Danny and Derek welcome back Christopher McKnight Nichols, Wayne Woodrow Hayes Chair in National Security Studies and professor of history at Ohio State University, to the program for a chat about rethinking American grand strategy. They talk about what exactly “grand strategy” is, grand strategy vs. first principle, the role of WWII and the end of the Cold War in US grand strategy, PEPFAR and the Bush administration, climate change vs other low-success grand strategies, technology and grand strategy, and more.
Jul 18, 2023·edited Oct 6, 2023Liked by Daniel Bessner
Are you guys gunna do another mailbags all the fucking majority report nafo hawks are whiling out on you guys now for idk wanting to pursue diplomacy or thinking the us should stay out. Which should have clarified not the hosts its a segment of their audience
I had a question about how you conceive of the differing strategic ambitions of the U.S./China in light of your assertion that we live in post ideological age.
This episode you ascribe the U.S.'s aims for global hegemony to a protestant millinarism. If the ideological landscape has been flattened by ascendant post cold war liberalism, shouldn't we expect states to pursue foreign policy based on some similar conception of power/security? Is it meaningful to say we are in a post ideological age if protestant millinarism vs the lack thereof is driving the posture of major powers?
Christopher McKnight Nichols expressed the hope that in future the US could have a grand imperial strategy with goals for our subject countries similar to what FDR would have wanted for them. The difference is that FDR's Good Neighbor policy did not object to friendly countries nationalizing their own natural resources and investing in their own public welfare, whereas the treaties that we force countries to sign forbid just that and totally subject them to commercial exploitation by US banks and corporations. At least 19th c. Britain sent out civil servants who had often studied the history and languages of the countries they administered, and if they had read Thucydides, had read him in Greek and not in Poly-Sci class in translation as a "strategy" "how-to" book. The post- WW2 idea that the US and Britain should attain "World Hegemony" sounds simply like an irredentist fantasy that recalls the Nazi slogan "Tomorrow the world". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
Are you guys gunna do another mailbags all the fucking majority report nafo hawks are whiling out on you guys now for idk wanting to pursue diplomacy or thinking the us should stay out. Which should have clarified not the hosts its a segment of their audience
Hey Danny, thanks as always for a great episode.
I had a question about how you conceive of the differing strategic ambitions of the U.S./China in light of your assertion that we live in post ideological age.
This episode you ascribe the U.S.'s aims for global hegemony to a protestant millinarism. If the ideological landscape has been flattened by ascendant post cold war liberalism, shouldn't we expect states to pursue foreign policy based on some similar conception of power/security? Is it meaningful to say we are in a post ideological age if protestant millinarism vs the lack thereof is driving the posture of major powers?
Henry Kissinger??? Friend of the pod!!!
Everyone wants to do strategy; nobody wants to do ops
I’d like you to do a show on the changing American involvement in interwar German public finance and how that made things difficult for Weimar.
A new LRB article “Habits of Empire” might be of interest. Debt commissions, Frank Nixon—HMT man at the League of Nations, the Dawes Plan, etc.
I think you guys need a separate platform for episodes like this one. It's too vague, academic and uninteresting for me.
Christopher McKnight Nichols expressed the hope that in future the US could have a grand imperial strategy with goals for our subject countries similar to what FDR would have wanted for them. The difference is that FDR's Good Neighbor policy did not object to friendly countries nationalizing their own natural resources and investing in their own public welfare, whereas the treaties that we force countries to sign forbid just that and totally subject them to commercial exploitation by US banks and corporations. At least 19th c. Britain sent out civil servants who had often studied the history and languages of the countries they administered, and if they had read Thucydides, had read him in Greek and not in Poly-Sci class in translation as a "strategy" "how-to" book. The post- WW2 idea that the US and Britain should attain "World Hegemony" sounds simply like an irredentist fantasy that recalls the Nazi slogan "Tomorrow the world". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man