The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

This interview with the Review of Democracy podcast is the deepest dive to date on Van Jackson’s book, Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic NewsletterReview of Democracy Podcast

What does Guam’s political status say about US strategic thought? What strategic choices does Guam have if it were allowed self-determination? What does America’s imperial relations with Guam have in common with the rest of the Non-Sovereign Pacific? And why does the existence of a Non-Sovereign Pacific region make both the Pacific and the great powers less secure? I assure you, you’ve never heard a foreign policy conversation like this. A hilarious, personal, and highly edifying conversation at the intersection of social justice and defense strategy, with Dr. Ken Kuper from the University of Guam.Subscribe to the Pacific Center for Island Security’s daily newsletter.Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic newsletter.Further reading on Guam.

This episode is unusual, more like part of a mini-lecture series. I was asked to give a talk recently on inequality, development, and IR theory for an audience that skews quite young. I’ve chopped it up to just bring out the highlights, but we hit many topics that might be of interest:—Why IR paradigms are not especially useful for making sense of inequality.—Why it sucks to be poor, no matter what flag you live under.—Capitalism v. Marxism, and by proxy, modernization theory v. dependency theory.—Why the East Asian development model is at its end.—Why it can be useful to think of political economy as a capitalist world system.—Why redistribution is the only alternative to revolution if you want to reduce inequality.Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter

What’s wrong with liberal internationalism? What alternatives do socialists and progressives offer? Is voting more (or less) than a defensive tactic? Is the Democratic Party beyond redemption? Is China a force for good or evil in the world?  Van went on the 1 of 200 podcast to have a really real debate about everything on the left’s mind at the moment. They talk about his new book--Grand Strategies of the Left--but couch it in a larger conversation on left perspectives about foreign policy. 1 of 200 Pod: https://www.patreon.com/1of200Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.comBuy Grand Strategies of the Left

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 banger.Morris Cohen, Property and SovereigntyRobert Nichols, Theft is PropertyAlina’s PodcastSubscribe to Alina’s NewsletterSubscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com

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 award-winning book, The Counter-Insurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History.Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com

Matthew Petit, writer and expert on the life of Daniel Ellsberg and the think tank environment in Washington, discusses the impact of Ellsberg's whistleblowing act and reveals shocking classified nuclear planning documents. The podcast also explores the evolution of think tanks, challenges of representation, contradictory actions, and the complexity of US policy in the Middle East.

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 theorist of race relations, not just international relations;Why the field of IR has a racial blind spot in the first place;Why IR’s leading journals, editors, and scholars re-engaged racial questions after 2020 but without drawing on what the discipline’s own canonical thinkers had to say about race;Why the Gen Z and Millennial generation of scholars are possibly built differently when it comes to racial issues and historical IR;How the concept of “frontier” unites Republicanism and imperialism in some of the early thinkers of IR like Frederick Jackson Turner, William Allen, and Merze Tate.I was sick as a dog when we recorded this, but it was one of the most generative conversations I’ve ever had on the pod and Robbie is one soulful human being. Hope you enjoy this one!Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.comRobbie Shilliam, “Republicanism and Imperialism at the Frontier: A Post-Black Lives Matter Archeology of International Relations,” https://robbieshilliam.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/frontier-2.0.pdf.Epeli Hau’ofa, WE ARE THE OCEAN: SELECTED WORKS (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008).

Adom Getachew, a scholar of W.E.B. Du Bois's life and thought, discusses topics such as the global color line and its limits in understanding international relations, Du Bois's views on violence versus pacifism, strategies for making change as a public intellectual, his evolving perspectives on World War I, blind spots on gender equality and imperial Japan, his perspectives on capitalism and Marxism, and why the Cold War prevented many from learning about Du Bois in school.

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 foreign policy plays a role in answering them, remarkably. I sat down with writer/director/producer/editor Kevin Fox to discuss. This was fun!Kevin’s epic tweet thread: https://twitter.com/Michigrimk/status/1695209106921947232Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com