2445 - Great Power Competition Threatens All Of Us w/ Van Jackson

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 2445 - Great Power Competition Threatens All Of Us
Guest: Van Jackson, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Release Date: March 3, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 2445 of The Majority Report with Sam Seder, host Sam Seder delves into the escalating tensions of great power competition, particularly focusing on the U.S.-China rivalry and its broader implications for global peace and democracy. Joining him is Van Jackson, a distinguished Senior Lecturer in International Relations and co-author of the book Rivalry Peril: How Great Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy. The episode provides a critical analysis of current geopolitical strategies and their unintended consequences on both international stability and domestic U.S. policies.

Setting the Stage: Current Political Climate

The episode begins with Sam Seder highlighting recent political maneuvers and controversies within the Trump administration, including the abrupt suspension of refugee resettlement programs and questionable economic policies. He underscores the administration's focus on projecting strength against perceived threats, laying the groundwork for a discussion on great power competition.

Notable Quote:

"Grand strategy is not just about being tough; it's about being smart and understanding the long-term consequences of our actions." — Sam Seder [00:01]

Debunking the Myth of the Cold War's Benefits

Van Jackson challenges the commonly held belief among some policymakers that the Cold War era was beneficial for the United States and the world. He argues that the Cold War led to devastating consequences, including millions of deaths, numerous failed regime changes, and a persistent state of global tension.

Key Points:

• The Cold War's legacy is often romantically portrayed, overshadowing its negative impacts.
• Contemporary policymakers may be repeating Cold War-era strategies without acknowledging historical failures.
• Jackson emphasizes that geopolitical rivalries have consistently undermined social democracy and peace.

Notable Quote:

"The Cold War sucked by like any clear-eyed, non-cherry-picked understanding of history." — Van Jackson [31:16]

U.S. Foreign Policy: From Primacy to Imperialism

The conversation shifts to the evolution of U.S. foreign policy from the late 20th century to the present. Jackson critiques the concept of American primacy, arguing that it has morphed into a form of modern imperialism driven by economic nationalism and military one-upmanship.

Key Points:

• The Democratic and Republican parties have both perpetuated a strategy focused on maintaining global dominance.
• Initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Asian Pivot are seen as attempts to reassert American hegemony.
• Jackson links current policies to the Project for the New American Century, highlighting a continuity of neoconservative strategies.

Notable Quote:

"These are all synonyms, you know what I mean? It's like nobody's confused. It's about American dominance." — Van Jackson [42:54]

Great Power Competition and Its Domestic Implications

Sam Seder and the panel explore how the U.S.-China rivalry impacts domestic policies and societal well-being. Jackson argues that the focus on external threats diverts attention and resources from pressing internal issues, leading to weakened social programs and increased economic instability.

Key Points:

• Defense spending remains disproportionately high, justified by the need to counter China.
• Policies under both Biden and Trump administrations are driven by an agenda to maintain supremacy rather than address domestic needs.
• The narrative of great power competition serves to justify cuts to social services and economic support programs.

Notable Quote:

"Geopolitical rivalry tends to be the enemy of all the things that we think are good: peace and democracy, not least." — Van Jackson [34:29]

The Role of the Defense Industry and Technological Militarization

The discussion delves into the symbiotic relationship between the U.S. defense industry and technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). Jackson contends that the defense sector profits by perpetuating a state of perpetual crisis, necessitating continuous investment in military technologies.

Key Points:

• Companies like Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX benefit from defense contracts driven by the China threat narrative.
• Investment in AI and other technologies is often justified by national security needs, regardless of actual profitability.
• Jackson warns that this militarization diverts funds from essential public services and exacerbates economic inequality.

Notable Quote:

"They are selling the China threat to the public as their business model and then telling the US Government, pay me because we're your answer to fighting China." — Van Jackson [55:33]

China's Global Strategy and Its Impact on the Developing World

Jackson provides an insightful analysis of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and its implications for developing nations. He explains how China's investment strategies often exacerbate existing local conditions, fostering dependency and undermining democratic institutions.

Key Points:

• The BRI offers an alternative to IMF loans, attracting countries by eliminating stringent conditionalities.
• China's investments in infrastructure projects in Africa and Southeast Asia often align with their own economic and strategic interests.
• Jackson critiques the lack of transparency and the exploitative nature of these investments, which prioritize resource extraction and geopolitical leverage.

Notable Quote:

"Governments are trapped in this choice and it's a choice of our making in a way." — Van Jackson [74:11]

Trump and Biden: Continuity of Imperialist Policies

The conversation highlights the similarities between the Trump and Biden administrations in their approach to China. Jackson argues that despite different political banners, both administrations perpetuate a form of imperialism that prioritizes global dominance over genuine diplomatic engagement.

Key Points:

• Both administrations maintain high defense budgets justified by the China threat.
• Jackson points out that policies under both leaderships often serve the interests of the defense and tech industries rather than the public.
• The continuation of aggressive posturing towards China underlines a systemic issue within U.S. foreign policy.

Notable Quote:

"Trump is still doing China rivalry, but a great power competition. It's not like a grand strategy, though." — Van Jackson [50:37]

Implications for Peace and Democracy

Jackson underscores the detrimental effects of great power competition on global peace and democratic institutions. He posits that the relentless focus on rivalry and dominance undermines efforts to build cooperative international relationships and address global challenges collaboratively.

Key Points:

• Geopolitical tensions destabilize regions and hinder collective action on issues like climate change and human rights.
• The narrative of competition distracts from building resilient domestic systems that can foster social and economic well-being.
• Jackson advocates for a reorientation of foreign policy towards cooperative engagement and addressing root causes of global insecurity.

Notable Quote:

"The solution is to put more money in the pockets of Chinese workers. The trouble and the reason why the CCP won't do that is because it's not clear that they would still be the world's factory if costs went up that much, if wages went up that much." — Van Jackson [73:24]

Conclusion: Rethinking U.S. Foreign Policy

As the episode wraps up, Sam Seder and Van Jackson call for a fundamental reassessment of U.S. foreign policy. They emphasize the need to move away from a dominance-centric approach and instead focus on fostering genuine international cooperation and addressing domestic socio-economic issues.

Key Takeaways:

• The mythologization of the Cold War benefits current geopolitical strategies that may be detrimental to global and domestic well-being.
• Great power competition, particularly with China, is perpetuating a cycle of militarization and economic exploitation.
• A shift towards cooperative diplomacy and investment in social democracy is essential for sustainable peace and democracy.

Notable Quote:

"If we abandoned primacy, if we didn't relate to the world in a predatory way, we would be a lot better off. We wouldn't have these problems and China wouldn't appear as nearly as threatening." — Van Jackson [77:34]

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Final Thoughts

Episode 2445 of The Majority Report presents a compelling critique of the ongoing great power competition, particularly the U.S.-China rivalry. Van Jackson's insights challenge listeners to reconsider the underlying motivations and consequences of current foreign policies, advocating for a more cooperative and inward-focused approach to ensure global stability and democratic resilience.

For more information, listeners are encouraged to check out Van Jackson's book, Rivalry Peril: How Great Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, and subscribe to his Undiplomatic newsletter on Substack.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Sam Seder [00:01]: "Grand strategy is not just about being tough; it's about being smart and understanding the long-term consequences of our actions."
• Van Jackson [31:16]: "The Cold War sucked by like any clear-eyed, non-cherry-picked understanding of history."
• Van Jackson [42:54]: "These are all synonyms, you know what I mean? It's like nobody's confused. It's about American dominance."
• Van Jackson [34:29]: "Geopolitical rivalry tends to be the enemy of all the things that we think are good: peace and democracy, not least."
• Van Jackson [55:33]: "They are selling the China threat to the public as their business model and then telling the US Government, pay me because we're your answer to fighting China."
• Van Jackson [74:11]: "Governments are trapped in this choice and it's a choice of our making in a way."
• Van Jackson [50:37]: "Trump is still doing China rivalry, but a great power competition. It's not like a grand strategy, though."
• Van Jackson [73:24]: "The solution is to put more money in the pockets of Chinese workers. The trouble and the reason why the CCP won't do that is because it's not clear that they would still be the world's factory if costs went up that much, if wages went up that much."
• Van Jackson [77:34]: "If we abandoned primacy, if we didn't relate to the world in a predatory way, we would be a lot better off. We wouldn't have these problems and China wouldn't appear as nearly as threatening."

Transcript

[Sam Seder]

Hey folks, as you know, the Trump administration has abruptly stopped all refugees from entering the U.S. and suspended the U.S. resettlement program. Well, Beautiful Day Granola is preparing for significant changes to the national and local resettlement systems. Programs that have already been completed or ongoing have not been been reimbursed resulting in layoffs and program closure. This is why Beautiful Day does such important work. Beautiful Day shines as a Providence based social enterprise with a unique mission to provide comprehensive paid job training to refugees who are involved in every step of making their award winning gourmet granola. They run four job training, paid training programs, job training for adults, internship programs for youths ages 15 to 18 with community partners, entrepreneurship training for Afghan women who are interested in starting food businesses and management training for refugees interested in learning customer service and sales skills by managing one of their farmers markets. Job training programs further their mission of connecting refugees to their communities throughout business, job training and education. And refugees come from all around the world. Syria, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Miramar, Burundi, Somalia, Eritrea and Iraq. And despite the fact they speak different languages, their granola chef, who is originally from Iraq, helps their refugees go beyond language barriers by fostering teamwork, building confidence while making delicious granola and learning English. Their program is about three and a half months. They also help these folks pursue an education, get job placement or start their own businesses. And their delicious handmade granola is made with premium organic grains, seeds, nuts, dried fruit and spices. No preservatives binding all this goodness together, local honey and the pride and spirit of newcomers rebuilding their lives. And what sets this granola apart is it's not designed for snacking. You can't really tell in the bag, but it's Matt's laughing because I can't even keep. If I kept this bag open, it would be a problem. I would eat it. And immediately they get sizable chunks. They're flavorful and you can or you can enjoy it with milk like regular granola. There are four standard flavors. Keith's original, Pistachio, Cardamom, Mochacino, Hazelnut and ginger zinger. And they also have like a specialty granola of the month this year. This month I think is like cherry chocolate. They got three muesli flavors available. Breakfast Ginger Zinger and the vegan super original. You have this with yogurt any way that you have muesli. Oh, I can feel it. I can feel it. It's calling to me. High protein. They get high protein fiber bars, six flavors. Banana Foster, Mochacino, hazelnut, pistachio, cardamom, salted Mango Bourbon Pecan. Check it out. Beautiful day r I.org and you can see the packaging has their mission right on top here. Proudly made for you by Refugees. Beautiful Day is offering free shipping for all Majority Report listeners. When you go to beautiful day ri.org use the code majority all caps at checkout until March 7th. Check it out. We'll put a link in the podcast and YouTube description. Honestly, it's the best tasting granola I've ever had and I've had like four bags of this already and I'm begging everybody to take it out of the office. Can't stop. All right now, time for the show the Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, March 3rd, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Van Jackson, senior lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, writer of the Undiplomatic newsletter on Substack, author of the Rivalry Peril How Great Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, co authored with Michael Brennis. Also on the program today, tariffs on Canada and Mexico to start tomorrow, supposedly. Meanwhile, fallout continues following the White House staged attack on Zelensky as Pete Hexis ceases all cyber operations against Russia. Meanwhile, Trump's government is looking to cook the books on the GDP by excluding government spending because, you know, government doesn't create jobs except for they only get rid of jobs except for we're not going to even count that in the gdp. Gdp. So everything's going great. Scam Presidency continues. Trump hypes his buddy David Sachs crypto ETF as a strategic reserve for the US Government. Meanwhile, Treasury Department abandons Corporate Transparency act measures and money launderers all across the globe celebrate. RFK Jr. Does pirouettes as HHS tries to deal slash, not deal with the measles. Emergency, slash, not emergency. Israel provides more evidence for its genocide, I should say the case for genocide against it as it halts all aid to Gaza. Huh?

[Emma Vigeland]

They can do that? I was told only Hamas to do that.

[Sam Seder]

Well, the, the good news for Israel is that they'll have more for their defense fund. Rubio sidesteps Congress to send another $4 billion military aid to Israel. And Trump's assault on Social Security and Doges and Musk's, even though he doesn't work there. Even though he does work there, his assault on Social Security, According to Martin O'Malley, former administrator of the Social Security Administration. The system, he believes, may collapse within 90 days. DHS is attempting to use IRS data to build an immigrant registry on the path to mass arrests. Speaking of mass arrests, Andrew Cuomo enters the New York City mayoral race. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us at the beginning of another week that already feels like we've already had a week's worth of news today.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's extremely overwhelming. I can't. I mean, says Emma Viglin, hello.

[Sam Seder]

Of the Majority Report.

[Emma Vigeland]

The Andrew Cuomo thing is just incredible to me. I mean, we're in a MeToo backlog flash era, really, with this, I think, Trump administration and the open endorsing of just rampant misogyny and our word culture. But now with Andrew Cuomo, if he's able to ride this back in, I mean, he had dozens of accusers. This is, he was looked in, probed by the doj.

[Sam Seder]

I, you know, like, I, I have to say, I don't, I don't, I never pursued those cases as much because he resigned before they came to fruition. But I will tell you the number of things about Andrew Cuomo that I absolutely despise. I don't know if there is a single Democratic politician I have had more problems with than Andrew Cuomo over the years. You go back to the idc, which was Andrew Cuomo's way of essentially empowering Republicans and preventing any progressive legislation from passing in this state.

[Matt Lech]

The thing we all suspect Democrats doing sort of in secret. He made official, informal.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, no. Yeah. It was all out in the open. The only thing is that his role in midwifing the thing wasn't clear until much later. He also essentially destroyed the public hospital system in this state, which of course led to a lot of problems, a lot more deaths during COVID than there should have been and of course concentrated amongst low income and people of color in this state. He also took gobs and gobs of money from Ken Langone to promote charter schools in this state. And he also did everything in his power to make it virtually impossible to institute universal pre K. Right. And good on de Blasio. He never did a very good job of promoting himself for it. But the idea that people living in New York City who have had children or plan on having children could ever want to vote for Andrew Cuomo, who was so against universal child pre K, it is just astonishing to me. And honestly, like, if the media does its job, which I don't believe that they Will in this city, Andrew Cuomo won't get with more than 10 votes, but we'll see. We will say, meanwhile, Zo Ron.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's all I have to say about that.

[Matt Lech]

Yes, I saw some hats out. People canvassing in Brooklyn love to see it.

[Sam Seder]

Folks need to really spread the word to New Yorkers about just how bad Andrew Cuomo is. He just is. If you didn't like Eric Adams, that's.

[Matt Lech]

What Zoran said is he's running for Adam's second term.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, that's good.

[Sam Seder]

Cuomo is, without a doubt. In some ways, though, just like, has to be fair to Adams, Cuomo has a lot more of, like, undermining of what Democrats and what just people want than Eric Adams did. Eric Adams is just corrupt. Cuomo was corrupt, but also more ambitious than just making himself wealthy. You know, Eric Adams was going to, you know, after his mayorality, he's just going to go off into the private sector. But what Cuomo wants to do is be corrupt and then also be president.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly.

[Sam Seder]

Where are we? Okay, here we are. So, as you know, the hits keep coming from Musk and Doge, and now they're starting to take out a lot of, like, Social Security offices. And understand, I want you to think about who goes in to get Social Security. It is widowers, it is orphans, and it is people who are in their 60s who are retiring. And a lot of this stuff, they're not necessarily adept at doing stuff online. If you're in your 60s, I can tell you right now, I am not in my 60s. I'm getting there. But I did not have a computer. They. Nobody I knew had a computer as a freshman in college. Nobody, certainly no one had one in high school. We are not computer natives like people are today. And so people who are five, 10 years older than me, the idea that they may need to go in and do this paperwork in person or to show documents, to prove documents. I was married to this person. They passed away. Whatever it is, that includes people who may be in their 70s even, right? I mean, somebody passes away. So when you start to shut down those offices, you're preventing people from getting their benefits. You're preventing, you know, potentially existing recipients, Social Security and others. And so all of this, like, people are starting to realize what's being cut here, and also that it's illegal. And we're going to find that out during the continuing resolution of the budget, because if it was legal, then you wouldn't be able to pass a continuing resolution because the budget's already been Changed unilaterally by the president. So the Republicans had said, we're not going to do any more town halls. Because they were. Because George Soros was personally paying people to show up at the town halls.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's selling tickets. I mean, wow. They really just don't want to hear the free speech of their constituents.

[Sam Seder]

They just hate the idea of a billionaire coming in and influencing our politics. And so. So they had canceled apparently, or said they were going to cancel their town hall meetings. Well, a couple of Republicans did not get the memo that they were supposed to cancel their town hall meetings. And maybe a couple of them were like, oh man, I don't have to worry about this. I'm in blood red Texas. I don't have to worry about my constituents. They're all dupes. Well, it seems that Representative Keith Self found out in Texas's third that's not the case. He had a town hall on Saturday.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wow.

[Sam Seder]

Now the Republicans want you to believe that this has been all been coordinated and that these are really organizers. I mean, the bottom line is, yeah, of course, the reason why people show up at meetings, people get organized to show up at meetings all the time. The idea that like, well, but these are local groups that are. Who cares?

[Matt Lech]

Why are they turning out now? Because people, activists try to get people to show up to this stuff all the time. It's only showing up.

[Sam Seder]

Of course, there's no meetings you go to where it's just like random, like, I had no idea this meeting was going on. I just finally, just out of the blue, tuned in to what was happening at the local.

[Matt Lech]

No, the algorithm hypnotized me here.

[Emma Vigeland]

But in Texas, it's almost 130,000 federal workers in the state. So, like, the idea that this is entirely astroturfed is ridiculous on its face.

[Sam Seder]

Of course. Of course it's not. I mean, the idea that it's, that it's organized makes total sense. Of course it's organized, but by local groups that don't get any funding. These are all just volunteers who are going out and doing this. And it's indicative of the Republicans having a problem. Now they want to put their head in the sand, but it's not working. Here is Roger Marshall from Kansas. Senator at a senator, I should say. In Oakley, Kansas didn't go so well.

[Matt Lech]

Remember, Soros has a lot of sway.

[Sam Seder]

In Oakley, 30% of federal workers are veterans, plus they're slashing VA services.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And in Kansas City in particular in the metro area, we said this last time we covered a town hall from there, it's 30,000 federal workers. I think it's the largest employer in the metro area.

[Sam Seder]

Now, look at this guy getting up here. Clearly like one of these, one of these, like, radical, you know, he was out there. Jw. Yeah, exactly. Right.

[Van Jackson]

Now, as far as cutting out those jobs, a huge percentage of those people.

[Sam Seder]

And I know you care about the veterans. The veterans, yes.

[Van Jackson]

And that is a damn shame.

[Sam Seder]

Yes, yes. That is a, I'm not a Democrat, but I'm worried about the veterans, man. Well, I yielded to one of my, my elders and I appreciate his comments.

[Van Jackson]

I think it's a great. I'm not gonna. We don't have time for everyone to stand up.

[Sam Seder]

I do got two more commitments today. Appreciate everybody making the drive out and God bless America. Wait, what? We're going to take pictures with you, buddy.

[Emma Vigeland]

So he just walked out?

[Sam Seder]

That's nuts. I mean, I hadn't seen that clip and I thought, like, oh, he, he said, listen, I know you're, I, I, I thought he, like that guy just literally pretended like he did not hear that. I don't know if that guy who was standing up was a vet talking about other vets, and then the guy can't camera pants over. Like, I'm not a Democrat, but I do care about the vets. And this senator goes, thanks for asking the question by two more commitments.

[Emma Vigeland]

I got to go to the bathroom. And don't. If I'm running out the back door. I mean, just don't worry about it. I'll be back any second.

[Sam Seder]

This is a guy who's looking at the audience going like, okay, I can outrun just about 85, 95% of these people by.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is the bind that Musk is putting these Republicans in. And Trump, which is that they basically have to answer to their constituents about this. But the number one person that they have to answer to before they answer to the people they're supposed to be representing is the guy that's the richest person on the planet who's going to fund a primary challenge against them if they don't do his bidding.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

What we are at a level in, in the post Citizens United world where it's just completely out in the open, whether it's the crypto scams and the pump and dumps that Trump is engaging in, openly using the federal government to enrich himself and the power of the presidency, or if it's like this, which is just exactly the problem with equating money as to speech and unleashing it in our politics, which Means that if you have more money, you have more speech and one guy has the most money on the planet, so he has the most speech and it can drown out all those voices. It's up to the constituents to punish them.

[Sam Seder]

In 2026, though, yeah, 2026 is going to be increasingly important to just get us back to somewhere that is even a relative baseline. There's, I mean, there's nothing outside of these court cases. There's not much structurally the Democrats can do right now except essentially communicate to the American population that things are messed up and here's how they're messed up and what you. What is, what is happening to you now, Whether it's a loss, Social Security checks, whether it's loss of services from the va, whether it's your kid is in danger because they can't get a measles vaccination, because maybe they're immunocompromised and they're living in an area now which is like, there's a measles outbreak or the price of your good of your car has gone up by $10,000 because Donald Trump has decided to wage a completely irrational non cohesive tariff war on, you know, two countries to justify essentially making America whiter. Right. Like he has to do Mexico and Canada to sort of justify it. Like it's not just about the brown people. There's a lot of fentanyl coming in through Canada. Of course there's not, but. And so, I mean, on and on and on like this. But the Democrats have to get out there and explain to people why this is happening, what the relationship between government and the immiseration that they're going through is. And I don't know if they're going to do it. We'll see. But. We'll see.

[Matt Lech]

See Bernie, if you can.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. Hopefully there'll be more popping up. We got a lot more to talk about. And in a moment we're going to be talking to Van Jackson, senior lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University in Wellington. That's in New Zealand, ladies and gentlemen. He's a writer of Undiplomatic newsletter on Substack, author of the Rivalry How Great Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy. Co authored that with Michael Brennis. We're going to be talking about the sort of, like, attempts to generate a new Cold War with China, the costs of the old Cold War and what's going on with Ukraine. But first, a word, a couple of words from our sponsors. Sleep is huge for me and when I'm not getting woken up by my son or the new cat because I'm trying to keep the cat from waking up my son. The biggest problem I have with sleep is falling asleep and then like staying asleep. So I guess it's all the problems with sleep. I sleep hot on top of like also worrying about everything else that's going in the world. And Cozy Earth can't help me when it comes to worrying about everything else in the world. But it can help me from sleeping too hot. Cozy Earth products are designed to transform your 5 to 9. That's the time when you know you're asleep and maybe you're at home into your coziest sanctuary. You can unlock an exclusive discount of up to 40% using the code majority [e-mail] MajorityReport and I want to thank Cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode. Cozyearth has basically redone my entire whole like bath and bedroom experience. I get Cozy Earth sheets. You know what I also just recently found out? Duvet. You've been saying you have a duvet from Cozy Earth and I thought it was just the COVID But the duvet includes like the sort of the comforter and the COVID Yes. I apologize.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, I mean not accepted.

[Sam Seder]

I don't know why you couldn't have challenged me on that beforehand. Anyways, that's not the point. Emma has a cozy.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's my fault again.

[Van Jackson]

Cozy pushback.

[Sam Seder]

There's no pushback. Emma has cozier thank apparently duvet and duvet cover.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

I got the bath towels. They're super. They call them bath sheets. They're super sized or oversized I guess. They're huge. They're ultra absorbent. They are super soft. I've also got Cozy Earth bath mats. Their sheets have a hundred night sleep trial. A 10 year warranty on all their bedding and bath products. Plus I got joggers and my favorite sweatshirt hoodie is a Cozy Earth hoodie. The hoodie is just. It just blows me away. I wear it now constantly. I wear it to work every day too. Now it's all made out of viscose, which is a. Which is essentially bamboo, right? In tiny, tiny strands. And so it's incredibly durable. But it ends up being incredibly soft and it's also sustainable. Plus the sheets have you sleeping several degrees cooler. Cozy Earth prides itself on the responsible production of its products. Cozy Earth bedding products have a 10 year warranty. That's how much Cozy Earth believes in them. Luxury shouldn't be out of reach. Visit cozyearth.com MajorityReport Use my exclusive code Majority Report for up to 40% off Cozy Earth best selling sheets, towels, pajamas and more. They have great pajamas. They make great present. Incidentally, that's cozyearth.com majority report and if you get a post purchase survey, tell them you heard about Cozy Earth right here. Sanctuary awaits at Cozy Earth. We'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube description. Also, like I say, talking about sleep, how do I get the bed virtually every night? Particularly now I'm worried about daylight savings coming up. You lose an hour.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh gosh, that's this upcoming weekend.

[Sam Seder]

Is it this coming weekend?

[Emma Vigeland]

I think so, right? Oh no savings on Sunday.

[Sam Seder]

Here's good news. Sunset Lake Saba Day can help you get better sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. Right now all of their SEBA Day sleep products are 35% off when you check out with coupon code DAYLIGHT35. Their sleep gummies are packed with Sebe Day and Seben and a touch of melatonin to help you drift off naturally. Or if you're sensitive to melatonin. I tend to be a little sensitive to melatonin so I've been using the Goodnight oil and I think they also have a good night gummy. I'm not 100% sure about that, but the Goodnight oil is fantastic. This is it. It's the SEBA Day and the SEBA and this is my go to. A lot of people like melatonin so there's some of that as well. But this is incredibly helpful for sleep and you know it doesn't have the same you're not taking Ambien, which destroys your memory and all sorts of other stuff like this. Plus you know the thing at Sunset Lake, all their products are third party tested. You know exactly what's in there, all of the levels of the SEBA and the SEBA Day and their farming practices. No pesticides. Just a great company. Don't let savings Daylight Saving Time screw up your schedule. Head over to sunsetlakeseba.com use the coupon code Daylight35 to save 35% on all participating sleep products. But Hari, the sale ends March 9, so you get a couple of days at Midnight Eastern Time March 9th. See their site for additional terms and conditions and we'll put the link in the podcast and YouTube description. Quick break. Be right back with Van Jackson. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Van Jackson. He is a senior Lecturer at International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand Writer of the Undiplomatic newsletter on Substack, author of the Rivalry How Great Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, co authored with Michael Brennis. Welcome to the program, Van.

[Van Jackson]

Thanks for having me. I first came to the show when I heard Janine Garofalo was on. Oh, she's not on anymore.

[Sam Seder]

She's not on where? That was 20 years ago.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, but you guys are. All right. Yeah, you guys stuck around for y'all.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah, that was. That was 20. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary actually. But that was. Right. Yeah, that was back in the aughts. Well, all right, so let's. Let's start with the. The argument that, that you all making in the book is the, in many respects is this notion that somehow the Cold War with Russia was a benefit to the United States, to the world at large. And that in somehow there are benefits to be gained with, I guess, engaging in what is known as the great power competition or rivalry. There are actually people who sort of promote this as a way of like, I guess, I don't know, maybe it's some like, sort of extension of that libertarian ideology of, like, people functioning in their own best interests ends up somehow helping society. But tell us the. Let's start with the myth of the Cold War being beneficial, broadly speaking.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, that's a good place to start. And my co author and I, we sort of came to this project during the Biden, early Biden administration when, like, people that, like, I had been friends with in the sort of Democratic Party foreign policy milieu, you know, the sort of mandarins who are. Who ended up becoming Biden's staff, like Kurt Campbell, Jake Sullivan and these guys, they basically built their whole orientation in foreign policy and their whole domestic project around confrontation with China, around reasserting American primacy in the way that we relate to the world. Sometimes we would just like, code it gently as like American global leadership or something, but we're talking about like hegemony, domination of the world, you know, and we were using China as like the gateway to that. And one of the arguments that we kept seeing these guys, my one time friends making was like, you know, the Cold War is why we had civil rights. The Cold War was good for the labor movement. The Cold War can make us the best version of ourselves. And we were like, what the fuck are they talking about? Like the Cold War that I knew had 14 to 20 million people die. And we just don't keep it in our historical memory because there was brown and black bodies in the, in the third world, you know, the Cold War that I Knew was like 60 plus US attempts at regime change, 40 something of which were on the side of autocracy in the Cold War. The Cold War risked global annihilation of us all multiple times. The Cold War sucked by like any clear eyed, non cherry picked understanding of history, you know. And so we were like, these guys are using a bad heroic elite kind of aristocratic understanding, like a great man of history understanding of the past to justify doing militarism right now. And it's a really, and I think some of them had good intentions, but it was just a really bad reading of history. And we're like, this is a bad bet, dude. And we could see already by 2021 just the fact that like Trump had been hyping up the China threat in his first term led to this huge spike in anti Asian violence in the U.S. the surveillance and oppress of, and then the forcing to the fleeing of scientists who happen to be Asian or Chinese. You know, like we were seeing a kind of red scare happening amid so many other things that were happening. And we're like, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like this entire project that we've got in America is going to go down if, if we end up trying to confront a Big bad rather than deal with our problems, right? Rather than, rather than attend to social democracy at home, we're going to defer social democracy in the name of fighting a big bad. So our meta argument ended up being that like, if we paid a little more attention to history from the perspective of its victims, we would see that geopolitical rivalry tends to be the enemy of all the things that we think are good peace and democracy, not least.

[Sam Seder]

All right, well, let me start with the, with those folks. Were they, was that a sort of like post hoc justification for the, you know, for an agenda that sort of preexisted in terms of like this conflict with China? Like nobody was saying that we should start or, or were they trying to argue that we should start a cold war with China because of all the benefits that we get from domestically. Like, I mean, I think it is the case that the competition that we felt with the Soviet Union probably did provide. I don't know if it was the definitive one, but, but some impetus for civil rights in this country because we were in some type of competition. I don't think it would have been enough to push it through. But were these guys, when they were talking about with China, because this all started way before Biden Right. I mean, we were. We saw the.

[Van Jackson]

The Obama.

[Sam Seder]

Obama. Right. I mean, we saw like the sort of the. And I would argue that it, frankly, it started in. I think it started in 1993. I mean, I think. I mean, you know, I've told this story on the. The original Majority Report. In fact, it was. We broke this story with Gary Hart. Janine and I interviewed Gary Hart, and he told us about the. He and I think it was Rudman had a 21st century threat commission. They went around the table of 15 people they had invited. What's the number one threat? Everybody said non state actors, terrorism. One person said China. Everybody sort of laughed at that person. They all went around the room again. Four months later, same thing after, hadn't thought about it. The same person said China. That person never showed up again. It was Cheney. It was either Liz or Lyn, I can never remember which one. But this is back in 2000. Right. And so I'm quite convinced the whole Project for New American Century and the Iraq War was very much about trying to contain China in some fashion. So this is. This is preexisting out there. These guys from the Biden administration weren't saying we should start this thing with China to help with domestic. Or are they just saying we should exploit this thing with China to help domestic or we should tamp down issues with a rivalry with China for these benefits?

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, so those are all great points. Like the. The Biden guys were kind of improvising foreign policy like it was an opportunistic thing. What is it in the political landscape that of elites, not the masses, that can move things, especially on Capitol Hill? Well, it's the China boogeyman. Right. And they were getting like, I mean, you know, this especially going back to the Gary Hart days, Democrats have always been defined by their right flank, you know, and like, especially on foreign policy, all Republicans have to do is say, like, a Democrat is weak on national security. And then the Democrats get all frothy about trying to out hock everybody. And so, like, when Trump started calling Biden, you know, in 2020, Beijing, Biden and all this stuff, and like, you know, he's weak on China. And that was the Republican messaging campaign basically for 2020, up and down the ticket like that. That created an incentive for the. The Democratic foreign policy people to try and out hock Trump. And so they ended up preserving and expanding all the blacklists of Chinese companies that Trump had started, all the tariffs that Trump had started, suspension of visas for Chinese students. Like, the whole thing the FBI, you know, China initiative program that they had, which was basically racist, that like that continued an all but name under Biden. And then the most important piece of all of this is the Pentagon is defense spending. You know, like all of that hangs on the China threat. And the thing about Project for a New American Century and Liz Cheney and all that is really important in a larger sense because the Democratic Party foreign policy and you saw this under Biden, it's indistinguishable from the platform of Project for a New American Century, like missile defense, China rivalry, you know, just like the military spending, space weapons, it's all the stuff that they wanted, you know. And so now the Democratic Party has basically become neocons on foreign policy and the Republican Party, if you're going to be a neocon, you have to be a convert to maga, you know, and sign on to this bizarro like imperialist stuff. But yeah, so like the China stuff has been in the background this whole time. The difference in the past 1012 years is that great power competition is a, a fancy way of talking about inter imperial rivalry. Neoliberal globalization, it started paying fewer and fewer dividends over time. In the wake of the global financial crisis and the Great Recession, globalization stopped paying off even for the haves and so global growth stagnated. And when that started to happen, China and the US both turned to economic nationalism. And part of economic nationalism is necessarily like jingoism and you know, military one upmanship and all that stuff. So both great powers are exploiting the advantages afforded by their powerful states by their favorable positions in the world system to claim a larger share of a shrinking economic pie. You know, and that's, that's the paradigm that we're in now. It's basically like state capitalism. Trump just does it in like a way that is like really focused on his corrupt oligarchic interests. But that, that was what we started doing under Biden too.

[Emma Vigeland]

But, but I'm curious about your viewpoint then on Biden's foreign policy more broadly. Right. Extending past obviously the more xenophobic things. But like Jake Sullivan was trying to sell something like called foreign policy for the middle class to the public. It seems like, like it's just what you're saying where they're freelancing these natsk ghouls that were really honestly it seems like running the show under Biden who was very weakened at this point and then, but, but in terms of, if there's any ideological consistency, for me it's like a time machine foreign Policy. How can we go back to making sure that we reify NATO and make that incredibly central aukus, the reopening of military bases. I think it was in the Philippines. Right. This is all centered around, okay, how can we make our self once again a global hegemon? And using kind of the framework of the post World War II foreign policy to do that via Europe. But, but then when it comes to, to, to China, this is just like copy paste China for the Soviet Union. And now they're trying to create more of a military presence in Australia and in Southeast Asia as well. Like that. That for me is just, okay, how can we turn the clock back? But I don't think they can turn the clock back.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, no, there's this. You're on it. You're totally on it. Like there was an intense nostalgia in Biden foreign policy, you know, like this. It was, it was like a rehash of the unipolar moment. So at the end of the Cold War, we declared primacy effectively as our grand strategy, which is a kind of structural domination of all comers. And that's an end and means of foreign policy. This was our orientation. We ended up calling it like liberal hegemony or an American led order project.

[Sam Seder]

New American centuries Hyper power.

[Van Jackson]

Yes, essentially, yes. So these are all synonyms, you know what I mean? It's like nobody's confused. It's about American dominance. So in the argot of like international relations, we would call this primacy. Right. But it's like a really predatory way of relating to the world in fact, because it's like you are the top dog and you have to hoard power at the expense of others and then sell it back to them and say actually it's a global public good. Our extreme power hoarding. Right, that's primacy. That was the, that's in our strategy documents. This isn't like some conspiracy secret going back to the George H.W. bush administration. So Soviet Union goes away and then we've got, we've got primacy. And in the unipolar moment, in the like fat, dumb and happy Clinton years and the early Bush W. Bush years, we could do primacy. We could do this extreme power hoarding shit. And it wasn't especially risky for us because we had a huge margin of power relative to everybody else. We could exercise bad judgment, we could do Iraq wars. And in the immediate sense it was like, well, who eats it? Just some, some working class kids who had the mad fortune to enlist at that time or something, you know, like we, it wasn't. And we. And it was all paid on the credit card, just debt financed. Our military, we don't pay. We don't pay for defense spending through taxation. It's through financing. Right? So like it's all on the credit card. So like we were, you know, go shopping. War on terror. So that's the world where we're still doing primacy. We still believe that our shit don't stink and we're not necessarily paying across a cost for it that we can see, but it's building. You know, the right wing is getting perverted and distorted. And the Spencer Ackerman argument about the war on terror gave us Trump. That's happening. We're becoming numb to the violence that we perpetuate in the world, the apotheosis of which ends up being facilitating genocide in Gaza. It's all connected. But China figures into this because only China had a chance going back to the 90s. To your point, Sam, only China could stand in for the Soviet Union. And the American national security state was literally designed as of the 1947 National Security act to deal with a giant, you know, communist monolith or whatever. Like literally a great power. A single other great power is what all these agencies are set up to cope with. The war on terror actually sucked for the U.S. national Security State. Like, it was a hard thing to do and it didn't do a good job. But like that's, you know. And so everybody who was in the national security world in D.C. and the think tanks and shit, they wanted to pivot, even like they served in the Obama administration. We wanted to move away from the war on terror as a paradigm, but we still believed in primacy. We still believed that that was the thing. What we didn't get was that the world was becoming more multipolar power, global power was diffusing, not concentrating. So we were literally going against a global trend in trying to seek power primacy.

[Sam Seder]

Was that, Was that the. I mean, because there was, I feel like at the beginning of the Obama administration there was this understanding of like, you know, particularly maybe, I don't know if their understanding of why it was happening was necessarily ultimately, you know, in retrospect, the full story. But there was a sense that post Iraq we no longer had that margin of error anymore and that things were just not heading in there and that like, you know, Obama was trying to do some type of like, soft landing. Although I, you know, I was, I did become away aware of the Asian pivot, but just coincidentally, because I got Held over in LA and went on some like down in Long beach, they had a carrier there where you could go do on a tour. And this guy is literally, this guy is like showing us a map and he's like. And I was like, why are all our ships over there? And he goes, oh, that's part of the Asian pivot. And I was like, the what?

[Van Jackson]

That was it.

[Sam Seder]

It was the first time I ever heard it. Never heard about it any. Nobody else was talking about it except for this dude and, you know, giving a tour on a boat. And so was there not in the Obama administration sort of an awareness of like, okay, we're no longer the hyperpower. This notion of like vox Americana is just not happening. The whole strategy to have a series of low level conflicts around the world and let that just keep everybody busy was not going to, was not going to do it. I mean, I mean surely they must have known or known that that wasn't the case. But I guess the TPP by the end of the Obama administration was. Was that a concern about the rise of China and an attempt to sort of like keep it down or was it like aspirational, like this is going to set it up so that we do have a bipolar world?

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, the Trans Pacific Partnership was. And the Asian pivot, which in Washington they call like rebalance to Asia, that like, those things were expressions during the Obama years of doing primacy in an updated historical context. So what ends up happening is like as the world, you know, China is building up its military, not, it's not like surging military spending. It's indexed to its growth rate. So it's just like keeping up at a steady pace, but it's growing. So its military spending is also growing, right? Also ours was. But so in the capabilities that China was amassing effectively, missiles, you know, that could attack like aircraft carriers and stuff, the technology itself is making it harder and harder for the Pentagon to imagine winning a war in Taiwan because Taiwan is literally right off the coast of mainland China and it's thousands and thousands of miles away from us. So power project, the, the balance of the geography makes it almost impossible for us. So as soon as China has any kind of real capabilities, the game is kind of over for us. And when we recognize that the game is over for us and our cold warriors start to see that, they don't think, well, let's time to pack it in. They think, well, our strategy is primacy. We better catch up, we better, we better keep ahead of them at all costs. And it's not that China has like, a bigger, badder military than us. It's that we the only place we dominate the world militarily. But there's this one spot on the map that happens to just be a really hard challenge for us. And instead of being like, maybe we should figure out how to avoid a war in that spot called Taiwan, we actually ought to arms race and make sure that we can, like, you know, dominate the Chinese military in Beijing or some shit. And so it's like we've set an impossible standard for us in the name of primacy. And as the circumstances in reality became more and more unfavorable, we had to start running harder and faster and being meaner and more predatory. And that culminated in Trump and then Biden, which was Trump plus when it came to China, like, Biden was even more aggressive than Trump on, on China, you know, and then now Trump is inherited, all of that. And it's got, it's people like Marco Rubio running the show and Pete Hegseth. So I'm sure things will be fine.

[Sam Seder]

So where, I mean, where does that leave us now? I mean, like, and let's, let's tie in. Like, the, you know, what we saw. I don't know, how would you characterize what we saw on Friday? I mean, that looked like, like, literally, like it was a play. Like, I feel like, you know, you know, one of those things where you can call up somebody to go prank your boss, like, had that kind of sort of, of feel. I mean, it was definitely a show for the rest of us. But the. What. What is Trump trying to do? Like, there's some people are saying, like we are. He is trying to, I don't know. I don't want to give him too much credit for having a cohesive ideology here. Yeah. Because. Well, because I think like, two things can be true at the same time. He is positioning us in such a way that just happens to be lucrative for him and for like, frankly, musk, for that matter. And it. And he may have other. But essentially accepting a bipolar or a tripolar or a quad polar sort of like world where, you know, it's founded on just sort of, you know, we're just going to do business like we're car. Instead of having a, you know, a mob war, we're just going to carve up the city and we are each going to get one quarter. And as long as we all stay in our turf, we get to do this stuff. I mean, is that. Give me your sense of what's happening with that.

[Van Jackson]

I mean, that's what's happening. But that's in another era, we would have just called that imperialism. Right. You know, straight up. And so like Trump is. And, and again, all of this is like, you don't want to make him seem more coherent than he is, but you also do want to draw attention to the outlines of kind of what's happening, you know, like, structurally so, like, Trump is still doing China rivalry, but a great power competition. It's not like a grand strategy, though. You know, like, he's doing a lot of incoherent things. And so big picture, the shape of his foreign policy is totally imperialist and ethno nationalist, which is to say a more predatory version of the kind of domination that even Biden pursued. And so you look at like, where is Trump doing the imperialism? It's Greenland, it's Panama Canal, it's the fentanyl wars with Mexico. All of that is justified on the basis of confrontation with China. The land grabs, the need to secure critical minerals. It's all China, even the Ukraine minerals deal that fell apart last week in that just agonizing embarrassment in the White House. Like, that could not be further away from China, really. But the reason why the critical minerals, which is why Zelensky got invited there, was a priority in the first place for foreign policy, is because this belief that critical minerals is the hotness that you got to secure in the case of war with China. And then Pete Heg says, war on DEI at the Pentagon, you know, why does that matter to them? Because they say DEI is messing up their lethality. Well, lethality for whom? For a war against China. You know, the 900 billion dollar military budget, plus the $1.7 trillion in nuclear modernization over the next 25 years, none of that has any justification except for war with China. Like cartel wars with Mexico don't require stealthy F22s. They don't require nuclear submarines. That's stuff for China, you know, and then the, the thing that, like, people are really missing, this is a big story. The Silicon Valley defense cartel, The Palantir Anduril, SpaceX, OpenAI, these are like the biggest beneficiaries of the Trump presidency. They all have close ties to Elon Musk. And you look at their annual reports, you look at their quarterly conference calls, they are the hype men for World War three with China. They are selling the China threat to the public as their business model and then telling the US Government, pay me because we're your answer to fighting China. So this whole Thing is rigged and this is why. It's like Trump says lots of incoherent stuff, you know, like I'm friends with Xi Jinping, I get along great with China and all this stuff. Love to see it. That's nice, good peaceful rhetoric. But structurally, all of the material interests that are associated with his presidency, they don't make money except by ringing the China threat alarm. And so.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, yeah, I mean they're going to incorporate that into their Pentagon spending or at least that's going to be, I think, a part of the defense future. Right. Is using American based artificial intelligence. Like, I mean we, we saw it in Gaza. Anthony Lowenstein wrote the book the Palestine Laboratory about how weapons are tested on the Palestinian people. I could totally see the, the AI or like Elon's AI being incorporated into weapons technology with his satellites and things like that.

[Van Jackson]

That's the plan, man. Like they're literally the VCs, the tech VCs. They've put $500 billion. There's no growth sectors in, in the global economy anymore. We're screwed. Right. So they're looking for a unicorn. There isn't one. So what do they do? They put $500 billion into AI. Oops. AI is not profitable. And depending like in chat, GPT is like you know, sixth grade, copying my essay homework or whatever. Like it's not great most of the time. But even if you think AI is whiz bang technology, they just can't figure out how to make it profitable. Certainly not $500 billion profitable. But do you know how you make profit in a low growth world? You sell to the national security state. You know, the Pentagon isn't going to check your homework about whether they're getting a good deal from their future of war. That's not falsifiable. You know, you say you stick some AI in the algorithm that you sell them and do cost overruns on and they'll pay for it and they'll package it and they'll be like, ah, well it's got AI, so it's super sexy. Plus Israel's using this to kill Palestinians. But it's like you're really talking about just like automation at a certain point, you know, like, and it's like the, it's going to be profitable for the VCs only by way of selling it to the national security state. Which means again, you have to have like a big bad to hang all this on. And that's mostly China.

[Sam Seder]

So I mean it sounds like if I was to make a difference between the Biden administration and the Trump administration, sort of broadly speaking, they both want to villainize China. All the typical people are going to benefit from that. I mean, we have a $900 billion defense industry, I mean, at least. Right. I mean, that's just the, that's just what we advertise.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, there's some funny accounting there.

[Sam Seder]

Yes. And, but the, the, the, some segment of the Biden, I guess, administration sold it as like, this is going to help with our manufacturing base and this is going to help blue collar people. And it's all sorts of other benefits could come from it that we don't know. Maybe we'll get, get, you know, more civil rights for people or I don't know what. And then, but the, the Trump people have the sort of the same dynamic, except for this is going to make all of our crypto buddies and tech bros really, really wealthy. So where, I mean, my sense is that Musk and some of these people don't have, I mean, I get the sense that Musk is going to sell to both sides. Like, this is sort of like, I get, you know, this is Musk's investment in China. Like, they don't want to, they don't want to destroy China. They just want it to exist as a threatening sort of like, almost like catalyst to keep producing this national security need. Right. So you have to sort of like you have to calibrate this on some level. Like, you wouldn't want to defeat them in any meaningful way because then, officer, what are you left with? You'd have to make space invaders on some level, right? Like, oh, this is the problem. This is what I've been saying. We got to go to Mars to fight the, you know, the people from Venus or whatever it is. Like, so, so this has to like be maintained as a cold war rather than a hot war on some level.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, man. That's the beauty of the Cold War to these guys. You get to have the perpetual crisis and the paranoia machine that diverts attention from the actual needs of society. You know, the excuse, the excuse. And I mean in real time, Republicans right now, amid the trillion dollar budget, $4.5 trillion of tax cuts, cutting SNAP benefits, cutting Medicaid, all of that going together, you know, like the boogeyman, the foreign policy boogeyman has always been part of that reactionary project. You know, like, and this is one of the, we have a whole chapter of this in the book. It's like geopolitical rivalry helps consolidate reactionary Political projects at home and abroad.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, this is always the case. I mean, and it's not just with America or with China. I mean, it helps with Iran to maintain their. I went down to Cuba and There's a statue 500ft from the US Annex of Jose Marti, you know, pointing, you know, saying to America, stay away from our children. And he's holding Elian Gonzalez. These guys, incidentally, did not. Were not. They did not live at the same era. So the idea is, you know, this is the way that people foment. I mean, this is. It's probably helping Zelensky to have gone and had this sort of, like, problem with. With Trump. I mean, in terms of, like, domestically. I mean, this is the way what George Bush did in many respects, too. So.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

All right, so. So is there, to the extent that, like, I mean, is there a threat from China? Like, Like, Like. I mean, I don't even know how to define what that would mean. Like, in. In, like, I imagine a world where there is a threat from a foreign entity. It's hard to imagine one where it's not exaggerated. But, like, what is there a threat? And then also, like, just touch on what you think that dynamic is going on with Trump and Zelensky and Russia.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah. So that China is not a threat to US Existence unless we're going to fight a nuclear war with them. They.

[Sam Seder]

They.

[Van Jackson]

What they threaten is America's dominance. They threaten American primacy, literally. China's rise comes at the expense of America's status as the dominant power.

[Sam Seder]

But.

[Van Jackson]

But, yeah, like.

[Sam Seder]

Well, that was. I was gonna say, like, okay, so I can't.

[Van Jackson]

Normal people don't get anything.

[Sam Seder]

I was gonna say, like, we're not gonna be able to go to, like, I don't know, the. The Olympics hockey game and go, you know, we're number one. Right, okay. Or whatever it is. Like, But. But outside of that, like, how would that impact act us on a daily basis? Because it seems to me that if we maintain decent relationships with the world, there's no threat to the US Primacy of the dollar, let's say, because there's no reason to change it.

[Van Jackson]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

Like, you know, inertia in and of itself would just keep us. And I would imagine we would feel it if the US Dollar was not the sort of like, a primary currency in the world. That would impact us in some. In many ways if somehow we were not the biggest consumer of goods in the world, even if we were second biggest, I think we would still be. Okay.

[Van Jackson]

Who cares where we fall on the list of things. What we care about is our lived conditions.

[Sam Seder]

Right. I'm just trying to come up with a scenario where we would feel a broad based change in our conditions. And it's, it's really hard to imagine one outside of like being radiated by a nuclear bomb.

[Van Jackson]

That's right. That's right. But these guys who make the foreign policy, they're very animated by these like old Munich appeasement analogies. And like, they're trying to play like chess three moves ahead where it's like, oh, if in a hypothetical future China consolidates control of Taiwan, then China will have a greater ability to conquer all of East Asia. And if China conquers all of East Asia, then China will have the ability to project power across the Pacific Ocean and attack California. And it's like, dude, like, what are you talking. You just. That's total galaxy brain stuff, you know, like that's not the real world at all. And you're going to risk World War three now in the real world to prevent that thing from happening. Also pay attention to China. Why do you like on, on what grounds? China, on its own terms, why would they do that? Why would they want that or need that?

[Sam Seder]

But is that really, do they really believe this stuff or is it more like, look, I'm best friends with, you know, my father in law runs so and so corporation and they're going to lose their market share if China, I mean, is like, do they really believe? Because what they're talking about is the domino theory, right? I mean it's just in a different name and it sort of feels like that was disproved.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, it's not serious analytically, but. And for normal people, I think, but that's, there's a little bit of like, there's true believers, you know, there's a big new Brzezinski guys, they think of the world as a chessboard, literally. Unfortunately, that's the lion's share of people who actually are foreign policy practitioners, you know, and then there are some foreign policy practitioners who get paid from the defense industry or get paid from UAE and Qatar, you know, who get paid by American allies. And so there's a lot of corruption in the system and you should totally follow the money with this stuff. And ultimately all of this is happening. Like if we abandoned primacy, if we didn't relate to the world in a predatory way, we would be a lot better off. We wouldn't have these problems and China wouldn't appear as nearly as threatening. You know, the Zelensky Stuff is pure. I mean, who knows why Trump is infatuated with Putin. Like, I'm not going to psychoanalyze him, but like that's what I see is total imperialism. So the template of like great power competition is inter imperial rivalry, land grabs of choke points like the Panama Canal, resource extraction from Greenland. That's imperial foreign policy. The, the, as you take that template and apply it to Ukraine, you would predict that the US doing an imperial foreign policy is going to seek maximum rent seeking and resource extraction from Ukraine. Screw them and their people. That's how it works because it's big power, small power. And that's what the minerals deal was, minerals for military assistance, you know, and so it's the, the, the drama of the blow up. The one thing Trump said that was true in that room, as awful as it was, is he told Zelensky straight up, he's like, you don't have the cards, man. And that's true. He's, he's losing. Russia can out fight him last longer. Russia can out escalate if needed, bigger badder weapons. And the politics of this, everybody knows Trump is on Russia's side, which is why Ukraine doesn't have the cards, you know, and so we're just seeing that version of imperialist foreign policy play out. The one thing I would note is that like the national security bros that I like from my old world that I kind of pay attention to still, they have two bumper stickers. They consider themselves like never Trump type people for the most part. And yet they're totally willing to serve him and his agenda. And so like, again, I'm not going to psychoanalyze that, but the two bumper stickers of what they think they're trying to do within Trump world right now is minerals for military assistance, which is a paradigm that they basically support. And that's what's playing out in Ukraine, just in a vulgar way. And then the other one is Monroe Doctrine to the shores of China. Monroe Doctrine, of course, is an imperialist doctrine. It's an exclusionary doctrine of other great powers. If we, and like, if you remember Latin American history, you know, under the Monroe Doctrine, we did dozens of wars, dozens of coups, you know what I mean? In the name of the Monroe Doctrine, if we extend that doctrine truly to the shores of China, it's World War three time. There's just no avoiding it like that. Can't those, those bumper stickers are horrific if true, because it's pure, it's pure imperialism all the way down, all the way Till World War Three, baby. That's scary.

[Sam Seder]

We should say also the stuff we did in Latin America we now are, is driving essentially, I mean, you could argue, put Trump in power. Right. I mean, because the, the, the catalyst for this anti immigrant sentiment is driven by what we did in destabilizing this hemisphere in many respects and making it impossible in many of these countries for civil society to grow and develop and stabilize and develop a mechanism in which to protect and, you know, benefit materially its own people. And so people are coming up here to look for, for work.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right, right. And. Yeah, go ahead. Van.

[Van Jackson]

Oh, no, I was just gonna say, like, this is what puts us on the left analytically. We look at insecurity in the world and we attend to and we perceive the root causes, which are always social and political, even of military insecurity, you know, and the right does not think that way. They ignore the social and political inequities that lead to the problems in the world, and they focus only on the proximate thing. You know, does the guy have a gun or not? Are they coming across the border or not? Not the why not? The layers that get us down to what caused this situation, you know, that's what makes us the left man.

[Emma Vigeland]

But, but, but my question then, I guess is like, we focus a lot on our motivations in the west and particularly the United States. What is China's vision here? Like, they obviously are trying to extend their soft power in a variety of different instances, whether it's like, you know, building stuff in the continent of Africa or it's getting involved in negotiations between Iran and Saudi Arabia over the starvation of the people of Yemen and that proxy war there, which they were kind of successful. And the question is, what do they see as their end goal here? I'm not naive enough to think that they're acting benevolently, but obviously I would say their strategy is more intelligent than ours.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, I mean, they want greater status. This is a great power thing. Big powers like, more status. They're largely happy with the global order as it has existed, although we are actively deconstructing that. And that's a problem for us and them and everybody. But China is like, they, the, they have to basically push out a lot of surplus capital that has accumulated as a result of them being the world's factory. And they're the world's factory a. Because we wanted them to be. But, you know, like, we, we pushed shit over to them to make it and finish process finished goods and then ship it back to us. We asked them to do that and so they did it and they benefited from it. Right. And if, and if we didn't benefit from it, we wouldn't have asked them to do it. But anyway, they, that the system on which they became the world's factory relied on basically extreme labor repression and environmental degradation, a lack of environmental regulations. This was basically how they became the sort of low cost manufacturer, which is why we wanted to have them do manufacturing. Right. That was their competitive advantage. So labor repression is built, built into the export driven model of economic growth that they have. But because they do labor repression, Chinese workers are very insecure and they don't consume enough domestically. So all the profits that get hoarded by effectively oligarchs and state, state run corporations, the profits that get captured from this system have to go somewhere. And so the most productive place to plow it is in investments abroad. And so this is how we get the slogans like Belt and Road initiative and stuff like that. You know, like they're trying to usefully use surplus capital generated by a system of labor repression that is directly embedded in our capitalist system, you know.

[Sam Seder]

And is there investment through or I mean for what they call the Belt and road initiative, etc. Etc. But I mean through in other means in Africa is, is, are they doing that for, is it, is it imperialism in the way that they're doing it or just in terms of like the. It's just a, another mechanism in which to extract resources and I guess to accelerate their own accumulation. Like the, of the wealthy elite from China are practicing imperialism, just a slightly different flavor of it.

[Van Jackson]

Yeah, it's less severe. And imperialism I think would be an overstatement. What ends up happening where anywhere where they put money. There's a bunch of studies on this. They adapt their investments to the local conditions. So if they're investing in a place that's a thriving democracy, they conform to local regulations, you know, they play their part, they stay apolitical, et cetera, et cetera. But most of the world is not thriving democracies. So when they put money into a place that's impoverished or kleptocratic or corrupt, their investment tends to inflame those local conditions that are already bad. Right. So all of these places, especially in the Global south, they need foreign investment. They need it bad. And they would prefer China to the IMF because the IMF is still doing the structural adjustment evils. Even today in 2025, they're still doing that. And so it's really hard for global south countries to accept IMF loans. China doesn't put those kinds of conditionalities on their loans, but they do expect you to have a kind of comprehensive relationship with them, which means you're not going to be part of, like, American war plans if you're taking money from China. You know, you're not going to be offering like, access to the U.S. air Force, to your bases or whatever if you're also having Chinese investment building those bases or building the cell phone towers that you need for your country. And so the developing world is in this trap where China is the lender of choice and China itself needs to lend in order to deal, manage, sustain the system that it has as the world's factory, where it's capturing surpluses unless it invests in its own labor, which it hasn't really done. You know, and we look at that and we find that threatening. And so we have been putting, in the name of, like, primacy and great power competition, we put a choice on countries like Fiji or whatever, you know, countries in Pacific and Africa and East Asia. We say, look, you know, don't let Huawei build your cell phone towers. Yes, they're super cheap and yes, you need super cheap digital infrastructure, but. And no, we're not offering an alternative, but don't take it because if you do, then we're not going to give you USAID money or what, you know, which now of course we're not going to do that either. But that's, that's the kind of trap that the developing world is in with great power rivalry. It makes them have to choose between China as lender or America as the contingent providers of, like, assistance, you know, and, you know, and so, so governments are trapped in this choice and it's a choice of our making in a way. And that's not to give China a pass on any of this stuff. Like the exploitation that sustains this system is bad. The solution is to put more money in the pockets of Chinese workers. The trouble and the reason why the CCP won't do that is because it's not clear that they would still be the world's factory if costs went up that much, if wages went up that much.

[Sam Seder]

They have to suppress labor on some level to make it worthwhile for companies over here to send their factories to China and around the world. Nice, nice world you got there. Really appreciate it, Van. Thanks, Van Jackson. The book is the the Rivalry Peril, How Great Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy, co authored with Michael Brennis. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. And we will put a link to that book as well as the undiplomatic newsletter that you put out on substack.

[Van Jackson]

All right, love you guys. Keep doing it.

[Sam Seder]

Thanks. Thanks for joining us.

[Emma Vigeland]

Thanks, man.

[Van Jackson]

All right.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, we gotta head to the fun half. Yep. Well, I guess the somewhat good news of the day is that the rest of the world also effed up. Maybe not as bad as us at the moment, but these things ebb and flow.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. We will head into the fun half. We will take your phone calls at 646-257-3920. We will read your IMs. Just a reminder. It is your support that makes this show possible. You can help us in our endeavors here at the show by becoming a [e-mail] when you do, you get the free show, free of commercial, you get the fun half. You can IM us and you keep us independent. Somebody on the IM was saying that we had a bunch of draftkings is it ads on YouTube. We should tell you that we're not aware of what ads run on YouTube and we don't in. If we don't say we endorse this product like when we read ads, it's because we use it like, here's my liquid IV and you know, I got my cozy earth sweatshirt over there and the granola's there. But don't think about it, 65 bags of granola last week. So, you know, these gambling sites are a problem, with all due respect to them.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

You can see the data now, what it's doing particularly to young men in terms of like their credit card bills and bankruptcies.

[Matt Lech]

And I read a piece we on left reckoning our bumpster of the year was the liberalization of gambling laws. And there was a quote from one of the guys who's like, yeah, we used to get a bunch of like 45 year olds and stuff, which obviously isn't great either. But they're saying because of the online stuff, stuff you're seeing more and more like 20 year olds needing gambling help. And it's just like the, all these ad reads, they have like big long disclaimers at the end for like every different helpline in your state. And it's like, that's clearly not enough.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, it's caused me to change my mind really on the topic at all fully. And it's, it's also we are now at the record level of credit card debt in this country. Country. And that's not in small part due to like both crypto and I think gambling, sports gambling, which makes it easier for people to like take wild swings to alleviate their financial precarity, which is just very, very dangerous. And the, the Georgia Fed, or is it the Atlanta Fed? It just came out earlier today that they're forecasting like a massive economic contraction in the next few months. So we could be heading towards some real financial issues.

[Sam Seder]

JD's pants also say you always get ads from Prageru and what is a woman in Ben Shapiro on YouTube. It's awful. Also, we don't endorse them. Yeah, I think that that's hopefully clear. That's also clear. Just want to make sure that's clear. What we do endorse is you becoming a member and supporting the program. Join themjorityreport.com Also Just Coffee Co op. I also endorse them personally. I only do I drink their coffee. They even have a majority report blend which you can show your friends. That's honestly the best gift you can give people because then you're also like, what's this Majority Report? Wait, this is great coffee. What's this Majority Report? Oh, it's the show you should listen to. Mom, dad, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, friend, frenemy, you know, bring it to your high school reunion. Just coffee co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. ESPN on break.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, Matt left reckoning.

[Matt Lech]

Yeah, left reckoning. Over the weekend, Griscom and [e-mail] left reckoning. Talk to the Zelensky meeting. Some of the supposed, the farce of transparency regarding the Epstein documents and this weird pattern that America first people like Dan Bongino and I can't remember the other guy, but oh, Cash Patel, they have about saying how much they love Israel. Like Dampangino was asked for something in a rapid fire question like what? What is something that's near and dear to your heart? And he said protecting Israel, which is just. Okay, same patreon.com left reckoning to get access to that. Oh, and I'm also posting more on Instagram. So I'm just Matt T L E C H on Instagram.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, wow. What are you posting?

[Matt Lech]

Just cat video thirst traps.

[Sam Seder]

Check it out folks. Fishnet. Matt wearing those fishnet shirts.

[Emma Vigeland]

I was like, is this, Is this something? Is that, Was that like a website.

[Sam Seder]

That was back in the 90s, everybody wearing fishnet shirts?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

All right, see you in the fun half, three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't Think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out we're going to look back and go like wow.

[Van Jackson]

What?

[Sam Seder]

What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on.

[Van Jackson]

Hold on for a second.

[Sam Seder]

Emma. Welcome to the program. Fun Half. Matt. What is up everyone? Fun hack.

[Emma Vigeland]

No.

[Sam Seder]

Mickey.

[Van Jackson]

You did it.

[Sam Seder]

Fun Half.

[Emma Vigeland]

Let's go, Brandon.

[Sam Seder]

Let's go, Brandon. Fun Crap. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy.

[Van Jackson]

It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false.

[Emma Vigeland]

No. I'm sorry. Women.

[Sam Seder]

Stop talking for a second and let me finish.

[Emma Vigeland]

Where is this coming from? Dude.

[Sam Seder]

But dude. You want to smoke this? 7A. Yes. Hi. Me. Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. It's me. Oh, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you. No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Van Jackson]

Sports. We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm gonna go snow white.

[Sam Seder]

Libertarians. They're so stupid. Though come common sense says of course.

[Emma Vigeland]

Gobbledygook.

[Sam Seder]

We nailed him.

[Emma Vigeland]

So what's 79 plus 21?

[Sam Seder]

Challenge. Matt. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96. I want to say 8572-103550-11389-11.

[Matt Lech]

For instance.

[Emma Vigeland]

$3,400. $1900. 5, 4.

[Sam Seder]

$3 trillion.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sold.

[Sam Seder]

It's a zero sum game.

[Emma Vigeland]

Actually you're making me think less of what.

[Sam Seder]

But let me say this.

[Van Jackson]

You can call it satire. Sam goes with satire.

[Sam Seder]

On top of it all. My favorite part about you is just like every day, all day. Like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey buddy. We see you. All right. Folks. Folks. Folks.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. Such out. Guns out. I, I, I don't know. But you should know people just don't.

[Matt Lech]

Like to entertain ideas anymore.

[Sam Seder]

I have a question. Who cares?

[Matt Lech]

Our chat is enabled.

[Sam Seder]

I love it.

[Emma Vigeland]

I do love that.

[Sam Seder]

Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing a prow. 2:00. We're already late and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.

[Emma Vigeland]

Outrageous.

[Sam Seder]

Like what is wrong with you?

[Van Jackson]

Love you. Bye.

[Sam Seder]

Love you. Bye.