Sam Bresnick, Research Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, discusses artificial intelligence in the context of the US-China relationship. He explains how AI will be used by states in coming years and compares different obstacles and advantages that both the US and China have in their competition to develop AI and its various applications. Among other topics, he also discusses diplomatic pathways for the US and China to avoid dangerous AI scenarios. 

Show Notes

Sam Bresnick, “The Obstacles to China’s AI Power,” Foreign Affairs, December 31, 2024

Sam Bresnick, et al., “Which Ties Will Bind?” CSET Issue Brief, February 2024

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Julia Gledhill, Research Associate for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, discusses the “permanent war economy” and ongoing efforts to increase military spending. She also talks about perverse incentives for defense contractors, the myth that military spending is properly construed as a jobs program, and the lack of strategic thinking in policy debates on how to confront China, among other issues. 

Show Notes

• Julia Gledhill, “The Truth about the Permanent War Economy,” Stimson Center Issue Brief, December 2, 2024.

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Anatol Lieven, Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, discusses how the international politics of the Ukraine war have changed since Trump’s election win, how to move towards negotiations to end the war, and the various issues - from territory to NATO membership - to be resolved in any peace deal. 

Show Notes

Anatol Lieven, “Three Conditions for a US-Backed Peace Agreement in Ukraine,” UnHerd, November 30, 2024.

Anatol Lieven, George Beebe, “The Diplomatic Path to a Secure Ukraine,” Quincy Paper #13, February 16, 2024.

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Joshua Landis, professor of Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, discusses the recent rebel advances in Syria, the causes and conditions that paved the way for the fall of the Assad regime, the many mistakes of US policy since the start of the civil war, and the regional politics wrapped up in Syria’s future. 

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Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University, discusses the foreign policy implications of Trump’s victory, the extent to which it represents a rejection of “Liberal Hegemony,” and why Trump failed in his first term to set U.S. foreign policy on a new course. He also discusses the bureaucratic challenges of reforming foreign policy, what to expect from Trump in the second term, and the potentially beneficial constraints of “American decline,” among other topics. 

Show Notes

• Stephen M. Walt, “The 10 Foreign Policy Implications of the 2024 Election,” Foreign Policy, November 8, 2024.

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Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Brandan P. Buck, research fellow at the Cato Institute, discuss the impact of foreign policy in Trump’s electoral victory, whether Democrats will rethink their foreign policy agenda following their losses, what changes Trump might make with respect to the wars in Europe and the Middle East and towards China, among other topics. 

Show Notes

Christopher S. Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim, “America’s Foreign Policy Inertia,” Foreign Affairs, October 14, 2024

Brandan P. Buck, “Harris Embrace of Cheney Goes Back to World War I,” Responsible Statecraft, October 22, 2024

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Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute, discusses America’s new regime of high protective tariffs under the Trump and Biden administrations and assesses what may be to come on trade policy under a future Trump or Harris administration. He discusses the overly expansive authorities presidents have to impose tariffs, the weakness of commonly employed national security justifications for them, and the economics of why tariffs fail, among other topics.

Show Notes

• Clark Packard and Scott Lincicome, "Presidential Tariff Powers and the Need for Reform," Cato Institute Briefing Paper No. 179, October 9, 2024
• Scott Lincicome, "Six-Plus Years of Incoherent, Ineffective China Policy," The Dispatch, October 2, 2024

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Alex Yu-Ting Lin, Assistant Director and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s International Security Center, explains how China’s concerns about status interact with smaller regional states and how that in turn helps shape the US-China rivalry. He examines how states use information warfare to delegitimize adversaries’ foreign policies and applies his analysis to US-China relations. He also discusses Euro-centric bias in international relations studies, China’s approach to flashpoints like the South China Sea and Taiwan, and whether China should be considered “revisionist,” among other topics. 

Show Notes

• Alex Yu-Ting Lin, "Contestation from Below: Status and Revisionism in Hierarchy," International Studies Quarterly, Volume 68, Issue 3 (2024).
• Alex “Yu-Ting Lin, “US Bias in the Study of Asian Security: Using Europe to Ignore Asia," Journal of Global Security Studies, Volume 4, Issue 3 (2019): 393-401. (with David C. Kang)

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Dov Levin, Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Hong Kong, examines the effects of whataboutism - essentially, charges of U.S. hypocrisy - on Americans’ foreign policy views. He explains his survey experiments to test the effectiveness of whatbaoutism on US public opinion and how it might shape policy. He also discusses his work on U.S. foreign election interference, the academic literature on hypocrisy costs, U.S. foreign policy activism, and avenues for future research on whataboutism.

Show Notes

• Wilfred Chow and Dov Levin, “The Diplomacy of Whataboutism and US Foreign Policy Attitudes,” International Organization Volume 78, Issue 1, Winter 2024, pp. 103-133.

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Peter Harris critiques America’s grand strategy of primacy and advocates for a move to restraint that necessarily includes wholesale reforms to domestic as well as foreign policy. He explains why primacy has persisted despite the wisdom of retrenchment and how decades of an expansive foreign policy has shaped American politics, culture, and institutions. He also discusses the problems of vested interests, partisanship, and how to make restraint more salable to the public.

Show Notes

Peter Harris, Why America Can’t Retrench (and How it Might), Polity Press, 2024.

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Daniel DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities discuss the latest iteration of the Axis of Evil threat, this time in reference to China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and argue their relationship is misconstrued and overhyped. They discuss threat inflation, the relationship dynamics among these four powers, including China and Russia’s relationship and how US posture has pushed them together, the state of the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s role in the Middle East, the problem of prioritizing threats and interests under primacy, and how to constructively think about core US national interests, among other issues.

Show Notes

• Daniel DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh, “The ‘Axis of Evil’ is Overhyped,” Foreign Policy, August 14, 2024.

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