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Articles by Power Problems
Embracing Multipolarity
Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses her book First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, forthcoming from Yale University Press.
Modeling War on the Korean Peninsula
Dartmouth College’s Daryl Press and George Washington University’s Nicholas Anderson discuss their modeling of an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula, assess the balance of power between the North and South, and explore the implications for the US military alliance with South Korea. Show Notes Nicolas Anderson, Daryl Press, “Lost Seoul: Assessing Pyongyang’s Other Deterrent,” Texas National Security Review Vol 8 Issue 3, Summer 2025.
A Regime Change War in Iran?
Rosemary Kelanic, Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, discusses the Israel-Iran war, U.S. involvement, and the risks of escalation. Show Notes Rosemary Kelanic, “A U.S. War With Iran Would Be a Catastrophe ‚” New York Times, June 14, 2025.
Do Madman Tactics Work?
Samuel Seitz, a fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program, explores so-called “madman behavior” in international politics and whether it’s effective in gaining leverage in international confrontations. He explains why problems of signaling, credibility, and reassurance tend to make madman tactics ineffective and he discusses examples from the Cold War to Trump’s first and second administrations.
Gen Z, Internationalism, & Change in Foreign Policy
Christopher Chivvis and Lauren Morganbesser of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discuss the foreign policy attitudes of Gen Z, the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, and the increasing salience of transnational issues, among other topics.
Can Trump Make a Deal with Iran?
Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, talks about the Trump administration’s diplomacy with Iran. He discusses the failures of the first Trump administration’s and the Biden administration’s approaches to Iran, why Trump’s second time around could lead to a new nuclear deal, Iran’s changing regional geopolitical position, and why a more peaceful US-Iran relationship serves US interests in the Middle East.
UFOs, Aliens, & National Security
Alexander Wendt, political scientist at Ohio State University, discusses his forthcoming book The Last Humans: UFOs & National Security, on the political and national security consequences of discovering that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) are piloted by intelligent extra-terrestrial life.
Why America Needs to Change Its Nuclear Weapons Posture
The Stimson Center’s Christopher Preble and Geoff Wilson argue that nuclear weapons modernization programs are wasteful boondoggles that undermine deterrence and stability while serving as a give-away to parochial interests. They discuss a “deterrence first” posture on nuclear weapons, perverse incentives in the bureaucracy, profligate waste and inefficiency, the risks of nuclear escalation, the consequences of eroding nuclear deterrence, and threat inflation on China, among other issues.
India’s Quest for Major Power Status
T.V. Paul, professor of international relations at McGill University, talks about his recent book Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi.
Strategic Empathy & the Roots of the Ukraine War
Barry Posen, professor of political science at MIT, argues that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 qualifies as a preventive war and was motivated in part to thwart U.S.-led efforts to expand NATO in Europe.
The Return of Bipolarity
Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor at Dartmouth College, argues that China’s rise now means the world is back to a bipolar balance of power. She provides insight into how U.S. foreign policy should manage this new reality and discusses why polarity is important, how to measure the balance of power, how stable unipolar, bipolar, and multipolar systems are, the major points of conflict between the US and China, and what to do about Taiwan, among other topics.
Reconsidering US Strategy in Europe & Asia
Miranda Priebe, senior political scientist at RAND, discusses US strategy towards Europe and Asia and how to manage relations with Russia and China. She talks about changes to US posture towards Europe and Russia following the Ukraine war, NATO strategy, how to manage the Russia-China relationship, and potential changes to US posture in Asia, particularly towards Taiwan.
Trump, Conquest, & the Laws of War
Oona Hathaway, professor of international law at Yale University, addresses President Trump’s plans to expand US territory into Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada. She discusses international law, the causes of the decline in interstate war, the difference between norms and laws, the problem of enforcement, tensions between norms against conquest and the need for a negotiated peace in the Russia-Ukraine war, among other topics. Show Notes Oona A. Hathaway, Scott J.
The AI Competition with China
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.
Perverse Incentives in the Permanent War Economy
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.
Negotiating Peace in Ukraine
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.
The Fall of Assad & Syria’s Uncertain Future
Download Episode 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 these events, the many mistakes of US policy since the start of the civil war, and the regional politics wrapped up in Syria’s future. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
How Not to Fix US Foreign Policy
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.
Foreign Policy in the Second Trump Term
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.
The Trouble with Tariffs and the Future of Trade
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.
Status, Revisionism, & US-China Relations
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.
Is Whataboutism Effective?
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.
Why Can’t America Retrench?
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.
Not Another Axis of Evil
Daniel DePetris and Jennifer Kavanagh discuss the latest iteration of the Axis of Evil threat, this time in reference to China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and argue it is misconstrued and overhyped.
The Pentagon’s Budgetary Time Bomb
The Stimson Center’s Senior Fellow Dan Grazier and Research Associate Julia Gledhill analyze U.S. defense spending and explain how the Pentagon is creating “a budgetary time bomb set to explode in the next twenty years.” They discuss several examples of failed over-budget weapons acquisition programs and warn that future such fiascos are now in the making, with unsustainable budgetary implications, unless crucial reforms to U.S. defense and foreign policy are made.
The Rising Costs of Overseas Military Bases
Renanah Joyce, Assistant Professor at Georgetown University, and Brian Blankenship, Assistant Professor at the University of Miami, explain how great power competition for foreign military bases in third-party host countries increases the costs of securing access.
Should America Let Europe Defend Itself?
Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, argues that the United States should immediately begin withdrawing military forces from Europe to set the stage for European defense autonomy. He discusses the history of NATO, how it’s strategic purposes have evolved over time, what NATO costs America, defensibility problems with some Eastern European members, institutional inertia, differing threat assessments of Russia, and burden-sharing vs burden-dropping, among other topics.
Ukraine, NATO, and the End of the War
Emma Ashford, senior fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses recent escalations in the Ukraine war, the costs to the United States and European partners of supporting Kyiv, the effect of the conflict on Russia’s economy, the problems with Biden’s strategy, why it’s unlikely Ukraine can achieve total victory, the timing of ceasefire diplomacy and peace talks, how early negotiations proved the significance of Ukraine’s neutrality as a core issue of the war, the wayward mission of NATO and the...
Reevaluating the "Special Relationship" with Israel
Jon Hoffman, foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and adjunct professor at George Mason University, argues for a fundamental reevaluation of the U.S.‘s “special relationship” with Israel. He discusses the dire scale of Israel’s siege of Gaza and why it qualifies as collective punishment, Israel’s lack of clear military objectives in Gaza and plans to attack Rafah, and the widespread regional ramifications of the conflict.
The Hard Choice of Retrenchment
Stephen Wertheim, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, discusses the lack of strategic focus in the Biden administration’s foreign policy and argues that genuine prioritization requires retrenchment. The U.S. should draw down from Europe and the Middle East, he argues, and step away from formal security commitments there in order to avoid getting entangled in conflicts where U.S. interests are not vital.
The Will for Hegemony
Paul Poast, associate professor of political science at University of Chicago, discusses the concept of hegemony in international relations and puts forth several models to explain a state’s willingness to take on the global responsibilities of a hegemon. He also explains hegemonic stability theory, analyzes the Biden administration’s democracy vs autocracy rhetoric, and suggests the United States may be a hegemon in decline.
Elite Politics & the Hawkish Bias in US Foreign Policy
Elite politics shape and constrain democratic leaders in decisions about the use of force and tend to induce a hawkish bias into war‐time foreign policy. So says Columbia University professor Elizabeth N. Saunders in her forthcoming book The Insider’s Game: How Elites Make War and Peace. She explores how elite politics influenced presidential decisions in U.S. wars including Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond.
Managing Instability in Europe, Asia, & the Middle East
Robert Manning, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses the increasing instability in the Middle East stemming from the ongoing Israel‐Gaza war, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the implications for the US role in the world, and rising US‐China tensions over Taiwan. He also talks about the risks of emerging economic nationalism, middle powers, the US addiction to primacy and American exceptionalism, and the problems of trying to manage global politics from Washington.
Arms, Influence, and the Military Industrial Complex
This site works best using the latest version of modern browsers. Update your browser (Chrome 118) for more security, speed, and the best experiences on this site. Skip to main content Download Episode Subscribe: William Hartung of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft explains the problem of retired military brass working for the arms industry and how this revolving door tends to militarize U.S. foreign policy.
The Middle East Is a Powder Keg. Washington Is Making It Worse.
Download Episode Subscribe: Renewed conflict in the Middle East increases the costs and risks of America’s entanglement in the region, and despite the strategic case for retrenchment, there is no sign of a substantial change to U.S. foreign policy there.
"Credibility" Is Not What You Think It Is
Download Episode Subscribe: Common but unsound conceptions of credibility and reputation in international politics have persistently promoted unnecessary militarism and prevented the United States from shedding even unnecessary security commitments abroad.
Israel, Gaza, and America’s Broken Middle East Policy
Download Episode Subscribe: Justin Logan, Cato’s director of defense and foreign policy studies, and Jon Hoffman, a foreign policy analyst at Cato, discuss the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas and the imperative of avoiding further U.S. entanglement in the Middle East.
Middling Powers & U.S. Decline
Download Episode Subscribe: Many countries in the Global South would like a more advantageous position in the international order. Sarang Shidore, director of Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Global South Program, discusses why these countries are dissatisfied, what changes they would like to see, and how Washington can respond.
Tripwires, Public Opinion, & War
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Social Science, Think Tanks, & National Security Policy
Michael C. Desch, professor of international relations at University of Notre Dame, discusses the disconnect between political science scholarship and policymaking and offers solutions for how to bridge the gap. Show Notes Michael C. Desch bio Michael C. Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). Paul C. Avey, Michael C. Desch, Eric Parajon, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, and Michael J.
Nobody Wins in Ukraine
Download Episode Subscribe: Christopher Layne, distinguished professor at Texas A&M University, provides historical context around the Russian invasion of Ukraine and questions direct U.S. intervention on Ukraine’s behalf. He discusses the U.S. strategy in Europe following WWII and following the end of the Cold War, NATO expansion, tensions in U.S.-Russian nuclear policies, Russian perspectives and motivations, potential resolutions to the conflict, and what could exacerbate the war.
Managing China, Avoiding War
Quincy Institute director of East Asia, Michael D. Swaine explains how to manage the rise in China’s power and influence through a restrained grand strategy, rather than through confrontation and primacy. He discusses Chinese diplomacy on the global stage, the problem with Washington’s current strategy to contain and confront Beijing, how to alleviate the security dilemma, managing US alliances and altering US force posture in East Asia, and handling the problem of Taiwan, among other topics.
Market Adjustment and Foreign Policy Failure
Notre Dame associate professor Eugene Gholz discusses U.S. strategy, the low costs of neutrality in war, global oil markets and why the U.S. does too much militarily in the Middle East. He also advises a “defensive defense” strategy in East Asia, the ineffectiveness and overuse of economic sanctions, and decoupling from China. Show Notes Eugene Gholz bio Eugene Gholz and Daryl G. Press, “The Effects of Wars on Neutral Countries: Why it Doesn’t Pay to Preserve the Peace,” Security Studies 10, no.
Honor, Deterrence, and Peace
King’s College professor Richard Ned Lebow discusses his vast body of work on international politics. He talks about his cultural theory of international politics, Thucydides, realism, deterrence, Russia and the causes of the Ukraine war, and hegemonic stability theory, among other topics. Show Notes Richard Ned Lebow bio Richard Ned Lebow, The Quest For Knowledge in International Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
The Politics of the China Threat in East Asia
Japan has realized that they need to take more responsibility for their security in response to China’s rise, but there remain disagreements among U.S. allies about how to confront China. Dartmouth College professor Jennifer Lind discusses the threat environment in East Asia, Japan’s military spending and relations with its neighbors, and how collective narratives about historical baggage between countries can shape policy.
Chinese vs American Diplomacy in the Middle East
Trita Parsi, co‐founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explains how China’s impartial approach to diplomacy gives it an edge against America’s more Manichean tendencies.
Overpowered: Restraining Presidential War Authority
Download Episode Subscribe: Brian Finucane, senior adviser at International Crisis Group, and Brianna Rosen, Senior Fellow at Just Security, discuss how the Global War on Terror is still ongoing and has allowed the executive branch to usurp war making authority from Congress, with disastrous and illiberal results. Show Notes Brianna Rosen bio Brian Finucane bio “Overkill: Reforming the Legal Basis for the U.S. War on Terror,” Crisis Group Report No. 5, September 17, 2021.
How to Avoid a Zero-Sum U.S.-China Relationship
Download Episode Subscribe: The increasingly competitive U.S.-China relationship is subject to various perverse incentives and negative feedback loops. Jessica Chen Weiss, Cornell University Professor for China and Asia‐Pacific Studies, discusses China’s rise and how to avoid a zero‐sum and conflict‐prone great power relationship. Show Notes: Jessica Chen Weiss bio Jessica Chen Weiss, “The China Trap: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero‐Sum Competition,” Foreign Affairs 101, no.
The Transatlantic Divide
The bankruptcy of centralized crypto exchange FTX has led to congressional hearings and calls to further scrutinize and regulate cryptocurrency and decentralized finance (DeFi). But how does DeFi compare to centralized or traditional finance in terms of its risks and benefits, and how should regulation take into account these distinctions?
Great Powers and Territorial Disputes
The Cato Institute has released its 2021 Annual Report, which documents a dynamic year of growth and productivity. High‐quality research, the hallmark of Cato’s work, plays a crucial role in the battle of ideas. But this research must be grounded in the moral vision of a free and just society, and communicating this vision has always been a vital part of Cato’s work.
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