difficult to see how being on the side of the administration in its draconian vision of immigration enforcement and contempt for constitutional rights lines up with a strong commitment to limited government. If you believe these positions are consistent, let me also note that members of the Freedom Caucus were among the most enthusiastic members of Congress acting in support of Trump’s 2020 coup attempt. No reasonable person can argue there’s a consistent through line that in ideological terms unites small government, anti-immigration, and lying about a stolen election. From my perspective, I see the Freedom Caucus being correct on some economic issues, taking views inconsistent with any individualist philosophy on immigration, and then on the 2020 election engaging in a naked authoritarian power grab.The Milton Friedman of our ageNot every member of the Freedom Caucus has gone along with Trump’s authoritarianism and election denial. But those who didn’t in years past became outcasts. One such example is Justin Amash, who was a founding member of the group but then resigned in 2019 after saying Trump had committed impeachable offenses. Given that he has no more role to play in Republican politics, thi...
Transcribe →Anti-Economics Is Shooting the Messenger
Feb 15Tap to summarizeI have a new article in The Boston Globe about the problem with critics of economics from the right and left, namely Jon Stewart and Oren Cass. As always, you can pay for it here or pay for it there. Below, I also share a brief note responding to reactions I have gotten to the article. When I was in academia, I noticed that often in political science, economics, and philosophy courses, one of the first things students would be taught was the difference between positive and normative statements. Positive statements are factual assertions made about the world, such as what causes poverty. Normative statements deal in the realm of values, what is desirable, and what we want to happen. For example, we can debate whether there is anything morally objectionable about an economy generating high levels of inequality. I used to think that this distinction was so obvious that it was a waste of time to go over these concepts in college classrooms.Then I started writing for a broader audience. At some point, I realized that people have a great deal of difficulty separating an inquiry into what is true from their beliefs about the way they want the world to be. Few things demonstrate this more clearly than ongoing debates about the role of economics in politics and intellectual discourse.Recently, comedian Jon Stewart had the Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler on his show. Stewart repeatedly admitted that his knowledge of the discipline was quite limited, but he confidently declared that “the goal of economics in a capitalist system is to make the most amount of money for your shareholders.” As Stewart described it, the field has no concern with “improving the human condition” but focuses on “just making money for the companies that are extracting the fossil fuels from the earth.” Read more
Transcribe →