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- [00:09]
A
Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join me each week for in depth coming conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo, coming to you this week from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sinica is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Seneca Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing with the show and with the newsletter, please consider lending your support. You can get me, as always, @senecapodmail.com and listeners, please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber@senecapodcast.com you will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China focused columnists and commentators. And of course, you will enjoy the knowledge that you are helping me do what I honestly believe is important work. So do check out the page to see all that's on offer, and please consider helping out. Citica has been running now for more than 15 years, unbelievably, and over that time I've tried to stay attuned to, among many other things, the shifts in the American discourse on China. It's a long enough arc now that I flatter myself that I can actually detect when the conversation is moving in a new direction. Lately I've had the strong sense that such a shift is underway. This isn't something I've verified with any kind of textual analys more than a gut feeling, but not much more. It's an impressionistic take from reading widely and talking to lots of folks, but it seems to me that the change is reflected in the pages of some of the most important American publications, and perhaps none more so than in foreign affairs. For over a century, Foreign affairs has been the journal of record for American foreign policy and probably the single most influential publication among the US Strategic class. I've been reading it since I was a graduate student, 1989 or 90, under its current editor, Daniel Kurtzphalin. I have noticed, or anyway, I think I've noticed, not just more attention to China, attention commensurate with how important China's gotten, but also an openness to heterodox views to voices that push against conventional Beltway wisdom while still maintaining the rigor and the seriousness that have always defined the magazine or the journal. It's not just the explicitly China focused essays either. It's pieces on technology, about the Middle east, about Russia, about India, or anywhere in the global South. They all seem to resonate with questions about how we think about China, the bread and butter of this show. I find myself reading just about everything now and finding it connects somehow with China. Anyway, this is all by way of explaining why I am so delighted to have Daniel on the show today to talk about how he sees these shifts, how editorial decisions are made there at Foreign affairs and what that tells us about where American strategy and the debate around it is, is actually headed. So, Daniel Kurtzfelin, welcome at last to Seneca. We've been talking about doing this forever.
- [03:27]
B
Yeah, Kaiser, I'm thrilled to be here. We've talked about this for a long time. I'm a regular listener of the podcast, and so the only real downside of this for me is that I will not have an episode to listen to this week. But it's worth it.
- [03:40]
A
You're going to want to listen to it anyway. I know what you mean, though. I hate listening to myself on other people's podcasts, but it's always like, God damn it, you know what? I should why was I so tongue tied? Anyway, let's jump in, though. Foreign affairs has been the journal of record, as I said, in American foreign policy thinking, for a century. Every editor, though, inevitably leaves a personal imprint. So let's think back to when you came in first as well, executive editor in 2017, I think it was, or if you like, when you took the helm as editor, what you call editor, what most people say, editor in chief in 2021. Either start date, though, works, because these were both moments of pretty significant shift in American attitudes toward China. But whether China or anything else, what did you feel most needed updating or re emphasizing? Did you see yourself mainly as a steward of this venerable tradition or as somebody who needed to make deliberate course corrections to keep the magazine central to the foreign policy conversation in the U.S. yeah, thanks, Kaiser.
- [04:43]
B
It's a good question. If I can step back a little bit, even.
- [04:47]
A
Sure.
- [04:47]
B
I spent a few years at the beginning of my career at Foreign affairs as a, as a junior editor, as a young editor at a time of the Iraq War was kind of the central issue in in American foreign policy debate. And that was, you know, formative to the way I thought about the whole set of issues that that we cover at Foreign Affairs. The China material was not a ton of it back then, but it was the, you know, era of China's peaceful rise. There was a lot of talk about economic engagement. It was shortly after China joined the wto.
- [05:18]
A
Yeah, golden age.
- [05:20]
B
Exactly, exactly. Different. Different time I went from there into government during the Obama administration, there were pretty pronounced shifts in views of China over the course of the administration. Obviously the big one came in Donald Trump's first term. But you can kind of see the shift change from the early days of the strategic and economic dialogue. I don't know if you remember that to kind of.
- [05:41]
A
Well, yeah, remember it very well, you.
- [05:42]
B
Know, where there was this real sense that there could be pretty expansive US China cooperation on a whole set of issues, not a ton of focus on competition at that point. And then between South China Sea and the arrival of Xi Jinping in power and disputes over cyber and lots of other things. I think you kind of saw that shift over time. I was also in that period working on a book about George Marshall's mission to China in 1945-47. This other really interesting moment. We can kind of happy to get into that further later in the conversation.
- [06:14]
A
But I plan to ask about it right next.
- [06:16]
B
Yeah, you know, so that, I mean, that was a, you know, another moment when you saw America trying to grapple with China, kind of going against expectations, seeing kind of pronounced change in China, obviously, especially in 1949 and the. The policy and political class kind of grappling with that and reacting in ways that I think probably in that moment certainly did a lot of damage to US Society and US Foreign policy.
- [06:38]
A
Who lost China?
- [06:39]
B
Exactly, exactly. Which was a, you know, really big and pretty poisonous political issue in the. The 1950s. So I came into Foreign affairs in 2017 as executive editor, you know, having seen really interesting shifts on U. S views of China and the U. S. China relationship in government, Having spent a lot of time, you know, reading diaries and memos and, you know, various archival documents from policymakers in the 1940s trying to figure out how the US China relationship should work. And of course, Donald Trump was president when I, when I came in. So it seemed like this moment a pretty profound shift and also a moment when the kind of way China had changed the global economy and affected global order I think was a kind of big part of. Of the American reaction, the kind of American turn against there of a post Cold War foreign policy. So in some sense, I think that, you know, kind of post Cold War consensus was blown up by China and the United States, that kind of end of history moment. And, and I saw all of that and it just struck me that it was a really interesting moment for Foreign affairs as a magazine that tries to both drive and, you know, in some sense reflect the debate in the American, you know, foreign policy community, very broadly defined. Really interesting moment for us to try to drive some of those big questions. So one of the early pieces that I commissioned as executive editor was now quite famous and controversial in some circles. Piece by Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner called the China Opening, which was a sure kind of critical history of the previous decades of US China policy. Really, really going back to the, the opening and, and Kissinger and Nixon. And that, I think has set off various rounds of this debate that we've tried to, to drive and facilitate and plumb in lots of ways since then. And you know, for all that we've, you know, we've run since that time, in the, you know, eight or so years since then, hundreds of articles that are trying to get at these, these big questions. Obviously, lots of other people have.
- [08:34]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:35]
B
And, you know, there have been interesting turns. I think the focus of that debate has shifted in various ways over that time, but in some ways it's, you know, the, the questions that, if you go back to that Campbell Ratner piece and the series of responses we ran to it in the next issue, I think we're still having that debate in some sense, and that in many ways is really at the center of American foreign policy and debates about America's role in the world and global economy broadly. So that's, I think, what explains the just sheer amount of what we do on China foreign affairs at this point?
- [09:03]
A
Sure, sure. You used two verbs just now, drive and reflect. How do you strike the balance between the two? Which do you see as your primary mission? Are you there to.
- [09:12]
B
It's a great question. And in some sense we want to part of what, you know, we're a policy journal as well as a, you know, more traditional magazine in some sense. So we want to look at what the key policy debates that decision makers and, you know, the people around them who engage in these, in these debates are, are focused on and try to have the most kind of substantive, wide ranging version of those debates as, you know, is possible in a public setting. You know, this is where I kind of think back to that Iraq experience. And you know, my sense, I was a college student and a recent college graduate and that was when that debate was playing out. But, you know, I had the sense, looking back at it, that there was not as wide ranging and fervent and substantive debate about the war and the response to, you know, 9, 11 more broadly as there should have been. So to my mind, having, making sure that we at the magazine are bringing in a wide range of voices from the policy community, but also the academic community. This is not quite as much of our focus, but occasionally journalists or Chinese dissidents or, you know, people kind of adjacent to power within China itself, that we are bringing those voices in and pushing them to kind of engage substantively in questions and answer good faith queries. You know, we subject all of them to a fairly intensive editing process. And no sense that by bringing in those that kind of full range of voices, impressing them to kind of address questions seriously, that's going to, you know, help everyone get to a better answer and the kind of driving part of it, so that these are not kind of entirely separate tasks. But we also spend a lot of time, you know, I spend a lot of time talking to people who are, whether in the academic community or in the policy world, wrestling with this set of questions. And, you know, there are times when we might say, seems like there's kind of, you know, assumption underlying all of this that maybe hasn't been explored quite as much as it should, or a kind of question that in the policy debate we're not surfacing, it's not being surfaced as well as it can. And I think that's where we might try to drive debate a little bit more by pressing people again, as wide a range of voices as possible, pressing people to address those questions, even if it's not what is front of mind for policymakers or in scholarly debate at that moment.
- [11:26]
A
Dan, it sounds like there are two things at work for you. One is sort of a recognition that as you put your hand on the tiller 2017ish and maybe more forcefully in 2021, a recognition that we've already moved into something beyond the unipolar moment. That seems to be sort of one of the things you're getting at. But the other is you talked about, having written this book, the China Mission, about George Marshall and his failed effort to mediate China's civil war. I haven't read it yet, to my regret, and I plan to, but this seems like it was pretty important in your own intellectual formation and, and you raised yourself just this sort of fear of what this could do to American politics. And I think rightly so. I mean, just looking at the decade, especially of the early 1950s, in the immediate aftermath of the Communist victory in China in 49. So this seems like a sort of cautionary note in your mind. What's your mental model for this? I mean, are we now in another iteration of the Cold War to you? Do you see this sort of in that sense as continuous for the magazine with the old Cold War era mission of it, or do you think this is a quite different task from what your predecessors faced?
- [12:42]
B
So I'm always very wary of addressing the kind of Cold War, capital C, capital W, Cold War question directly because my advisor was John Lewis Gaddis, who's one of the great Cold War historians, and he. I always kind of hear his voice in my head pointing out some of the differences. He wrote a great piece for us in 2021, I believe. Yeah, I remember it exploring this analogy. And, you know, his conclusion was this is not a Cold War in the capital C, capital W sense that the US Soviet one was. But there are enough parallels that it's worth trying to kind of look for those echoes. You know, when I look back to the Marshall Mission and just to, you know, give people a very brief sense of this, this was this moment right after World War II, when China was supposed to be in the FDR especially conception, but also the broader conception of international order after the war. China, which was led at the time by, by the kmt, by Chiang Kai Shek in a, you know, kind of wary, ostensible partnership with Mao in some sense during, during World War II against the, the Japanese, but one that was quickly coming apart, that China was supposed to be one of the pillars of order. It was one of the first signatories of the, the United Nations Charter. It was, you know, supposed to be this kind of new power that would help be a bridge between the US and Soviet Union and help keep, keep order in Asia after the war. The problem was as, as World War II ended that you had the Chinese civil war restarting. And it was kind of clear at that moment that the, the Nationalists and Communists were on their way back to civil war even before Japanese forces were fully out of China. And so President Truman, Harry Truman at the time sends George Marshall, who was this towering figure in American foreign policy, had been one of the most important chief of staff of the army during World War II, one of the kind of key figures in the US war effort. He just retired and Truman said to him, I need you to go to China and patch things up between the Communists and Nationalists for a few months to make sure that China doesn't become a source of instability and can be this kind of pillar of order that we had expected it to. And Marshall, you know, kind of reluctantly goes. He's had a rather tiring several years before during World War II. And the expectation is. And a pretty striking thing to me, very widespread expectation, even from people who became very, very critical of US China policy before 1949, people kind of driving the who lost China Debate. When you go back to 45, almost all of them, I think there are a few exceptions. Almost all of them, though, at the time were saying that it was in the US Interest to find some kind of coalition government, some kind of united government that would bring in both nationalists and Communists, and that that would be the best path to stability in China. Marshall spent these kind of fascinating 13 months in China dealing with both the, you know, nationalist leadership, Chiang Kai Shek and his totally fascinating wife, as well as Zhou and Lai and Mao and kind of a whole host of Communist and nationalist figures. And Marshall obviously fails. 1949 comes and. And. And Mao obviously wins. And that creates this kind of totally astonishing backlash in American politics. You know, we kind of all know the. The famous Joseph McCarthy line as McCarthyism, starting about a conspiracy so immense and infamy so black. The famous line that was the denunciation of George Marshall, you know, this kind of great American hero. And Marshall became the kind of focus of the. The who lost China debate. This notion that it was because of kind of treason or weakness, that. Or some kind of deception that a slew of American officials allowed the Communists to win. And, you know, that kind of loomed over both American politics through the 1950s. I mean, McCarthyism was this incredibly powerful force through the 1950s. And then it really shapes decision making, especially into Vietnam. So you see these kind of amazing moments when people in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations are sitting around the table talking about what they should do in Vietnam and often saying, look, this seems like probably not a war we're going to win if we send troops. But, you know, you saw what happened when those guys in a previous Democratic administration lost China. We can't. You know, we can't let that happen again. So you see loom there. And then also, as we kind of approach the. The Nixon openings, we get to the early 1970s, there was a lot of. It was. It was not that hard to see that the Soviet Union and China were starting to. Were. Were. You know, if they'd fought a war, there was significant tension before them. Lots of policymakers knew that it wasn't a secret to American policymakers. But part of the kind of difficulty in acting on it was the shadow of the who lost China? Debate. So it really did become an impediment to having healthy debate in this country and then also kind of agile, effective foreign policy for a couple decades afterwards.
- [17:18]
A
So, I mean, it's interesting that you are unusual among recent editors of the magazine because you are something of a China hand yourself. I wonder whether your thumb on the scale has. Well, first I test this hypothesis with you. I mean, I. I've noticed, I don't think this is just reader bias, that there's a higher density of China coverage in foreign affairs. Again, like I said, pieces about the US China relationship itself, but also essays on climate, on tech, on the Global south, on Russia. It all pulls China into the frame. I'm wondering, first of all, is that empirically correct? Because I've not actually done a count, but I thought you might know whether this is just maybe some cognitive bias on my part or whether it's objectively the case.
- [18:02]
B
Yeah. I should have gone through and done rigorous assessment, I should say. I would not call, Compared to the true China hands who are in our pages, I would not call myself a China hand. But I did develop real interest in the policy debate here. And so I think it's probably right that when I came to the magazine eight or so years ago, you started to see an uptick, but that obviously reflects the greater focus on China and US policy debate more broadly. So.
- [18:31]
A
Yeah, gravity of the moment. Right. I mean, it just draws authors and editors, everyone toward China.
- [18:37]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [18:37]
A
And I, I sort of figured that was the case.
- [18:39]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's also. There's just so much. It's a really interesting debate. I mean, the kind of substantive elements of it, you could go down any one of the. The, you know, kind of functional areas you mentioned, and we could run, you know, five times as much as we do on any one of them. And I think there'd probably still be more to say. So in some ways there's a temptation.
- [18:58]
A
To do even more.
- [19:00]
B
Yeah, exactly. All China. But that is, obviously there are other things happening in the world.
- [19:05]
A
There are, are there? Huh? Strange. I have not noticed, but in your time, like you said, you've published a number of pieces that have, you know, gotten my world at least really chattering. And you mentioned the Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner piece. I actually talked to Kurt Campbell about that piece at one point. It was sort of strange how his understanding of it seemed to be so at odds with mine. To me, it was the proclamation of the end of engagement. But there have been a bunch of other really interesting pieces. What are some of the ones that you look back on over the last five or six years that are particularly impactful either in shaping the debate inside Washington or maybe surprising you with the traction that they found? Because for me, off the top of my head, it's like Jessica Chen Weiss piece on making the world safe for autocracy definitely got the world talking. Mike Gallagher and Matt Pottinger wrote that piece. Just prompted a whole ton of pushback on, you know, the sort of victory against China. And, you know, there was. There was a lot of back and forth in the subsequent issue about that. But, yeah, that was, I think, a very interesting conversation. But yeah, what are some of the ones that really stand out to you?
- [20:11]
B
Yeah, this is a slightly challenging question because it has a slight, you know, kind of picking. Picking your favorite child quality.
- [20:17]
A
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, not your favorite. I mean, the child that's gone on to the most famous notoriety.
- [20:23]
B
So, you know, not just noting the. The Campbell Ratner piece itself, which was in early 2018, but part of the magazine that we don't always do, but is often one of. I think one of my. My favorite parts of any issue is the sets of responses that we'll do. And I think this is, you know, very much the kind of mission of the magazine, the mission where we do. And there are other places that. Where you can see this today play out, but I think there's a fairly distinct version of it that you can see in our pages. In the issue. Maybe two issues after the. The Kirk Campbell, Eli Ratner piece ran, we had a set of responses from, you know, a whole set of really serious China hands and people who have been involved in China policy and some Chinese scholars in some cases contesting it. You know, there were pieces from Long Jiza and Tom Christensen and Patty Kim. I think Joe Nye was in that was in that response. So.
- [21:18]
A
Rest in peace.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Kind of great. One of the great scholars and policymakers of. Of the last several decades. So seeing that debate and getting, you know, having. Whether, you know, it's Wang Jiza in conversation with Kurt Campbell or people who, you know, the ability to disagree with Kurt from the, you know, on the kind of engager side, I think those often tend to be really interesting. But then if you kind of tick forward through the years, it was about a year and a half or two years later that Fareed Zakaria wrote a really forceful piece called the. Called the New China scare really pushing back against the kind of emerging hardline consensus. Kurt Campbell wrote with Jake Sullivan a piece called Competition Without Catastrophe, which really kind of laid out the framework that I think became the Biden policy of, you know, competing but also being focused on kind of guardrails and, and some degree of cooperation. You could, you know, argue with the implementation of that in various places.
- [22:11]
A
And I do.
- [22:12]
B
Yeah, no, I know. I listen. And then, you know, going to the Jessica Chen Weiss piece that you mentioned, this was from. She wrote an earlier one called Making a World Safer Autocracy, the one you mentioned, but then wrote a piece called the China trap in 2020 that was actually outstanding coming out of government. Jessica obviously very serious scholar of China but had spent some, spent some time in government and you know, it was not. She was dismayed by the kind of emerging consensus that, that, that she saw so very kind of forceful response from her. And then a year, maybe two years later, a set of pieces that were in the issue with the, the Matt Ponnager, my Gallagher piece arguing that we. It's called no Substitute for Victory, a reference to a line from Douglas MacArthur which kind of goes back to the history I was talking about earlier, but.
- [23:03]
A
An interesting reference in the context of China. I mean, the man who advocated new King Beijing.
- [23:07]
B
Right. But you know, that, that piece of course argued for a much harder line approach to China which was really focused on, you know, there's, I think, a kind of semantic debate about whether it means regime change or not, but that it should be the U. S. Goal to weaken the CCP and with the ultimate objective of, you know, changing the nature of power in China. There were other pieces in that issue from Liz Economy and Definite Medeiros and I think I'm probably forgetting about a couple of others. And that again sparked a really interesting debate as you, as you mentioned. So we had. Think of that, the next issue, Jessica Chen Weiss and Jim Steinberg.
- [23:41]
A
That was fantastic. Yeah.
- [23:43]
B
Kind of force response. Rush Doshi who had just come out of the Biden administration, also engaging with that essay. So, you know, I think the, the opportunity to have, look, there's, you know, we can talk a lot about political dysfunction and the quality of public debate in lots of areas in the United States. I think this is a place where, you know, that looks pretty healthy and substantive to me. Right. That you have Matt Pottinger and Jim Steinberg and Jessica Chen Weiss arguing about ultimate objectives of our China strategy in a substantive and, you know, kind of good faith way is I think the kind of Public discourse that we would ideally have across a whole, you know, whole host of issues.
- [24:20]
A
I want to, I want to get to who you think is actually winning, whether that that balance has shifted. But first, I mean, you mentioned just now Wang Jisi is, I would call him sort of one of the usual suspects who we hear from, from China, along with people like Yan Xia Tongue or Dawei who have both been in the pages of your magazine. But one thing that really stands out, I mean, there's, let's just be honest here. I mean, this is the same problem that I have with the podcast. A kind of paucity of actual contributors from inside China who, as you say, are close to power. I mean, we do see these issues that, you know, these essays from these usual suspects. But you know, I mean, these are people who are allowed to speak. I mean, they're within the system. Sure, but. So I wonder how the landscape has changed during your tenure here. Do you see a rising generation of younger Chinese scholars who would like to contribute, but who are maybe effectively constrained by political red lines? And if so, how do you think about balancing the need for more authentic Chinese voices with the reality that those voices are pretty hard to get? I mean, I wrestle with the same thing, so maybe I'll take some notes here.
- [25:27]
B
Yeah, I mean, I'm really interested to hear. Can I ask how you've. This is not a dodge, as I'll answer, but I'm curious how you've tried to navigate that.
- [25:34]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I just have to lean into it. I mean, I have to just sort of set quotas for myself mentally. I mean, it's like I'm not going to do another show with another white guy until I have like two well spoken Chinese people who sort of represent Beijing's view in some capacity. And you know, when I do, I get a lot of pushback. I mean, sometimes these, they can be very wooden. They often have different demands for how they'll amount of preparedness that they can have. They're not as apt, just answer extemporaneous questions. And of course, you know, there's the language issue, but I feel like it's really important that I do it. So, you know, even if the quality of the show maybe suffers sometimes I feel like it's, it's necessary. Yeah, I mean, and being in China a lot more helps. I mean, I'm there now, I'm in the mix. I'm talking to people all the time. I'm, you know, it's, it's, it was hard to do during COVID that's for sure.
- [26:29]
B
I mean, my sense of this is that it's, it's become much harder for even people with some stature in China who are not dissenters from the kind of leadership line on most issues right now. I think it's become, become harder, much harder obviously for them to say anything particularly substantive in our pages. And we do know that the Chinese leadership reads Foreign affairs pretty closely there. We are not, we're not technically allowed to access our website in China, but they, you know, they obviously find their ways to, to, to. To. To get, to get around it. And the number of times when, you know, a kind of senior US Official or former US Official has been in a meeting with, you know, very, very senior Chinese leaders and they'll say, you know, they'll ask about a piece in Foreign affairs that's anecdotal but, but you know, a kind of clear sign of that. And then I'll be at, you know, conferences in, in Asia and have you know, kind of pla three stars come up and ask me about like the Matt Pottinger piece or something. So, so there are, there are of readers there when it comes to contributors. You know, we've spent a fair amount of time trying to have conversations with, you know, the kind of generation, I guess Dawei is a kind of generation below Yanchui Tong and Wang Jizo or you know, very much the kind of senior members of IR community and I think probably have a little bit more, a little bit more licensed to ride in. Dawei is kind of a generation down. But no, I, when I go to China I spend time trying to meet with people, you know, either that generation or a couple generations down from there. There's some, you know, interaction in the US at this point and most of those people just have a very, you know, will have interesting conversations and they're, you know, in person especially, it's harder on zoom. But in person especially, there's plenty of interesting disagreements, lots of, you know, kind of interesting perspectives both on the course of China and the U. S. China relationship, but also on, you know, global climate issues or technology or.
- [28:25]
A
Sure.
- [28:26]
B
Or. Or anything else. And I think some of them we, we've worked with and we'll continue to work with a lot of them trying to kind of generate pieces. I think the, you know, the main thing that I found is it just takes a really long time. Some of that is because of the language difficulties and, and you know, other just kind of more typical editorial challenges but you know, kind of finding the Right way to frame a piece so that someone's able to say, you know, something that reflects their own kind of substantive analysis but doesn't, doesn't get them in trouble. It's, it's really hard. And it's gotten harder even in, you know, the last several years because of the, you know, reaction from power in China is often very. Yeah, I don't have a great answer. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a struggle is the bottom line.
- [29:06]
A
Sure. Dan. Related to this, you mentioned that, you know, you're often in conversations with pretty senior Chinese leaders where a Foreign affairs piece will come up. I'm curious what you've managed to glean about how Foreign affairs is positioned in the Chinese mind. What do they believe the magazine, the Journal to be? Is it again, is it an accurate reflection? Do they see it as having an agenda of its own? Do they see it as sort of an official government style publication along lines of Chil Shi or something in an analogous Chinese publication? How do you think it's perceived?
- [29:42]
B
I think there was a time when I was, when I did my first in at Foreign affairs, you know, 20 plus years ago, when I would see foreign officials or foreign readers. I think there was often a sense that we were, you know, literally run by the CIA, right. That we were, we were a government organ. And I think that there's a more, you know, I'm not sure that's a reflection of anything we've done, but instead kind of more sophisticated understanding by readers in China and elsewhere that, you know, while we are obviously kind of very much part of the foreign policy establishment or what, you know, Ben Rhodes called the Blob in the United States that we, you know, we operate independently even within the Council on Foreign Relations. We have editorial independence and, you know, kind of delivering institutional lines. So I think that's, that's, that's understood. You know, I was struck in the early Biden administration when Chinese officials seemed to be kind of surprised by the hard line that the Biden people came in with that. I was surprised they were surprised because, you know, I had said to them a couple times, just look at what these people have been writing in, in our pages over the last few years. And that's true of, you know, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, but also, you know, a whole slew of, of younger people, whether, you know, Laura Rosenberger, Mira Rap Hooper, you know, Rushdoshi and Julian Gortz, or, you know, kind of whole host of people who were in the administration where you saw that that shift happening. Eli Ratner, who was at the Pentagon, was part of that. So they may have missed it in that case, but I think they're very one conversation that we've tried to drive, in part because this is not the kind of thing that's going to happen in the political debates or in the official discussions, at least in public. Here is kind of how we think about ultimate objectives of the US China policy or the US China relationship. And the Pottinger Gallagher piece was a version of that. Jessica Chenweiss has gotten to this in a number of her pieces, and I think they're very attentive to that. I mean, kind of as we try to articulate strategy in somewhat more kind of explicit ways than a government official might. The Chinese interlocutors I've, I've talked to about these things I think are very interesting in that part of the debate.
- [31:42]
A
Right, right, right. So over the last nine months or so, I've been pushing this idea that there's been a pretty pronounced vibe shift in how the American public is thinking about China. I seeing this now filtering up into the strategic class, for sure. I actually see this across the entire political spectrum. And I was saying this before even the recent pieces about how challenged the China hawks now are in the second Trump administration. What's your take on this? Are you seeing this reflected and are we likely to see this in the pages of Foreign Affairs?
- [32:12]
B
How do you understand the vibe shift?
- [32:14]
A
Well, I mean, across the political spectrum, you have sort of, I think, the most vital force on the American political left right now, the abundance movement. It's sort of shot through a lot of China envy. I mean, in the libertarian quadrant, there's a lot of sort of the tech Bros are sort of worshipful of the technocratic authoritarian approach. MAGA seems to appreciate China as some kind of ethnostate on steroids that doesn't face problems of immigration. But more than that, what we've seen is when Trump had Laura Loomer take an ax to the entire basically National Security Council's China talent, such as it was. We've seen just the gutting of the State Department's China House and a lot of other stuff. But the hawks are on the ropes, right? I mean, I don't know if you saw Ben Smith in Semaphore wrote a piece about this. I think it was just yesterday or the day before. I mean, we're recording here on Wednesday the 29th. But there's this sense right now that in this administration, the hawks are down. I Mean, even people who are reliably old hawks. I mean, I sort of been joking about this how Peter Navarro, he's going to publish a new book called Death by India, right. It's not, he's switched enemies somehow. That's my sense of it. I'm just wondering what your take is and whether you've seen that.
- [33:38]
B
So I had smart friends and colleagues who were, many of whom were in government kind of seeing this much more directly even before Trump had, had, had come back into office, would make the point to me that, you know, it became a kind of throwaway line, kind of hackney blind to say, oh, the only bipartisan issue in Washington, kind of hard line on China. And I'm thinking about one, one friend in particular who would frequently point out, you know, I think this consensus is much thinner than, than people think. There's a kind of issue level there. But when you, when you poke at it a bit, it starts to fall apart. So I think even if we go back a couple of years, you know, even if you look at, you know, moments of kind of peak, right. That many of you kind of the kind of balloon crisis or something, right. That kind of felt like that reflected a kind of deep consensus. And I think that was probably wrong even then. This has become scrambled in the Trump administration because so much about the Trump 2 foreign policy is idiosyncratic and personalist and hard to kind of understand in any framework. I mean, to do. Your India point, I think captures it really well. I don't think there was anyone and its administration other than the kind of, you know, some of the, the anti immigration sentiment which did have a kind of implications for India. But it was a kind of really strange series of events which, you know, included probably some, you know, some elements of corruption and smart diplomacy by the, the Pakistani military and government. So how we got to this kind of, you know, rift in the US India Rush, if I don't think it'd be explained by any ideological policy debate. It was kind of the strange idiosyncrasy of Trump too, where so much of it comes down to, you know, his there. It's, it's purely driven by the president. You hear kind of again and again and again from, from people in the administration and often for reasons that are really hard to kind of predict in advance or even really explain in retrospect other than, you know.
- [35:31]
A
But I think your more interesting point is that this was already falling apart before Trump took office, before his election in the November, that this consensus was flimsy and I've always been somebody who's believed that. I mean, it's maybe something that's even been reflected in your pages. There's certainly, as I said in my intro, I think that you, under your editorship, you've been quite open to publishing pieces that aren't just polished statements of the Washington consensus at all. They were actually quite sharp challenges to it. I mean, you've run pieces by folks like Van Jackson, who I really like. I think he's just great. Other real contrarian thinkers. I think we ran into each other in the halls at Davos, and I told you, hey, I'm really glad you ran that Van Jackson piece. But these guys push against the prevailing orthodoxy. Has it been a kind of intention on your part to cultivate these kinds of voices? Do you think that maybe giving oxygen to the perspectives that might otherwise get drowned out in the blob echo chamber is part of your mission?
- [36:30]
B
Yeah, very much so. And, you know, I would try to do that. We kind of try to push at that consensus, sometimes successfully, some, sometimes less so, from lots of different perspectives. I mean, I think if you look at the debate about kind of Chinese economic performance and in the abundance context, you know, you have Dan Wong, who wrote a piece, has written for us with Arthur.
- [36:53]
A
Yeah.
- [36:55]
B
Which is a great piece. And then, you know, this. I think this does not kind of get quite as politicized as some of the more core foreign policy questions which, you know, have. There's a kind of Washington version of that debate. But the debate about, like, what the Chinese. What the lessons of Chinese economic. The Chinese economic story of the last several years is. Is a really interesting debate that, you know, you have Dan, you have Lizzy Lee, you have Dan. I mean, there's kind of slew of smart people. And, you know, they all probably. They all obviously have their politics. I don't really know what they are. Right. So that. That I think kind of cuts in different directions. And then we ran a piece this would have been a couple months ago by David Kang and Zenobia Chan.
- [37:35]
A
Yeah, yeah, I had them on the show. I don't know if you heard it, but I had all three of the contributors to that piece, which was in International Relations in the MIT Journal, talking about that piece. And yeah, the Foreign affairs piece of it was just sort of a small part of a bigger report support, but.
- [37:53]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And that, you know, that was a. A piece arguing that from three great scholars arguing that kind of the view of Chinese aims that you typically hear in Washington conversations And then American foreign policy conversations was, you know, wrong and overstated. That was a, you know, lots of my friends yelled at me about. But that's, you know, that's okay.
- [38:15]
A
Yeah, we can't leave out Jonathan Zinn, who just, I just had on the show and to talk about a piece in Foreign affairs which you guys graciously gave me on embargo. And it was, it was terrific. I mean, it was a real pushback against a lot of the entrenched conventional wisdom about the person of Xi Jinping himself.
- [38:32]
B
No, I, I love that episode. And that, that, that piece was fantastic. And I think it, in some ways, I mean, going back to the point about the, how, how thin or fragile the supposed consensus on China and Washington was, you know, he, he was a, you know, pretty central member of the American foreign policy stubs and he was one of the top CIA China analysts for, yeah, I don't know, a decade or two, and was on the National Security Council in the Biden administration. So that piece, I think, reflected a lot of analysis and thinking that he's been doing over, over many years. You know, if someone watching Xi Jinping really closely from within the intelligence community, probably with, you know, lots of information that you and I don't have access to. But John wrote a really fascinating piece that I think cut against the views of Xi's both kind of economic policies and approach to foreign policy in pretty interesting ways. And they'll be more, they'll be more like that when we kind of continue to drive, drive those big questions. And the challenge for us is kind of figuring out what the, what the next turn debate is. I'm curious, I mean, if I can.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah, I was actually going to ask you about that. I mean, I mean, before you get to the turnaround question, whatever it is that you're about to ask me, I wonder how much of your job is about sort of anticipating where the debate is to going, going in the next five years, the next 10 years, versus keeping the magazine pretty rooted in the urgent issues of the day, which I imagine are very pressing on the Middle east, on Israel, Palestine and Iran, on sifting alignments in the Gulf. Do you find that China is now. I mean, I feel like China's part of the subtext of every damn piece that you run. I wonder whether China's obviously growing role is changing the frame to, to Latin America, where there's going to be, I mean, it's going to be hotly contested, or to other parts of the world that you cover.
- [40:17]
B
So there's A kind of a fine balance to strike here that it's easy to make every piece, in some ways a piece about US China competition or the US China dynamic in a certain context. If you're doing a, you know, an AI piece or a green tech piece or global trade piece or something regional, right. If it's something on Latin America or sub Saharan Africa or the Middle east, there is obviously one factor in, in US Strategy and U S Policy discussions with any one of those issues is going to be about Chinese influence and how we should think about it. I think that, you know, part of the, the challenge for, you know, both for the magazine but also for the foreign policy discourse more broadly, if I can put it that way, is to not become so fixated on the US China dynamic that we fail to look at what's happening. And you know, if you look at dynamics in South America at this point, right, like part, there is a U S. China element to that, but it's easy for that to kind of dominate our, our analysis in ways that I think don't reflect the level of importance in, in when it comes to the issue itself. But, but I, but I do think that when it, you know, the kind of big questions about America's role in the world and the ways that debate has shifted over the last, you know, 10 years, I think a lot of that is about China and the way that China did not, you know, you can obviously contest the, the details of the Kurt Kurt Eli piece from, from 2018, but I think that is a kind of. Does reflect a view in much of the American political and policy class that there was a, you know, kind of expectation about how China would, would behave, how would. How it evolve over time with commercial engagement and diplomatic engagement. I think there was a, you know, 1940s version of that to go back to, to the martial book. And again, it was that kind of cycle of hopes and hopes that were probably clung to a little bit too long, failing to see the kind of reality of what was happening on the ground and then this kind of, you know, often emotional reaction and response. So I do think that that does reflect where a lot of the policy class and debate is. And so China, you know, again with the caveat I had mentioned before, that you don't want it to kind of drown out everything else. I think it is really at the center of a lot of these questions.
- [42:31]
A
And in not allowing that to be, to drown out everything else, how do you approach diversifying perspectives? How do you bring in more voices from thinkers in the global south authors outside of this US China binary so that it doesn't collapse into this sort of Washington versus Beijing conversation, even when it is about Africa or India or Latin America. Actually, in my recommendations, actually, I do want to point to a new publication that I think is sort of trying very, very hard to do that. But, you know, that's maybe something that I hear frequently in criticism of foreign affairs. How are you guys in the editorial board, you know, thinking about this question?
- [43:13]
B
So I think I was probably going to mention the same, the same publication in recommendations, but I will, I will leave that one for you. I think one of the balances for Foreign affairs is that we are both, you know, seek to cover global politics and global developments on their own terms, but we are so rooted in the, the American policy debate. So when it comes to both the kinds of questions we are asking and the kinds of issues that we pay close attention to, some of that does reflect kind of US interests and, and US fixations or US anxieties at, @ some time. So some of that is, you know, by design. Right? That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a feature of what we do, not a bug. But that can also lead you to a misperceived reality. So we, you know, this, this is the kind of work that editorially just takes more time because we're, you know, it's, there's a kind of steady stream of stuff coming in from the American, the American, you know, kind of policy analysis community that works well for trained to write this kind of piece. It's the kind of analysis that works well, but looking for questions that, you know, we think might be important in several months or several years. Right. Things that may not be front of mind for policymakers now or for the American policy deb. Now, but that we think will be. I'm going to point to a piece we ran a few days ago about cooperation between Nigeria and South Africa and how kind of critical that is to how much the future of that cooperation will determine, you know, both power within Sub Saharan Africa, but also how Sub Saharan Africa interacts with the rest of the world. So, you know, trying to look at questions like that, which may not be, are probably not front of mind for a lot of senior policymakers at this moment, but we think will be at some point that they, you know, it's, it's something they should be attuned to. So looking for ways to get at those dynamics that are not just, you know, kind of don't take as our Point of departure, debates in American foreign policy right now.
- [45:03]
A
Fantastic. I want to be mindful of your time. I know you only gave me an hour, but I want to just ask one more question. If you weren't editing the, the journal, but if you were yourself writing what project or project in foreign policy, China related or otherwise, would you most want to take on right now? What's, what's on your, on your mind?
- [45:23]
B
It's, it's a, it's a question that brings some degree of guilt to me because every year I kind of say I'm going to get started on another book and then fail to, given the.
- [45:37]
A
You and me both.
- [45:38]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so. But, you know, I had the idea, you know, I'm so fascinated by the US China relationship in the 1940s and really was kind of amazing about that period, which I was, you know, kind of plumbing in various ways for, for my book about the Marshall Mission was just how deep the relationship between, you know, American Chinese businesses, academic communities. You had, you know, American missionaries of China very famously and, and there was just an incredible amount of interconnection in that period and you had it kind of cut off very abruptly in, in 1949 in a way that I think explains some of the, you know, kind of policy failures and political reactions in the United States. And I, you know, that seemed both incredibly obviously a meaningful moment for the future of the US China relationship, but also kind of really a hinge moment in the Cold War and in American post war politics. And I was, my hope was to kind of follow that with a couple other episodes kind of moving forward in history, a couple other episodes in the U. S. China relationship that would, you know, both capture again that kind of U. S. China dynamic, but also illuminate something else about American debates about its role in the world. So I still would like to do that at some point, but yeah, I'm not sure when, you know, kind of current events are going to come down enough to, to allow me to actually do that.
- [46:59]
A
That's such a fascinating period. I don't know if you heard my show with or read the book the Raider by Stephen Platt. It's about Evans Carlson about the guy who started the Marine Raider battalion. And it intersects completely with the Marshall Mission that you write about and the whole run up before he's actually had involvement in China from the 1920s. He's there just sort of right on the eve of the white terror in 27, and he's embedded with Judah's forces in Shanxi province during the period after the Long March. So it's a fantastic book. But that period, I think it's crazy when you go back. I mean, it just really sort of sets the stage for so many of the debates that have unfolded in all the time since. That's great. I mean, I hope you do find the time and I would really look forward to reading it.
- [47:51]
B
Can I ask you guys.
- [47:53]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [47:53]
B
After this. You know, the question that preoccupies me kind of what the next. What the. What the big questions are now, Right. Like what are things that people should be addressing that you don't think are settled or you don't think there's enough discussion, the assumptions, underlying debates that you think aren't scrutinized enough. I mean, you spend a lot of time thinking about this, talking to people. Where would you kind of point? Right?
- [48:17]
A
Yeah, that's. That's a great question. I mean, I've written about it recently. I don't know if you got a chance to read. I put a big piece in the Ideas Letter and that talks quite a bit about it. And I mean, on the American side, it's just sort of doing this soul searching about what it is to relinquish primacy and hegemony and to sort of acknowledge the rise of another. And just. I think there's gotta be a lot of careful disassembly and not sort of rapid unplanned disassembly of American exceptionalism. Because I think the latter would be kind of dangerous for the world, but the former would be really salubrious for the world. So I'd like to see those conversations happening. But, you know, with China, I think there's a whole nother set of issues that we haven't really started asking ourselves. And those have to do with the Chinese identity in a period where they have achieved modernity. They have. It's another moment of having risen. And it unboxes a whole new set of questions about what kind of nation state China is going to be. One that has never fit comfortably into this sort of Westphalian nation state concept. It's this civilization state still. And lots of questions that flow from that about Chineseness itself. I mean, about the identity. It's. I mean, there's a crazy number of questions that. That unfolds. But I'm really curious about what intellectual life in China is going to be like in a moment of, you know, I mean, does it turn hubristic and triumphalist? Does it. Does it end up seeking kind of primacy or even hegemony. I actually, you know, I'm kind of convinced by much of what I read that that is not the case. But, yeah, I think it's really interesting to see what's happening right now in the American discourse. I mean, just to get back to one of the topics that I really wanted to kind of push you on. I mean, there's a big shift happening. I hear. It's a different conversation I'm having with just about everyone. It's conversation. I mean, I'm even hearing people who traditionally I have disagreed with vociferously praising that piece that I wrote and just sort of, you know, saying, hey, this has actually made me think a lot. I've got a lot of interesting notes from people who I wouldn't have thought. I mean, who I thought would have just found it repellent and just sort of hurled it with great force against the wall. But. But here we are. It's. It's a weird.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, one thing that I would just really. I mean, this is what you kind of do with. With all of your life. So. So, you know, this well. But like, the thing that really I. I go back to again and again and looking back at that, you know, the kind of post 1949 history is just the incredibly harmful effects of the cutoff of conversations between Americans and, you know, Chinese scholars religiously. Now you can go through any. Any community and just how damaging that was to the American ability to make policy in smart ways. And so, you know, obviously with. With a pandemic, there was a version of that. I think the political environment certainly in China and increasing the United States has made that, you know, has raised risks that we will. Should not become that extreme again. But it's become, I think, harder to have those kinds of conversations. So, you know, anything that any of us can do to kind of encourage more in both the. More people who can literally be having those conversations. But it kind of do kinds of analysis that are more nuanced and just, you know, again, you could take this out of the most kind of polarized partisan context, but, you know, debates about what the Chinese like, how the Chinese economy is functioning, right. That used to be. Used to be kind of like, is China going to rise inexorably and overtake us and in the next five years, or is it, you know, collapsing? And. And I think when you read Dan Wong or Lizzy Lee or Dan Rosen or, you know, Jonathan Zinn, like all of those just have a much more. There's just much more nuance to that debate now. And so that's part of what's changed. And in some ways the kind of strangeness of the Trump China policy has.
- [52:36]
A
I mean, it's opened the Overton window on discussions on China. I think that's the long and short of it is there's a lot more that we can say now. And to your point about the closing off thing, I'm actually pretty sanguine. I've seen the direction of travel being a lot more travel in that direction. I mean, there's a lot of people going. I mean, I'm finding it hard to get stuck on middle seats sometimes. There's a lot of people going back and forth, a lot of young people. A lot of new programs are starting up again. And this is part of that vibe shift I'm talking about. I'm kind of delighted to see that this is happening. But so it goes again. I want to be really conscious of your time here. I know you're a very, very busy man. So I want to just wrap this up and move on to these segments of the show. One is paying it forward, where I ask you to just sort of name check a younger colleague, somebody who's doing work that you think that we should be paying attention to, and then let's move on to recommendations.
- [53:31]
B
I mean, I've talked a lot about some of the, both, you know, well established and younger writers who, who write in Foreign affairs. And you know, they'll be, they'll be there. That's a much longer list. There'll be more of those. I think the, the thing that I would really focus on is, is our editorial staff. And part of what, you know, you kind of don't see when, when you are, you know, are reading a publication is just the intensive editing process behind it. And I think part of what we're trying to do is, is bring together, you know, different kinds of voices, scholars and policymakers and, you know, in some cases journalists and others, different kinds of people from different academic disciplines in into one debate. And that takes a ton of work from, you know, just the editors on our team, some of whom are very experienced, some of whom are, you know, really smart, you know, 24 year olds who just spent a, you know, a year, a year in Beijing doing, doing the Schwarzman Scholarship, which is a, a great, a great thing to do before, before coming to Foreign Affairs. Yeah, kind of intensity of that editing process. And then, you know, I was just reading Equator New, a new magazine that I think is called kind of explicitly meant to bring in Non Western voices or global south voices into some of these geopolitical debates with you just stole my recommendation.
- [54:51]
A
Alluded to it. I've got another one. I'll put that in as well. But yeah, and then recommendations that would be yours then. Let's let that be yours if you've got another one. I'm eager to hear it.
- [55:02]
B
Yeah. I mean, I imagine, I think this has been mentioned many times before, but I am reading it now is Joseph Trigian's book by Father, which is fantastic. And then a forthcoming book by great historian AD Army Westad, who's written fantastic books about the Chinese Civil War and about a global cold war, especially in theaters other than the ones we normally focus on. He has a book coming, I think late this year, early next, called the Coming Storm, which grows out of a piece he did in. In Foreign Affairs a year or two ago about the kind of unsettling parallels between early 20th century kind of pre war moments and what we're seeing now. So he brings a huge amount of depth on China and in U.S. china, but also that historical perspective.
- [55:50]
A
Yeah, I think in anticipation for that book. And I do look forward to it. I mean, I have my quibbles with historical analogies typically. And this one, you know, there's a lot to it for sure. And if you read Christopher Clark's book the Sleepwalkers, which I highly recommend. I've recommended it before, so it's not officially my recommendation for this show, but I think I'll put a link to it anyway because I just recently reread it. It's just so very good. And there are parts of it that will absolutely send chills for anyone who cares very much about avoidance of war between the United States and China. So.
- [56:27]
B
Yeah, just on the. The history, if I can just.
- [56:30]
A
Sure, yeah, no, go for it.
- [56:31]
B
Exactly. But, you know, I. It's obviously very easy to use historical analogies in kind of crude and misleading ways. Right. Though there's no. You see plenty of examples of that. And certainly if you look at our political, you know, political discourse at this point, there's, you know, no shortage of, of bad history and kind of mythologized history. And in some ways my, my book about Marshall was an attempt to kind of push back against like that period is so that kind of post war period of the wise men and the greatest generation is so mythologized in American foreign policy that part of the point of my book was to. To complicate it. But I do think when you look at, you know, a lot of the interesting new IR work that that is done on kind of political, you know, political psychology and ir. Karen Yuri, Milo Columbia's, you know, you know, one person who has done this in really interesting ways, Bob Jervis, obviously.
- [57:22]
A
Yeah.
- [57:22]
B
Did this in his work. I mean, we're kind of bringing those analogies to decision making and analysis no matter what. So I'd rather, you know, better, better to my mind, to raise them explicitly and interrogate them and complicate them rather than just kind of waving them away. That's, that's, that, that is my, my case for that kind of writing. Even though.
- [57:41]
A
Yeah, no, I, I don't wave them away. And, and I, I definitely have played with some of my own. My one of my favorites is sort of Spain in the Golden Age as an analogy for, for the United States right now. The analogy primarily being between the boundless access to silver from Potosi and Zacatecas and the United States and its ability to print money endlessly. And being the Hessians of the world, our strength isn't, to borrow a phrase from Evan Feigenbaum, that we export military prowess. And not much else right now. But the one that's been tickling me recently is a meme floating around on the Chinese Internet right now about the United States and late Qing. It's pretty funny in Chinese, it's funnier, but just the translation is flooded with opioids, closed to foreign trade, Navy rotten to the core, government in paralysis, misuse of military funding, governors ignoring central orders, throwing birthday parties for the emperor. And the punchline, fixing up imperial gardens, of course, a reference to what he's doing to the White House East Wing. But it just cracked me up hysterical. So my official recommendation, though, be said, since you stole Equator from me, but maybe we should just put a little bit of color on Equator. There's a great editorial team of people from a bunch of different publications, many of whose names you will recognize. I won't exhaust list, but the guy who sort of alerted me to this was somebody who's been on the show three times before, Pankaj Mishra. He's one of my favorite public intellectuals today. I don't know. I would love to get involved in this. It's great. But Equator, it's newly launched. I think it's only been out for about a week. And Equator.org, equator.org check it out. Amazing writing. There's a really great piece of. From an inner Mongolian journalist right now. That's the first thing that I read on it. It's Just fantastic writing and just really interesting stuff. But my actual recommendation is for a book by C.V. wedgwood. We talked about her with John Zinn on the show last week about her book on the Thirty Years War. And I suddenly realized, I'm sure she's written other stuff. I'm going to check it out. She wrote a book called the Spoils of Time, which is a general history from sort of, you know, the beginnings of early hominids in Africa in the Rift Valley, all the way to the early Renaissance. And I'm still in the Rome sections of it, but it's written with her wit and her sort of big picture perspective. It's fantastic. She's very good. I really enjoy reading this kind of stuff. I mean, notionally, it's like, this is the book that I'm going to make my kids read or whatever. That's too late now for any of that. But it was actually, I guess, latest edition of it was 83, so it's not even all that out of date. It's good. It's a masterful wit, as great piece of historical writing should be.
- [60:46]
B
Can I throw in one more recommendation in that garret?
- [60:49]
A
Sure, absolutely.
- [60:50]
B
Please do. I mean, I would also. Sorry, I'm actually throwing two very quickly. You had Tom Meany on the show to discuss.
- [60:56]
A
I did.
- [60:57]
B
China issue. They have a new India issue, which is awesome.
- [61:00]
A
Yeah.
- [61:00]
B
So really good. So I would recommend that. And then in the.
- [61:04]
A
There's also a really, really good interview that was recently published with Tom where, you know, he sort of talks about his own life. It's in the Nation. The interview is conducted by Daniel Steinmetz Jenkins. And it's. It's excellent. I highly recommend that. But, yeah, Tom is great. I wish I knew him better. I mean, I've had him on the show, but before, obviously. But he just strikes me as a great guy to, you know, have a meal with, have, have drinks with. He's really brilliant.
- [61:30]
B
That was a great episode. And then the one other quick recommendation, just on the other, the Wedgwood book is fantastic. That was a Covid read for me. A book I just came across that I'd heard of, but had never read before in a used bookstore and found totally fascinating was the Rise of the Meritocracy by, I'm now Michael Young, I believe. Right. This is the British sociologist who wrote this. It's the book that coined the term meritocracy.
- [61:55]
A
Right. Which was critical of meritocracy.
- [61:57]
B
Very critical of meritocracy. And is written from the perspective of like a sociologist in, I think, 2034 in the 1950s. And it's this, like, dystopian sociological study about the populist revolt against, you know, meritocratic elite. Sorting. It is just. There are. Some of. It's bizarre, but much of it is totally farsighted and fascinating. So worth revisiting.
- [62:17]
A
Yeah, there's another great book by Chris Hayes about meritocracy. It's called Twilight of the Elites, America After Meritocracy. I think I've probably recommended it on the show years and years ago. It's like, from like 2012. So. Old book, but really worth reading too. But yeah, no, I've not actually gone to the Source and read that one. You found it in a used bookstore, huh?
- [62:41]
B
Well, I stumbled across it and picked it up for a dollar or two and. And totally fascinating, so.
- [62:46]
A
Oh, wow, wow, wow. I'll definitely check that out. You know, I really try to read everything that gets recommended. Like, right now I'm in the middle of the book that John Zinn recommended last week called the Betrothed. But it's sort of the Italian national novel by Alessandro Mansoni. And it's just great. I'm listening to the audiobook. I had a lot of travel recently, so I was on planes, and I just cannot recommend the audiobook version of it. I mean, the narrator is just insanely gifted. But yeah, okay. We've spent as much time on recommendations as I'm going to allow. But thank you so much. My God, what a fun conversation. Dan, thanks so much. And thank you so much to geneleaf from your organization for helping set this up.
- [63:32]
B
Yeah, thank you, Kaiser. I'm glad we finally did this. And I love listening to the show and I appreciate the amount of. When you discuss foreign affairs pieces, even if it's critically. I mean, part of what we want is people who are deeply committed to these debates kind of arguing with each other. So in some ways it's more interesting when you're disagreeing with something you read in our pages.
- [63:53]
A
Great. Thank you so much. And I've got actually, weirdly, a lot more foreign affairs related content coming up, including I'm going to be talking to Lizzie on, quote, unquote, overcapacity. And she. She had some quibbles with the way her piece got edited, but we won't talk about that. All right, thanks so much.
- [64:12]
B
Thank you so much.
- [64:14]
A
You've been listening to the Seneca Podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me. Kaiser Guela support the show through substack. @senecapodcast.com where you will find a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio. Email me@senecapodmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can 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 this year. Huge thanks to my guest Daniel Kurtz Phelan, Editor of Foreign Affairs. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Take care.
- [64:57]
B
Sam.