Podcast appearances and mentions of Barry R Posen

The United States sells arms to almost any country willing to pay for them, but many recipients are risky, unstable, undemocratic, and liable to misuse the weapons. Cato defense and foreign policy studies policy analyst Jordan Cohen explains why the U.S. government sells arms to risky countries, why it doesn't give the U.S. strategic leverage, the costs and consequences of U.S. security assistance to Ukraine, the problem of cluster munitions, U.S. support for the Nigerian military (which recently executed a coup d'état), and how to reform U.S. arms sales policies. Show NotesJordan Cohen bioJordan Cohen and A. Trevor Thrall, “2022 Arms Sales Risk Index,” Cato Institute policy analysis no. 953, July 18, 2023.Jordan Cohen and Jonathan Ellis Allen, “When our Weapons Go Missing,” Reason, July 31, 2023.Barry R. Posen, “Ukraine's Implausible Theories of Victory,” Foreign Affairs, July 8, 2023.Jordan Cohen and Jonathan Ellis Allen, “Cluster Munitions May Win a Battle but not Ukraine's War,” Inkstick Media, July 13, 2023.Jordan Cohen and Jonathan Ellis Allen, “Did the Pentagon Just Make a $3 Billion Accounting Error – or Did It Do Something Even Worse?” Reason, May 19, 2023.Jordan Cohen, “Coups Are Just An Arms (Sale) Length Away: US Weapons Equip Niger's Military,” Cato at Liberty, August 3, 2023.Jordan Cohen, “Deal or No Deal: Explaining Congressional Restrictions on Arms Transfers,” PhD diss (George Mason University, 2023).Jon Hoffman, Jordan Cohen, and Jonathan Ellis Allen, “Biden Steamrolls toward Disaster in the Middle East,” The Hill, August 2, 2023. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MIT professor Barry Posen joined the show to discuss the crisis in Ukraine, the origins of the conflict, what diplomatic approaches are available, and how US strategy is pushing China and Russia together. Barry R. Posen bioBarry Posen, “Unleashing the Rhetorical Dogs of War,”Just Security, February 15, 2022.Barry R. Posen, “A New Transatlantic Division of Labor Could Save Billions Every Year!”Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 7, 2021.Barry R. Posen,Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is Europe capable of defending itself against a Russian invasion without assistance from the United States? In a recent paper for Survival, Barry R. Posen argues that it can. The John Quincy Adams Society's national organization teamed up with the JQAS chapter at the University of Notre Dame for a conversation with Dr. Posen on his article and several subsequent critiques of it. You can find the original article here: https://www.iiss.org/blogs/survival-blog/2020/12/europe-can-defend-itself

Chris, Melanie, and Zack wade into the long-running debate on whether Europe can defend itself (chiefly from Russia), and how hard it should try. In a recent article, Barry Posen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concludes that Europe is capable of conducting major military operations against a potential Russian attack, and that these capabilities serve as an important deterrent. But others doubt that Europe will ever be able to stand on its own without substantial support from the United States. The ultimate unknown, however, might revolve around how much autonomy the United States is willing to grant to key NATO allies — and how much autonomy they will demand in exchange for greater burden sharing. Zack offers up an atta-doctor/atta-deputy secretary of defense to newly confirmed Kath Hicks, while Chris praises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for showing the way on how schools can reopen. Melanie has a grievance against those who just can’t get along with others, even when they perform random acts of kindness, and Zack throws shade on people who refuse to put their names on major publications.   Links Barry R. Posen, “Europe Can Defend Itself,” IISS, December 3, 2020 Jeffrey Lightfoot and Olivier-Rémy Bel, “Sovereign Solidarity: France, the US, and Alliances in a Post-COVID World,” Future Europe Initiative, Atlantic Council, November 11, 2020 Adam Weinstein, “What the Afghanistan Study Group Final Report Missed,” Inkstick, February 11, 2021 Laura Meckler, “CDC Defends School Guidelines as Advocates Say They Make It too Hard to Reopen,” Washington Post, February 14, 2021 Evan Braden Montgomery, In the Hegemon's Shadow: Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers (Cornell University Press, 2016) Joe Gould, "Senate confirms Hicks as DOD's No. 2," Defense News, February 8, 2021 Anonymous, "To Counter China's Rise, the U.S. Should Focus on Xi," Politico, January 28, 2021 Virginia Heffernan, “What Can You Do about the Trumpites Next Door?”, Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2021 Our World in Data, Coronavirus Vaccinations by Country “Americans and Germans Differ in Their Views of Each Other and the World,” Pew Research, March 9, 2020 Hans Van Der Burchard and America Hernandez, “US-German Tensions Over Russia-Backed Nord Stream 2 Pipeline,” Politico, January 21, 2021 “What Would Happen if America Left Europe to Fend for Itself?”, The Economist, March 14, 2019

The United States, argues Barry R. Posen, has grown incapable of moderating its foreign policy ambitions. Since the collapse of Soviet power, it has pursued a grand strategy that has tended to overreach, generating a host of failures and encountering many unexpected difficulties along the way.In this new book, Posen explains why the dominant view among the nation’s foreign policy elites, what he calls “liberal hegemony,” has proved unnecessary, counterproductive, costly, and wasteful. His alternative — restraint — would resist the impulse to use U.S. military power, and focus the military’s and the nation’s attention on the most urgent challenges to national security. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.