B (4:53)

Well, thank you so much for having me. And I had no idea you were in the Triangle. I did my PhD at Duke.

A (4:59)

Yeah, I did. I knew that. I saw that.

B (5:01)

Yeah. So it's always nice to talk to someone from Research Triangle. Also, just for people, if people do want to check out American prestige, I would just point them to americanprestigepod.com yeah.

A (5:14)

I'll make sure to put a link to that, of course, in the show notes. And it's great. I think, as I said, cynical listeners are going to find A lot of interesting perspectives there that are not really too far away from the ones that tend to appear on this show. Denny, this is your first time on Seneca, so you are not a China focused scholar per se. Maybe you could say a little bit by way of introduction what it is that you do focus on academically, what's moved you in your intellectual and personal life, professional life, I guess, closer to the China space, enough so that you've caught the attention of somebody like me. Besides the fact that you guys also interviewed Mike Brennis and have a bunch of, you know, you've actually had him out a bunch of times. Right. As well as Van Jackson. I had Mike and Van on the show. I think you will probably have heard this one just last week. He's also a regular guest on your podcast, Van and I talked to them about their book, of course, which is not unrelated to your own work when I was up at Yale a couple weeks ago. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about where you came at this from, for sure.

B (6:20)

And actually, by the time this is released, listeners will be able to look at our eight part series, I believe, on the history of modern China that we did with Yidi Wu that we're calling Chinese prestige. So check that out. Oh, wow. If you're interested. Yeah, I think. I think it would be of significant interest to people who like Seneca. But basically, academically, I've studied what has been termed, or I at least term defense intellectuals, the thinkers who help define the common sense of what US foreign policy should be. I'm very much a product of the Iraq war in the sense that I was politicized in the 2000s. And my experience of US foreign policy as an adult or as a young adult and then into an adult has been just one of non stop failure, nonstop intervention and collapse, the destruction of other people's lives, literally and in terms of deracinating them. So that's really what got me interested in US foreign relations and studying how it came to be that U.S. dominance became the assumption of so many Americans, and particularly basically everyone in the American elite. So my academic work started on the formation of think tanks because interestingly enough, a lot of the thinking in terms of US foreign policy actually doesn't take place within the state proper, but takes place within what might be thought of as a techno structure of institutions that are nominally private, but who oftentimes, particularly in the early Cold War period, worked almost exclusively for the US government. So I focus in particular on the foundation of the Rand Corporation, which is really the first modern national security think tank. It was founded in 1946 as Project RAND, which was part of Douglas Aircraft Company, which was one of the largest airframe manufacturers before becoming independent in 1948 and becoming the Rand Corporation. That became famous in the 1950s and 1960s, probably the height of its modern consciousness, or that in popular consciousness was Pete Seeger, I believe, actually wrote a song called the Rand him. And in Dr. Strangelove, Strangelove receives a report from the Bland Corporation.

A (8:28)

Right.

B (8:29)

And. And. And Stanley Kubrick, actually, if I'm remembering correctly, met with Herman Kahn, who was a very famous Rand nuclear strategist. And I was kind of exploring how it came to be that so much thinking in US Foreign relations actually occurs outside the confines of the government. And my conclusion was that US Foreign policy has been anti democratic pretty much from the inception, but especially since the 1940s when the United States emerged as the global hegemon. And then I sort of drifted into policy work. I am. I am a socialist. And obviously in the wake of Occupy Wall street and the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a serious presidential candidate in 2015, 2016, there has been this new sort of wing of the Democratic Party that is more explicitly left wing and more explicitly socialists. So the first major piece I wrote for a public outlet was actually a op ed for the New York Times. They titled it what Does Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Think about the South China Sea? But it's really sort of the principles of what a democratic socialist foreign policy should be. Then I did some minor consulting work for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign in 2020. And then the piece you read, Empire Burlesque, was a summation of basically about a decade of thinking about what the United States and the role in the world should be. And when you're talking about what the United States's role in the world should be today, you're really talking about what should the United States position vis a vis China be? And get to inescapable. But yeah, I mean, that is the central question of US Foreign relations, because it is the central question of US primacy or US hegemony or whatever US leadership, quote unquote, as the DC has call it, is what should the United States do vis a vis China? And I have my own thoughts about that, but that's a bit of a precis of where I'm coming from.

A (10:07)

Yeah, we'll draw those thoughts out of you in just a bit here. But across your recent essays and now in this forthcoming volume, Cold War Liberalism, you argue, as you hinted Just now that the American intellectual and policy making establishment really kind of internalized this whole set of assumptions, a cluster, I think you call them, a constellation of ideas during the early years of the Cold War. And those are about human nature, about the inevitability of conflict, about the need, as you suggested, for technocratic elite management. These continued to shape US Foreign policy long after the historical Cold war ended in what, 89 or 91, however you want to date it. For those who haven't really read your work or aren't familiar, what do you see as those features? What are the features of Cold War liberal thinking? And why does this worldview still exert so much influence on how Americans think about the world today?

B (11:00)

Well, Cold War liberalism as a phenomenon is important because it's basically Cold War liberals who create the architecture of American power and the founding ideology of American Empire, the 1940s. And that's partially just contingent in the sense that it was the people who became Cold War liberals. I, I say, as I argue, you read the introduction, Cold War liberalism, I think, could really be traced to the 1930s, and it's an offshoot of New Deal liberalism. But the people who created the institutions of foreign policymaking, like the National Security Council, like the CIA, like the Department of Defense, all these various institutions, like think tanks, like the RAND Corporation, were Cold War liberals. And they had a particular approach and understanding of modern politics and what the United States role in the world should be. Now, liberalism is a very complex phenomenon. It is a variegated ideology that has multiple strands and manifold strands going back to the early 18th century. I, I think it's proper to understand liberalism as emerging from the French Revolution. And it's basically French thinkers response to the violence of the revolutionary terror. People like Benjamin Constant and Madame Germain Destael understood these are, I would say, the earliest people who you could really identify as liberals. They understood that there was a problem with the monarchies and royalism of the past, but they were also afraid of revolutionary terror. And so liberalism attention, in essence tried to chart a middle path between monarchism and what they viewed as a revolutionary terror. And it goes in various streams over the course of the 19th century, particularly in Europe, you know, Gladstone in England, various thinkers in France and Germany. And it really only comes to the United States, I would argue, in the 1930s. So one thing that's really crucial to understand about the United States is that until the 1930s, American thinkers and American elites did not use the political spectrum that we use today with a left, basically a communist and Socialist, left, right, basically what we now identify as a fascist right or a far, far right, sort of less than fascism, but linked to these authoritarian reaction and liberalism in the center. Americans actually thought that their political matrix stood apart from Europe. There was never a monarchy here. And really in Europe the right wing was a monarchical association that was associated with monarchy. What you had here was diverse regional constellations of politics that were oftentimes quite strange. So think about the New Deal coalition. It's a bunch of northern, what we would call today liberals and southern Dixiecrats. Right? That's kind of a strange coalition. So liberalism really comes to the United states in the 1930s, I believe Franklin Delano Roosevelt first used the term to describe his political program in 1932 to a large degree, if I'm remembering correctly, because he didn't want to use the term socialist. But it's essentially an offshoot of left wing progressivism. So I could go briefly into progressivism very, very quickly. The progressive movement emerges in the 1880s and the 1890s. There's various strand, a more populous strand in the Midwest, there's a more properly progressive strand in the, in cities effectively. But essentially the notion is that you want to use technocratic social science methods to manage an increasingly complex industrial society.

A (14:26)

Right.

B (14:26)

That is the, the basic impulse of progressives. There are right leaning progressives like Teddy Roosevelt, and there are left leaning progressives like John Dewey. Over the course of the teens, in the 20s, the progressive movements, as all movements do split. And FDR's New Deal is to my mind at least a type of offshoot of left wing progressivism. Okay, now one thing to understand about progressivism, and I'll get to Cold War liberalism a second, is that progressivism has a strange relationship to the democratic public. So from very early on in the progressive movement, there's a skepticism of ordinary people. Probably the, the apotheosis of this stream is Walter Lippman in his book Public Opinion, in which he essentially argues that elites cannot expect ordinary people to be what he terms omni competent, that is to say, able to vote wisely about a bunch of different issue areas. And so what you needed to do was you needed to establish a technocratic elite that would be able to manage. He's really talking about domestic affairs at the time. So Cold War liberalism essentially argues that you need to have an elite designed to manage foreign affairs. That the experience of Nazism in the 1930s and then Soviet communism in the 1940s, basically the emergence of dictators like Hitler and Stalin demonstrates that the United States needs to take an active role in world affairs or otherwise the world will fall to what they call totalitarianism. And that you needed to back up the active role with a very strong military, which Cold War liberals argued would be used to basically end unemployment at home through a type of deficit spending. Military Keynesianism. And those are types that, the sort of major tenets of Cold War liberalism. And we could get into any and all of those as you'd like.

A (16:14)

Yeah, yeah. I mean, let's just double a little bit further into the sort of intellectual genealogy of this, of this. Because no, it's rooted in the anxieties and the experiences, as you said, of a very specific cohort though of these mid century thinkers. I mean, you name check a bunch of them. I mean people are really familiar with some of them, I think because she's.

B (16:33)

Quoted, never heard of others.

A (16:34)

Yeah, because Hannah Arendt is quoted at me constantly. Reinhold Niebuhr, Isaiah Berlin, who I'm personally pretty fond of, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. And even some people who we ordinarily think of as more conservative thinkers, like George Kennan, who's the of containment. And these guys, as you say, they're all sort of reacting to the catastrophes of the 30s and the 40s, of the depression, the war. And they draw these, like you said, kind of bleak conclusions about human nature, about the fragility of democracy and how it sort of does need these elites, the guiding hand of the enlightened elites, to shape it. They're really skeptical about mass politics in general. Right. So let's, let's talk about how they arrive at this, at this worldview.

B (17:25)

I think the thing to understand is that a lot of these Cold War liberals, not all of them, but a lot of them were socialists in the 1920s and the 1930s. Many of them were in fact German emigres to the United States. The man who I wrote my first book about, Hans Speier, who was the founding head of the RAND Corporation Social science Division, was very much associated with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the late 1920s, to the degree where he was like an educator of workers. So if you know your Marxist theory, Marx basically said that the proletariat needed to recognize itself as the object of history, that is that which is being acted upon by the forces of industrial capitalism, but also as the subject of history, that which is able to transform capitalism because capitalism relies on their labor. Sure, they're supposed to be the subject object of history, but of course what happens in the 1920s and 1930s is that doesn't happen. Instead you get the rise of Nazism in particular in Germany and you get the transformation of the Soviet Union into what many people believe to be, I would say correctly, an autocratic society. Particularly a big moment is the Moscow Trials of 1936, 1937, where a lot of old Soviets are put on trial. So essentially this encounter with Nazism and Soviet Communism or Stalinism essentially forces a lot of left wing people to re evaluate their assumptions about the direction of history and in particular their assumptions about the wisdom of ordinary people. Because the notion is that ordinary people support a Hitler or support a Stalin. And then if you're looking at the United States, ordinary people, you know, have panic runs after the Depression. The Americans are always a little bit more in the, what we today call the center than the Europeans. But there's a lot of sort of mass action in the 30s that, that, that elites, liberal elites and emergent liberal elite views with skepticism. Sure. So essentially you have the experience of World War II. The United States has emerged as triumphant and is insanely powerful. It's difficult to convey how powerful the United states was in 1945. It's the only country with a real air force. It's the only country with atomic weapons. I think it's responsible for about half of the world's exports. And of course, unlike the Soviet Union and Western and Central and Eastern Europe, it's not destroyed physically during the war.

A (19:44)

Right.

B (19:45)

And it also has an incredible position in Japan. It occupies Japan, of course. So this happens. The United States emerges triumphant. And initially between, let's say 1945 and 1949, there's actually a debate about what the United States's role in the world should be. There are still people who argue that the United States should do what it did after World War I. The United States should basically return home, leave Europe to the Europeans. It should maintain a foothold in Asia. As you are well aware, the open door notes, and well before the sort of late 19th century, the United States always wanted a trading position in East Asia. It's a remain in East Asia, but maybe not as a military hegemon and should return home. And there's a debate between quote, unquote, internationalists associated with the FDR coalition and the Democratic Party and more skeptical, what were pejoratively termed isolationists at the time, but really Hemispherests, people who believe that the United States should dominate the Western Hemisphere but should not dominate the globe. And so there's this debate between 45 and 49 the Democratic Party over the course of that period really becomes more and more on the side of intervention. In March 1947, President Harry S. Truman announces the so called Truman Doctrine, which essentially says the United States is going to fund anti communist regimes around the world.

A (20:58)

Right?

B (20:59)

And then in 1949, two things happen which really end the debate in the Democratic Party. First, Mao wins in China decisively with the declaration of the People's Republic. And I believe on, I believe 10-1-1949 according to the the Western calendar, I don't know if it was late September is the second in China itself. It's always referred to here as October 1st. And then almost with within a week or two of that, the United States traces, I forget if it's uranium or whatever they trace. They discovered that the Soviet Union had detonated an atomic weapon, right? So within a very short period of time, China is quote unquote lost and the Soviets get atomic weapons. And this essentially for the majority of the center and left establishment basically says, okay, we're going to fight a Cold War with the Soviet Union. They just can't wait. It takes a little bit longer for this to happen in the Republican Party, which is more traditionally hemisphere, but really once Eisenhower defeats Robert Taft in the and for the 1952 presidential nomination, the Republican Party basically gets on board with this program, reconciles itself to the Cold War, and most famously. And then I'll just end you see this with William Buckley, who comes from a much more traditionally hemisphere position. But by the middle and late 1950s, Buckley is on board with the Cold War. And so this essentially becomes the logic of American foreign policy, of this logic of Primacy from the 50s down to today.

A (22:22)

So you essentially agree then with Steve Wertheim's kind of his description of the United States having made a proactive choice, a decision to seek and to maintain primacy hegemony after the Second World War or during the Second World War.

B (22:38)

Well, wartime traces it to the fall of France and I think I would trace it that that's when, that's when a significant part of the establishment begins to make this choice. But I don't think it's institutionalized until 1949. And then one final thing, I actually think it's useful to think of this institutionalization, the creation of nsc, CIA, dod, these are all Alphabet soup agencies. In my work I refer to this as the second New Deal. So if the first New Deal of the 1930s was designed to create institutions, to manage a domestic space, the institutions of the second New Deal in the late 1940s are basically designed to manage an international space. So you have this irony where this progressive move at home is linked to what eventually rather quickly becomes imperialism abroad, which represents sort of the dialectical tension at the heart of modern liberalism.

A (23:28)

Let me first assure the listeners that we are going to get to China soon. First, just a couple more questions about your work on the idea of Cold War liberalism. I think one of the more striking arguments that you make is that this doesn't remain confined to the ivory tower, the State Department memos. I mean, it becomes structurally embedded in this Alphabet soup of security institutions. I guess what I'm really curious about is how do these ideas make the jump from theory into the machinery of actual state power? And once they're institutionalized, how do they shape America's posture toward the world in ways that really have outlasted the Cold War itself?

B (24:07)

For sure. So the crucial story here to tell is one of institution building, as I mentioned. So institutions, once they are made, they have their own logics. So for example, the National Security Council is the ideal Cold War liberal institution. The head of it is not approved by the Senate. So how does someone like Henry Kissinger become part of the state? He's just appointed the head of the National Security Council. He's appointed head of the ns, he's appointed National Security Advisor.

A (24:32)

Right.

B (24:32)

And there are many people who are influential throughout American foreign policy history. McGeorge, Bundy and others who enter through this, the NSC and, and then the CIA and DOD have their, have their own source of logic. But I think the crucial thing here is that part and parcel of the Cold War liberal project is basically destroying the genuinely left wing and liberal coalition that emerged in the 1930s to defend the New Deal. So I'm sure all the listeners have heard of McCarthy and they heard of McCarthyism. Right? And that's generally pointed to as what destroyed the left in the United States. I do not think that is accurate. What actually happens in the late 1940s is that Harry Truman's Democratic Party as a conscious project, basically destroys the institutions of the American left. You have the creation of loyalty oaths, anti communist loyalty oaths within the executive branch. You have the Attorney General going against left wing institutions like the Hollywood Writers Mobilization for Defense, the Civil Rights Congress, other explicitly left wing groups. And then you have, basically the big thing is that due to pressure from the Democratic Party, the Congress of Industrial Organizations basically kicks out the communist unions. So the communist unions are basically exiled from the labor movement. And then you have trials against communists and things like that over the course of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

A (25:51)

But you're saying this all predates the who lost China debate, It hold debate, it predates the rise of McCarthy.

B (25:58)

Yeah, it's happening around the same time. And I would say that the who lost China basically gives it a sort of adrenaline shot, but it's happening beforehand. And then McCarthy basically finishes the job in the culture arena in universities and Hollywood in particular. But it's really the Democratic Party that goes against labor and exiles as sort of, sort of quote unquote, cleanses its, its own ranks. And so basically due to that, that effort and then due to the Republican Party coming on board in the early 1950s, you have this sort of politics ends at the water's edge, by which is meant everyone agrees the United States needs to dominate the world world globally. You get the creation of an international basing structure. What Daniel Imberfar in his book how to Hide an Empire terms empire where it's essentially projecting power around the globe. And at its height in the mid-1960s, forget the exact number I quoted in the piece, but it's well over a thousand foreign military bases today. We have 750, give or take, depending on how you count a base. Whereas China of course has, has two or one nine, depending on who you. I mean, 1, 2, 9. There's various, various people saying, various claims, you know, whatever. What it's, it's orders and orders of magnitude. The United States, sure, whatever it is, certainly less than 10, let's say. So you basically have this institutional logic of domination in the, in the literal structures of the American state and this ideological embrace in domination amongst the American elite that is then propagandized in the 1950s through various red Scare elements and anti Soviet elements to the American populace. And so it's a very top down approach as to what the United States role in the world should be. There's no discussion as to whether the United States should dominate the world really after the late 1940s. And that's still the ideological and institutional structure that characterizes U.S. foreign policy today.

A (27:53)

So in this essay, in the ideas letter that I referred to, you revisit this. You know, what was a long running debate over whose fault the Cold War actually was. I mean, that's a debate that's been caricatured as a fight between pro Soviet and pro American interpretations, I suppose. But you actually show that the serious historiography is a lot more complex than that. You got these scholars that you look at Andrew Stevenson and Sergey Rodchenko and they reveal how it's American universalist assumptions, especially this kind of unwillingness to accept the idea of spheres of influence made the Cold War much more actually a matter of choice than any kind of structural inevitability.

B (28:32)

Absolutely. I, I mean I would say today it's clear that the Cold War was an American choice. And this is what I mean. Stalin was not a good guy. Stalin wanted to dominate Eastern Europe and he wanted to impose friendly to the Soviet Union regimes that were anti democratic. There was never a genuine choice in East Germany or for much of the post war period for several decades Hungary or Czech Republic. Right, right, right. Czechoslovakia over what it should be. Right, so, so that's, I'm not, this is not Stalin apologia. But what is true is that Stalin was a quote unquote realist and that he understood power and he didn't believe that the Soviet Union was going to dominate the world and turn the world communist. He believed that the world should have been divided into spheres of influence in which the Soviet Union had its own sphere, the United States had its own sphere, the British Empire had its own sphere and China had its own sphere. And then these nations would basically be allowed to do whatever they wanted within their own sphere and they would deal with each other outside of the sphere and trying to avoid things like, you know, trans border aggression. What the historiography now shows is that the Americans just were never going to accept that, that due to a combination of, of geostrategic impulse. I think, and I don't think actually Andrew Stevenson does emphasize this sort of a Protestant millenarianism, the notion that capital H history could only work with the United States, would only move in a positive direction with the United States as the head of global affairs, essentially refused to deal with Stalin. And that I think if Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been in office that things would have turned out very differently because Roosevelt had this four policeman vision of international relations which was essentially a spheres of influence vision of international, international relations. And I think Stalin could have accepted Yalta.

A (30:21)

Right, yeah, you're probably right. That's probably the case. I wonder why this matters in 2025 in understanding the first Cold War not as destiny, but the product of contingent decisions that were grounded in real ideological commitments, whether those are founded in Protestant millenarianism or just more generic American kind of universalism, which is what you sort of lean toward. It seems when we're looking at China today there is a kind of sphere of influence logic now that I think seems to be in ascendancy in the Trump administration. It seems to be that that's where they're leaning right now. Are we facing a similar decision right now?

B (31:07)

Yeah, we are. So it's actually kind of interesting. Trump is kind of interesting. It's funny, I just did a podcast about this. I do think there is a dawning realization amongst younger foreign policy hands, let's say under 50, loose definition of younger, that the United States is not going to be able to dominate East Asia like it had for much of the 20th century and into the 21st century, that China is just incredibly powerful, it has its own interests and it is, of course, in the region. So I think right now you're seeing within Washington D.C. a type of old gerontocratic establishment represented by most recently the Biden administration that really believed that the United States would be able to be primus inter Paris in East Asia, basically going forward. I don't think the Trump administration thinks that. I think whether it's conscious or not, even though there are people like Elbridge Colby and perhaps Rush Doshi who are associated with the administration, who are in it.

A (32:03)

Oh, Russia is not in the administration currently.

B (32:05)

Right.

A (32:05)

But Biden administration cold.

B (32:07)

Right, right. But kind of associated with this aggressive China position. I think that there is a realization that, for example, it wouldn't be worth World War III to defend Taiwan, like when, when push comes to shove, that's just not enough in the United States's interest to do. And that the United States, while obviously going to likely to maintain some sort of position in, in East Asia, particularly a trading position, is not going to be the political and military power there for much longer. So the thing that I would hope to avoid is that this happens willy nilly. Right. Like some, some dramatic action is taken by China or another nation, and then the United States just like leaves or does something dramatic, but that this is actually planned for. So I think making clear that conflict is not inevitable, but that even in the case of the Cold War, that conflict was a choice, could help policymakers reframe their ideas about what they should do vis a vis China. Which to my mind, and, and I don't know if you agree or disagree, I think essentially the United States should effectively return home, should get rid of its military bases and should stop trying to dominate the world. And, and there's, I have philosophical reasons for that about my theories of international relations, but also practical material reasons, which is just that the United States doesn't have the power to do what it did in the 20th and early 21st centuries any longer.

A (33:34)

Right. And I'll remain agnostic about how I think about that, but certainly I see a growing number of people who are warming to that position. So there's a major theme that threads in your work, what you call the anxiety of loss, this kind of deep seated fear among American elites that US Primacy is just slipping away. I mean, it's been a big theme in a lot of my own thinking and my own writing as well. You argue that this whole notion of decline itself is an ideological idea that assumes that somehow US Global dominance was supposed to be. It was natural, it was sustainable. There's kind of teleology there that it was actually morally necessary, that it's not just this sort of anomalous product of the 20th century condition. How does this anxiety of loss, though, distort the way that the US interprets China's rise? And how does it continue to sort of inform this debate that we're talking about, whether we should be sort of hemispheric and accept spheres of influence or whether we should continue to pursue hegemonic primacy in East Asia?

B (34:35)

So I think that there is a Protestant millenarianism that undergirds all of American political culture, this universalistic notion that eventually becomes part of liberalism, broadly speaking, and Cold War liberalism in particular, that the United States is to a significant degree here to redeem the world world. That the best thing that the United States could do is to transform the world into the United States because that's what would not only make the United States safer, but would also be good for humanity. Capital H. And I actually think someone like George Kenan read this onto the Soviet Union, basically identifying within Communist Soviet ideology a type of phenomenon similar to Protestant millenarianism. And that people today are reading that on to China, because to my mind, again, this isn't. I'm not an expert in Chinese foreign policy. It seems to me like China would want to have economic relations with most of the world, would want to have, you know, exploitative relations where, where possible, but doesn't feel the need to, for example, dominate the Western hemisphere like the United States felt the need to dominate the Eastern hemisphere. So what you have here is a lot of political elites reading on to first the Soviet Union and today the People's Republic, A universalist mission that I don't think is consonant with how these people act, how the people in other nations act. Stalin, for example, we know, did not have a universalist mission. He wanted to have a sphere of influence. And I think the Same is true for China today, even if many American elites don't seem to recognize that. Even though I do think there's an increase.

A (36:00)

Yeah, there's. I mean, that's an ongoing debate and it's really sort of at the heart, it's the what does China want? Debate. I mean, you'll never settle this. There are people who are absolutely convinced, convinced that China has these sort of global hegemonic ambitions. And there are other people who will, just who don't. I mean, that's maybe the most significant cleavage within the sort of China analysis community. Let's talk about this new Cold War narrative. I mean, you suggest that much of the emerging new Cold War narrative with China, it still borrows very heavily and very uncritically from the old Cold War liberal frameworks. It's got these same features, this sort of tragic view of politics, this belief in the ineradicability of evil, this conviction that the US has to manage global order or else there will be utter chaos. These assumptions, I think, combined with what you've talked about before, this elite anxiety over American decline, they seem to make China almost ideally suited to play this role that the Soviet Union used to. So insofar as there is, or there recently was, this is another matter of debate, a bipartisan consensus on China. I mean, I think at the time that you were writing, I think it was pretty clear there was something akin to a bipartisan consensus. I think there's cleavage in that. We can talk about that. But do you see this as driven more by material realities on the one hand, or by the kind of psychological and ideological legacies, the first Cold War? I mean, do they see this thing sort of dispassionately and say, yeah, it resembles the first Cold War in that we have this large multidimensional, pure competitor that's rising, that has ambitions? Or do you think that it's more sort of the residue of the psychological and ideological thinking of the first Cold War?

B (37:55)

I think it's both. And just I think the two big differences between the first Cold War are one, the United States trades much more with China, of course, than it ever did with the Soviet Union, to the degree where the decline of American industry is directly linked to the offshoring of labor to China in a way that the wheat exchanges between the US And Soviet Union just doesn't, doesn't relate to. So you basically, you have an economy here that is based on the promise of never ending consumption, that relies directly on China, even though that's changing, that is that Is that is changing as we speak. But for several decades, the, the economic relationship was embedded in a way that it never was in the cold war. And there's also the racialized element of U. S. China relations. So throughout the cold war, the Soviet Union was, and I, I use this term just in sort of the technical sense, was presented as like other, was presented as not quite European, even though many Soviets were. Were white, sort of looked white. They were presented as other. But it's not for nothing that most of the violence in the cold war occurred in Asia and particularly in Korea and Vietnam. And that, I think has to do with sort of the important causal force of race and dehumanizing people who don't look like white elite Americans on the global stage. And so you have this racialized element with China as well, which was present with the Soviet Union the first cold war, but not to as as high a degree as I think it is now. So those are two significant differences. But I think basically what people who want to promote confrontation with China see is a quote unquote rising China at this point, it's risen. So there's a material reality there, but also this sort of commitment, this millenarian commitment to American global domination. But I think what's going to happen here is that the material reality of the fact that again, China's huge, powerful, economically important, defeating the United States right now in a number of key technological arenas and is of course in Asia, those material realities are eventually going to lead to just the fact of U. S. Retreat from the region. So the question to me is not a matter of if but when, and not a matter of if, but how.

A (39:54)

Right.

B (39:54)

And so you wanted to do the least amount of damage possible with the least amount of death and destruction and economic collapse. But the US Foreign policy elite, to my mind, has never been especially wise. So I'm worried that something like that would. Won't happen.

A (40:08)

Yeah. And I mean, I'm going to say this toward the end of our conversation, but I would love to hear you sort of paint a picture of what a sober, deliberate drawdown would actually look like and what could actually bring it about, aside from something catastrophic reversal. But I think one of the implications of your work is that cold wars aren't just things that happen to states. They are things that states and elites within states actively make. So when you look at the present moment, with Washington framing China as this existential ideological rival, both parties converging on a militarized competition, which talked about quite a bit with Mike and with Van and the Taiwan Strait treated as this moral hinge of global order. It's hard not to hear again the echoes of the ideological hardening of the late 40s. What are the clearest parallels between the, the first Cold War and the way that that was constructed and the way that you see this emerging US China confrontation taking shape. Where do you see genuine differences to, I think structural, ideological or geopolitical that might actually allow us to maybe avoid repeating the catastrophic patterns of the first Cold War?

B (41:21)

Well, I mean, it's so funny because it's just so ridiculous to claim that the Taiwan Straits are like a huge American interest. You could imagine from the perspective of someone in the 1940s, some sort of, of Anglo American or German American guy who has a civilizational view of, of North Atlantic relations, seeing like Germany as a hinge point in world history. But to claim that like Taiwan is a hinge point in world history for the United States is just so, so strange. I, I mean, I think, I guess I, I am actually sort of like, I, I do not think the United States and China will, will go to war because I just think that enough American elites understand that there's just no way the United States would be able to win that for war, A, a win. So the question is, is to me is really the question of how one disengages. Because I, I just do. And maybe I'm naive. I just don't. Let's say China did, did try to invade Taiwan tomorrow. It's hard for me to imagine that the United States would fight World War III over that in a way that they would, might have over Germany in, in a serious way, or they might have over Cuba, which were viewed as sort of genuinely existential problems for the, for the Americans. So I do think that there's a difference there because just this sort of ideological reality is just not the same. China, at least to my mind, is also capitalist. This is when I say that Fukuyama was right, but for the wrong reasons. Fukuyama thought that the end of history was going to see the final triumph of liberalism. What we've actually seen is the triumph of capitalism. And liberalism itself seems to be the thing that's withering away. So like, what are the actual real disagreements between, between the United States and China as a certain level of abstraction? Like the United States has an oligarchic capitalism, China has more of a state party capitalism. They're both ready to do business with one another. And you actually think, I, I, I think you see a lot of the business community actually militating against confrontation with China because it's obviously a gigantic potential market for American business, at least in theory, even though China is becoming less and less open to those sorts of imports. But so I, I, I think that it is unlikely to repeat in the same way as it did with the Soviet Union, which makes this all even, even more ridiculous. Because instead of this ridiculous saber rattling, you should be actually be able to come to some court of concord dot years earlier than the four decades that it took with, with the Soviet Union. And I do think we will eventually see that because the Soviet Union was essentially slowly collapsing from, from its foundation. And China is not by any stretch of the imagination so slowly collapsing. It is just going to become more and more powerful. And I think the reality of that power is going to force America.

A (43:57)

So like I suggested, a major implication of your work is that once we stop treating American primacy as natural or morally indispensable, the way we have a very different picture emerges of Asia in Asia of the future, one where the US sure still important actor, still trades in, but it's no longer the region's unquestioned arbiters.

B (44:17)

Right.

A (44:18)

So what would it actually look like for the US to accept a more pluralistic order in Asia? I know that's a tough question. I mean, but are there, are there historical precedents? I mean is there like a concert of Europe kind of post Vienna kind of arrangement?

B (44:33)

Well, the US could easily accept it. It's much more difficult for Japan and South Korea. I mean, that's the reality of the situation. To me, the irony is this is not a very difficult choice for the U.S. united States.

A (44:45)

Okay?

B (44:46)

Americans are going to be able to get what they want ultimately, which is they want to consume. Right? This is what, this is what we love to do in this country. We love to consume an incredible amount of the world's energy and resources. And I think that's going to be pretty easy to maintain at least for the time being. It's going to be less easy for the United States to for example, dominate the military power of a South Korea or Japan. So to me the real question is how do you do a security transition? And that depends on, on where you sit it. If you care about Japan and South Korea maintaining significant autonomy, then you would really want to spend decades planning for that and providing these countries and helping these countries develop militarial capabilities to not, they'll never defeat China in the way that Japan did in the early part of the 20th century, but to, you know, hold their own to some Significant degree, at least in terms of. Right, deterrence, or are you just like, good luck, China is going to decide what they want to do vis a vis Japan or South Korea or Vietnam or what have you. And that's for the region themselves to work out. And that depends on where you stand politically. I'm critical of the military industrial complex. I think the military industrial complex has perversive effects at home. I think it increases domestic militarization. I think it's led directly to the militarization of American police. I think it's corroded American culture. So do I want weapons manufacturers to have permanent access to militaries that constantly want to buy things from them? It's not my ideal world. But on the other hand, I totally understand why a Japanese citizen or a citizen of the Republic of Korea would want to have the defense industrial capabilities, to not allow China to just bully them like the United States has bullied many Latin American countries over the course of its history. So I think it's a difficult situation and it depends on, you know, where you stand is where you sit. And I think different people will have different answers to that question depending on their domestic political location.

A (46:43)

Well, I'm asking you specifically, and I have a pretty good idea of where you sit, but I think we would probably agree that one of the big challenges in the discourse today is just that strategic imagination seems so terribly impoverished. I mean, so much of DC's thinking, it just goes between sort of deterrence and confrontation. Rivalry is like the only conceivable mode of interaction. You don't seem to accept this. You think that there maybe are alternative pathways, forms of coexistence that are built on mutual recognition of legitimate interests, this kind of discipline, not to moralize every single point of friction. So what I'm asking is what does it look like? What does one that is premised on a relationship, premised on coexistence rather than on zero sum rivalry actually look like in practice? And what would the concrete manifestations of that be? On the big things? On Taiwan? On trade? On technology?

B (47:39)

No, for sure.

A (47:40)

And how would that be different from what we've got right now?

B (47:42)

Right. So the United States shouldn't go to war over Taiwan. Flat out. It's not worth fighting World War three. I think the United States, I think it's just like one has obligations to security partners like Japan and South Korea. So I actually don't think tomorrow the United States should stop giving weapons. I don't think that's right. I think you would have to prepare Some sort of security transition to allow these countries to develop a significant industrial base that they don't presently have. But at the same time, I also think philosophically that the, the quote, UN Capital P progressive idea that you could manage global affairs or manage regions is just wrong. It is just, you know, it is not a true fact and that regions have to determine for themselves what happens. My ultimate goal would be to create a sort of like humanistic, like global government because philosophically I think all humans are equal that that regardless of where you were born, you are not philosophically worth more than another person. But the question is, how do we get there in 2025? We're nowhere near there. So I think the first step of that would be spheres of influence. The only way we're ever going to get there would be to establish a spheres of influence influence system at home. And what I would do in the United States's sphere would be to draw back from it. Essentially would be to stop Yankee go home in Latin America and just in North America start developing genuine political ties with Mexico and Canada. Over time that would be able to create a larger and larger polity that was genuinely democratic and not ruled by capitalist oligarchs. Now that's utopian. But I think you, your, your sort of decisions in the, in the present need to be guided by some utopian vision or unless you're just a realist and think war is inevitable and it's just going to be fighting and fighting. I actually think that's an unrealistic position because the history of the last thousand years does show that political consciousness is able to expand from the family to the village to the, to the nation state, to the region, et cetera, from to the region to the nation state. I reverse those and that there's no reason why that couldn't happen at larger and larger scales until every human being recognizes the other as legitimate. So that's what I would try to do when I'm making choices in the present would be to make the choices that in my mind would eventually lead to that position.

A (49:39)

Get you on the path, at least toward that. But I think there's an idea that runs through all of your work. It's this idea that a responsible American foreign policy for the 21st century, it just simply requires us to accept certain tragic realities. The US is not going to be able to shape every region to its liking. And it's sort of these understanding of limits of American power. There's other states out there, including China, maybe especially China, that have legitimate security Interests that you don't get moral clarity often, or when you do, it actually comes at the expense of actual stability. I mean, this is not an easy thing for this political culture to accept. I mean, we're so steeped in universalism, we are so accustomed to primacy. I mean, this is what I keep running up against when I talk to people. I mean, because you dig down, you drill down a little bit, and you see that there is this hard core of primacy still embedded in the minds of so many people. So what does it mean in practical and intellectual terms, in moral terms, for the United States to adopt a foreign policy of genuine restraint? I mean, I think that's what we're all getting at here, right? What does real. I mean, the change needs to be just so fundamental. I mean, it means sort of an abandonment of a lot of these things that have defined us and have been at the core of American foreign policy.

B (50:56)

Yeah, well, yes and no. I mean, the first 175 years of this country was much more skeptical about global intervention. You, I think that it is correct to read the history of the United States as a history of ever expanding empire. First from the thirteen colonies, which was itself a settler colonial project, the expansion from sea to shining sea, the domination of the Western hemisphere, et cetera, et cetera. But when it came to extra hemispheric affairs, the United States really did stay out of it until World War I. Not economically, but mostly militarily and politically. And so there's, there's long standing American traditions of restraint, at least extra hemispheric. So that, that to me is actually less of a huge ask than, than many people assume. The sort of global thing is, is relatively recent in American history and there are still, still powerful strands of skepticism of extra hemispheric interaction. The real question is, when it comes to Latin America, how do you, how do you disentangle the United States from domination of that region? But in terms of practical effects, I think it's actually, it's, it's difficult to do politically, but it's pretty simple. You get rid of the bases and you stop funding the military as much as you do now. Easier said than done. But the, the fixes are pretty much right there. Stop all the forward positions, stop giving the military a trillion dollars, stop supporting these 750 military bases that are used to essentially project power, and then start focusing on your domestic society and then also start winding down hemispheric domination again toward a large, basically towards, towards expanding democracy both at home and over time within I would argue North America itself.

A (52:32)

So, but, you know, the pushback obviously, to any of that is like. But what about the moral imperative? What about this? I mean, when, when you.

B (52:39)

That's nonsense. The history, like the history is. Is not unclear on this. You cannot do the thing. You cannot manage international affairs. It is an incredibly violent project in which tens of millions of people died. That's my answer to that one.

A (52:52)

That cuts it off shortly. So the Samantha Powers of the world, whose worldviews were very much shaped by American impotence in the Rwandan genocide and impotence. Looking at the crackup of Yugoslavia in the early 90s. This doesn't read to you as persuasive at all?

B (53:09)

It's ridiculous. I mean, we have a recent example. You have a good war in Ukraine. Right. That was bad. That Russia invaded. That was bad. That is a good. That is morally a good thing to try to defend Russia. What happens almost immediately after the United States funding of a genocide in Gaza? So the point is, you can't have the, quote, unquote, good empire without the bad empire. That is just a fact of history. And the bad empire has done an enormous amount of damage to the world. That's just the facts of the matter. It's not even, like, ambiguous. So to me, it's always a funny argument because the ledger is so clear. You know, it is not like the United States has had a bunch of noble wars and then, you know, a few bad ones.

A (53:51)

So this is the lesson of history that you think we should be drawing when we look at it. I mean, because obviously you mean. One of the implicit arguments that you make is that, you know, it's not about offering clean analogies. It's not about offering policy recipes. It's more just sort of. It's not even about expanding necessarily the range of what we can imagine. It's more about sort of like negative lessons. Yeah. Where we've really. We just screwed the pooch or we've.

B (54:14)

Name the good wars.

A (54:15)

I mean, well, the Second World War is obviously the one that everyone will name. Right. You know, so. Right.

B (54:21)

Name the good ones since then.

A (54:23)

Right, right.

B (54:23)

Obviously, you know, it's. It's like, it's not. It's, it's ridiculous. It's. This is the. The frustrating thing is I always say that the foreign policy debate is often quite boring because these aren't like, complicated questions, actually. If you actually have a deep knowledge of American history, it's very, very simple. You can't have good empire without the bad empire. And the Bad Empire has been terrible. So what are you going to do?

A (54:45)

You know, it's just hard to persuade Americans that. That they're not a moral actor in the world. Right. I mean, it's that. That I'm sure you've written, actually.

B (54:54)

So actually, it's funny. I have a book coming out called Imperialist Realism. So I would complicate it a little. I think that Americans understand that they're not moral actors. And you see this in pop culture. I don't know if you're a video game player, but the Call of Duty series, a lot of it, particularly the black ops strand, is about how Americans are essentially amoral psychopaths. Even in the. The Marvel movies, like, I don't know if you saw Marvel Civil War, it's basically like, yeah, the superheroes can't do it, but we've got to act, you know, without legal restraint, because that's the only way to say bad people. So good people. Sorry. So there's like, there's this thing that I term in this book imperialist realism. Imperialist realism where, like, Americans understand that they can't do good in the world, but they simultaneously feel the need to act. So you have this strange situation which is like, there's an incredible cynicism about American power. Even look at what Blinken and Lloyd Austin were saying about Ukraine. They were not talking about defending democracy, they were talking about weakening Russia. So even in the good wars, they're still using this power analysis, but it's undergirded by this strange universalism that they really don't even believe in. It's quite. Quite cynical, actually. So I think we're living in the moment of imperialist realism. And the book's coming out in a few months. Maybe I should come back on again to discuss that concept. You're very welcome, but I think Americans.

A (56:08)

Welcome to. That'd be fun.

B (56:09)

Yeah. Because Americans don't. We don't think we're good, actually. We're not stupid. We. We understand Vietnam. We've seen the global war on terror. And particularly in the wake of the global war on terror, we don't actually believe in the American project, but we also can't imagine another world because there are structural things happening. There are, you know, capitalist systems working here that we have essentially no control over. So I think we're actually in a very strange moment now, this imperialist, realist moment.

A (56:35)

So I just happen to run into the ones who still do cling to this idea that America is fundamentally good on Twitter. Right. I just see Them all the time.

B (56:43)

Well, and also D.C. right. Like, I don't think the best and the brightest are going into foreign policy, you know, because like, you, you understand that it's like a very particular world, that you're not really going to be able to change anything. It's very inertial. And so, like, I have no desire to be in D.C. and a version of me in 1950 might have felt like they were able to be able to do good in the world. I think a lot of people don't, don't feel that any longer. And so, yeah, this is the sort of, not, not to insult anyone. D.C. i, I just mean, like, like there, there's sort of a stultifying element to the foreign policy debate that makes it a little boring and a little silly in the 2000 and twenties, in my opinion.

A (57:21)

Well, you are about as physically far as you can possibly be from D.C. and still be in a place called Washington and still in the lower 48.

B (57:32)

Exactly.

A (57:34)

Danny Bessner, it's been a lot of fun talking to you, man. I think that we've got a lot in common. I look forward to chatting with you again in your new book comes out. Hey, I've got a segment of the show that I want to move to next. It's called Paying It Forward, where I just ask you to name check somebody who you work with or somebody whose work it's come to your attention. You're super young yourself. What are you, like 41?

B (57:59)

Yeah, I'm 41.

A (58:00)

Crazily young. I hate people like you who just are so accomplished and put so many books under their belt already at such a young age. But, yeah, name somebody whose work we should be, you know, paying attention to for paying it forward.

B (58:13)

Well, well, I, I do think the best foreign policy world right now is the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Even though they're, they're sort of like trans partisan, they're not explicitly left wing. I, I do think that the best foreign policy analysis is really coming out of Quincy. So I would read Responsible Statecraft. I would check out their social media feeds and, you know, full disclosure, I have a personal connection to sort of the face of Quincy. She's my wife. But I think they're doing really good, really good and interesting work. So if people don't already follow them, I would, I, I hope they start expanding their sort of reach into Latin America, because I think that's going to be a big thing in the coming decades. But I, I really do like the work released by Quincy and Particularly there's a new book, I believe by William Hartung and Ben Freeman called the Trillion Dollar War Machine Kaiser. If you haven't, you should check them out. That's really interesting and I would. I would look into that.

A (59:04)

I know the Quincy folks. Well, what are you. You're married to Laura?

B (59:07)

No, no, no. I'm married to Courtney, who is their social media head.

A (59:14)

Yeah, I mean, I've got a lot of friends over there as well. I mean, Jake Werner, who's our China guy, is just. He was like a big comms guy over there as well. He's just absolutely terrific. I mean, Bass Fitch himself. Yeah. But also, I think we already mentioned just now a book by another person who's affiliated with. I'm not sure how affiliated he is right now, but Stephen Wertheim, he's there.

B (59:40)

Yeah. So his book. Yeah, Tomorrow the World, which is a good look at like the beginnings of this choice for primacy in World War II.

A (59:46)

Yeah. And Michael Swain, who's another guy I have all time in the world for.

B (59:51)

Absolutely.

A (59:51)

Really good guy.

B (59:52)

And also americanprestigepod.com the most important, the only way that we'll be able to truly chart a path forward is if you subscribe to American Prestige.

A (60:03)

It's a good podcast. I do heartily endorse that. I mean, do check it out. I mean, as you've heard just now, Danny is a good talker and he's enjoyable to listen to. And so is Derek Davison, your co host. They bring out a lot of the same sorts of folks that I would tend to bring on. So, hey, it's really terrific. And again, it's sort of grounded in the progressive left, but it's very sensible, well informed foreign policy. All right. I have another segment of the show called Recommendations where I just ask you to talk about a book or an individual or a film or some body of music or anything at all that you think that our listeners would want to know.

B (60:40)

Sure. I mean, this is not exactly obscure, but I've been working for about five years now on a podcast about the history of Nirvana and placing Nirvana within the political economy of the Pacific Northwest. The decline of the Olympic Peninsula. So I've been listening and sort of reading a lot about Seattle punk, Seattle indie music, and of course, Nirvana itself. And we record this the day after the 32nd anniversary. We're the day after the 32nd anniversary when they recorded Unplugged. So everyone, I guess, check out Nirvana. You already have. But check out wait for my podcast on the history I think you'll really enjoy it.

A (61:16)

Oh, how fun. That'd be great. You know, I'm a big music guy myself and I've always thought about, you know, what, what my music podcast project would be. You've come on one that's very geographically relevant to you. Yeah, when you, when you're here, I'm in Chapel Hill. It would have to be James Taylor or whatever. Who wants to hear that one?

B (61:34)

No, you can go to Nirvana. Played the Cat's Cradle actually, but I mean, they did. When you come to the Northwest, you realize how so much of obviously Nirvana, but all the other quote unquote grunge bands, really regional music in a real way. And I mean, North Carolina, Chapel Hill in particular, has such a great regional music scene as well that there's a lot, definitely a lot of work to be done in that too.

A (61:53)

Yeah, there's some good bands that, I mean, it's just really not my whole, my genre. I mean, I mean, if I had to do a podcast, it would be about really annoyingly bombastic and pretentious progressive rock, which is my jam. The exact opposite of what you got there in Seattle. Yeah, there are some great bands that I still listen to often from the 90s. From Seattle. So. Hey. All right. That's a fantastic recommendation. Mine is sort of just a little more on point. It's Po Zhao's substack. It's called hellotechchina.com it's quite a breed apart. It's a really deep, but very accessible, quite well written, very insider China tech substack. There's a lot of them out there, but this one is. It's fairly new and it's particularly good. So. Hellotechchina.com written by Po Zhao. And yeah, there's so many interesting substacks. If you subscribe to mine or even if you just look at it, I do make a lot of substack recommendations, many of them related to technology in China. All right, man. Danny, it's been really fun. It's great to have you on and I look forward to the next time.

B (62:55)

Thanks a lot, man. Really appreciate it.

A (62:58)

You've been listening to the Cynica podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me, Kaiser Guel. Support the show through substack@cinecopodcast.com where you will find a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio. Email me@cinekapodmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin, Madison's center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show again this year. Huge thanks to my guest Daniel Festner. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Take care.

B (63:42)

Sa.