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PODCAST

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

Global power politics, for the people. Hosted by Van Jackson, Julia Gledhill, and Matt Duss. The views expressed are theirs alone (not those of any institution or employer).

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All Episodes

00:54:00

Silicon Valley’s Galactic Colony Fetish, w/ Alina...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/12/19

How do the space-colony visions of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos meaningfully differ? What does a company like Space-X have in common with the old imperial company-states, like the British East India Company? And why are billionaire bros obsessed with “political exit” projects like seasteading and galactic escapism? We tackle all that and more with Alina Utrata, a scholar whose new article in American Political Science Review called, “Engineering Territory: Space and Colonies in Silicon Valley” is a

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00:57:42

The Reactionary Worldmaking of Counter-Insurgency, w/...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/11/25

What separates conservatives from reactionaries, and where do they converge? What are the politics inherent to counterinsurgency strategy? What does the popularity of counter-insurgency in the 21st century say about Democratic Party politics? How does small-war thinking unify counter-revolutionary monarchies with Edwardian imperialism with anti-communism? And where does David Petraeus fit into these questions?All that and more in this wide-ranging conversation with Joseph Mackay, anchored in his

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01:01:28

Death of the Think-Tanker w/ Matthew Petti | Ep. 171

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/11/05

What made Daniel Ellsberg—the famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower—different from today’s public intellectuals? How has the think tank environment in Washington changed over the decades? Why were the Pentagon Papers such a big deal? Why is foreign policy change so difficult? And how does progressive foreign policy fit into the story of Washington’s intellectual stagnation?I sat down with Matthew Petti to discuss a new essay he had on the life of Daniel Ellsberg, the death of the old-style think tank,

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00:59:21

Robbie Shilliam on Frontier Imperialism and Post-BLM...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/10/15

After George Floyd’s police murder and the Black Lives Matter movement explosion in 2020, the field of international relations rushed to engage the topic of race after ignoring it for half a century. When they did, they largely acted as if early generations of international-relations scholars hadn’t engaged with or theorized the topic. But they had. In this episode, Van sits down with Robbie Shilliam, a multidisciplinary IR scholar and postcolonial theorist, to talk about:What made Hans Morgenthau a

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01:03:52

Adom Getachew: W.E.B. Du Bois’s International Thought...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/09/24

In this episode, Van sits down with Adom Getachew to talk about W.E.B. Du Bois’s life and Du Bois-ian thought as a prism for making sense of the world, including: The global color line and its limits for understanding IR; Du Bois’s complicated attitude toward violence versus pacifism; strategies for trying to make change as a public intellectual; how he viewed World War I, and how that view changed with time; his blind spots on gender equality and empire—especially imperial Japan; how Du Bois viewed

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01:00:18

The Writers' Strike, Global Film, and Entertainment...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/09/08

Have you ever wondered about the political economy of movie-making?Like, why are Hollywood movies globally hegemonic, and why is South Korea its only rival, and why are most foreign countries mere backlots for American studios?What does it have to do with the Netflix-Hulu-Amazon-Disney+ streaming model?Why are the WGA and SAG-AFTRA on strike? What kind of solidarities unite American writers and actors with Korean writers and actors?And what is the future of film?Some really big questions, and US

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00:59:39

Live Show! China, US Grand Strategy, and the...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/08/26

I just gave a talk to a section of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs—a great group of a couple dozen Gen Z’ers, at a nice little bar in Wellington. What started out as shooting the shit about foreign policy turned into a live show of the podcast.In this live show, I put three propositions on the table—Un-Diplomatic regulars will be at least somewhat familiar with all these themes: 1) Sino-US rivalry is not a struggle for hegemony or domination; 2) US grand strategy is one of

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01:01:11

Fighting Pentagon Graft, w/ William Hartung and Julia...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/08/15

This episode doesn’t just have a theme, it has a thesis. Have you wondered how precisely the Pentagon manages to siphon so much taxpayer money year after year? How the military-industrial-congressional complex functions in practice? Why US primacy is so expensive yet perpetually in crisis? This episode with William Hartung and Julia Gledhill is something of a tutorial for understanding Pentagon bloat and corruption—which are deeply intertwined. US defense strategy has been hot garbage for, well, as

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00:52:16

Dissident Thinking, Foreign Policy for the Middle...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/08/06

In this cross-over episode with the Security Dilemma podcast, Van speaks with Patrick Fox and John Allen Gay of the John Quincy Adams Society about a range of issues: dissident thinking and intellectual diversity in foreign policy; how to think about China and deterrence; what’s wrong with a "foreign policy for the middle class”; fissures in the progressive movement on foreign policy; and more! Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.comSubscribe to the Security Dilemma

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00:31:46

Part II: Classical Realism Versus International...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/07/31

Part II of my conversation with Jonathan Kirshner about his new book, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics. Kirshner explains how classical realists think about the “national interest"; distinctions between realist and progressive political economy; what he doesn’t like about the “Thucydides’ Trap,”; the poverty of offensive realism; and how classical realism understands everything from British appeasement of Hitler to the Vietnam War.Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic

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00:48:58

Part I: Classical Realism Versus International...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/07/22

Part I of my two-part conversation with Jonathan Kirshner about his new book, An Unwritten Future: Realism, Uncertainty, and World Politics. Kirshner explains why classical realism is a misunderstood intellectual tradition. We get into: Why realism recruits dead people into their intellectual tradition; what we can learn from Thucydides, and why an armchair understanding of the Peloponnesian War does more harm than good; why realist pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy; why international

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00:59:42

Rethinking International Order: 15th Century Maritime...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/07/07

What's the difference between centered and de-centered international orders? How do small states navigate geopolitics without becoming pawns? What does it look like to have a world in which there is no hegemon, and how is it sustained? And why was 15th century maritime Southeast Asia a different international order than the Sino-centric "tributary system" in what is now Northeast Asia? Dr. Manjeet Pardesi joins the show to share new research that sheds light on all these questions and more. A

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00:58:49

American Hegemony v. New Zealand's 'Independent'...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/06/29

What's wrong with liberal hegemony? What does it mean for New Zealand to have an "independent foreign policy?" Why did New Zealand's Prime Minister recently visit China? And why are the interests of New Zealand's leading dairy supplier far from the same thing as the interests of the nation? In this cross-over episode, Van sits down with the good folks at the 1 of 200 Podcast to discuss an unusual intersection of US foreign policy pathologies with those of New Zealand.Subscribe to the newsletter:

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00:40:49

How China Thinks About Asian Security Order, w/ Carla...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/06/23

Van sat down with China watcher Carla Freeman (US Institute of Peace) to explore this thing Xi Jinping announced last year called the “Global Security Initiative,” which turned into a larger discussion about how China thinks about security and international order generally. The catalyst was a piece she wrote with Alex Stephenson. We get into: What China’s “relational” thinking about world politics really means in practice; How Chinese security thinking affects the global South; How US choices

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01:05:21

Where is Thailand Now? w/ Aim Sinpeng and Greg Raymond

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/06/19

Opposition parties carried the day in Thailand's recent multiparty elections on May 14. The Move Forward Party, led by Pita Limjaroenrat, and Phue Thai party of Thaksin Shinawatra's family, won a sizeable majority, with the military's coalition parties losing resoundly. What does the recent election mean for the country's path forward? Will the military's election commission let the opposition form a government, or will it stage another coup like in 2014? Has Thai society finally moved on from the

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00:54:30

Unmaking Asian Exceptionalism, w/ Gaiutra Bahadur |...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/06/09

What does it mean to write with not just logos but pathos? How has racial violence in America shaped the identity of Asian-Americans? Why is the "model minority" myth so problematic? And what possibilities emerge from recognizing that people of different nationalities share a common repression? Van speaks with Gaiutra Bahadur about her experience growing up around anti-Indian racism in New Jersey and how that sheds light on all these questions and more.Gauitra's essay, "Unmaking Asian

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00:37:01

Kissinger's Cambodia Killings, w/ Nick Turse | Ep. 157

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/06/02

The award-winning, New York Times best-selling author, Nick Turse, has done some deep investigations at the intersection of Southeast Asia; the intellectual bankruptcy of US geopoliticking; and Henry Kissinger’s direct role in the slaughter of 150,000 civilians in Cambodia. A wild story and some great journalism. Van Jackson sat down with Nick to talk about it all. They also swap anecdotes about their personal run-ins with Kissinger. A must-listen.Nick’s story in The Intercept:

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00:37:05

Is Fukuyama Liberalism the 'End of History?' w/...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/05/27

What makes neoconservatives different from Cold War liberals? Why did Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" lament the end of the Cold War? What's classical liberalism? And how do liberals like Fukuyama size up our current historical moment? Dr. Daniel Bessner joins the pod for all that and more. Bessner on Fukuyama: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/francis-fukuyama-liberalism-discontents/Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com Subscribe to the American

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00:36:51

Narrating the Pacific in Indo-Pacific, w/ Sandra...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/05/19

How does the narrative of a Blue Pacific complicate strategic narratives about the "Indo-Pacific?" How do the nations of the Pacific Islands region think about security? What role does the Pacific Islands Forum play in regional security? Why do most Pacific states try so hard to avoid "choosing" between the United States and China? And what would Pacific governments do if Guam determined it wanted to be its own independent nation? Van Jackson sits down with Sandra Tarte (University of the South

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01:03:40

Democracy Over Authoritarianism w/ Charles Dunst |...

The Un-Diplomatic Podcast ·

2023/05/15

From a freelance journalist in Southeast Asia to becoming a “foreign policy person,” and how to publish your first book. Can authoritarian countries practice meritocracy? How can we make sense of good governance and public trust in authoritarian governments like Vietnam when support for western democracies seems to be at an all-time low? How China’s rise has challenged democracy’s global appeal, and what does it mean if the United States reverts to MAGA autocracy? Hunter Marston speaks to Charles

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275 results

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