Killing Empire, Abandoning Asia, or Rescuing the Asian Peace? A Radical Rethink of the US in Asia’s Balance of Power | Ep. 319

A new report from Defense Priorities has a radical proposal: End US alliances with South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines; drastically cut US military presence in East Asia; declare a non-intervention policy on Taiwan; and shift US military strategy from defending a "first-island chain" defense perimeter to the "second-island chain." Dr. Van Jackson explains the meaning and implications of this proposal and evaluates it from the perspective of anti-militarist anti-imperialism.

Based on previous research, he also proposes the standard for "progressive foreign policy," whether progressives and socialists should support this new proposal, and no proposal for changing military strategy has a chance of stabilizing Asia if it does not prioritize the concept of the "Asian Peace."

Also this episode: why the 1995 Michael Moore comedy Canadian Bacon explains the US fixation with colonizing Canada in 2026.

In the back half of the episode: a mini-lecture on imperialist accounts of World War One, comparing how W.E.B. Du Bois and V.I. Lenin both theorized empire as the cause of World War One but in starkly different ways. 

W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk” (1920), https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Du_Bois_White_Folk.pdf. 

V.I. Lenin, “Chapter 1: The Principle of Socialism and the War of 1914-15,” in Socialism and War (1915), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s-w/ch01.htm. 

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