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Last time we spoke about the surrender of Japan. Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender on August 15, prompting mixed public reactions: grief, shock, and sympathy for the Emperor, tempered by fear of hardship and occupation. The government's response included resignations and suicide as new leadership was brought in under Prime Minister Higashikuni, with Mamoru Shigemitsu as Foreign Minister and Kawabe Torashiro heading a delegation to Manila. General MacArthur directed the occupation plan, “Blacklist,” prioritizing rapid, phased entry into key Japanese areas and Korea, while demobilizing enemy forces. The surrender ceremony occurred aboard the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, with Wainwright, Percival, Nimitz, and UN representatives in attendance. Civilians and soldiers across Asia began surrendering, and postwar rehabilitation, Indochina and Vietnam's independence movements, and Southeast Asian transitions rapidly unfolded as Allied forces established control. This episode is the Aftermath of the Pacific War Welcome to the Pacific War Podcast Week by Week, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800's until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.  The Pacific War has ended. Peace has been restored by the Allies and most of the places conquered by the Japanese Empire have been liberated. In this post-war period, new challenges would be faced for those who won the war; and from the ashes of an empire, a defeated nation was also seeking to rebuild. As the Japanese demobilized their armed forces, many young boys were set to return to their homeland, even if they had previously thought that they wouldn't survive the ordeal. And yet, there were some cases of isolated men that would continue to fight for decades even, unaware that the war had already ended.  As we last saw, after the Japanese surrender, General MacArthur's forces began the occupation of the Japanese home islands, while their overseas empire was being dismantled by the Allies. To handle civil administration, MacArthur established the Military Government Section, commanded by Brigadier-General William Crist, staffed by hundreds of US experts trained in civil governance who were reassigned from Okinawa and the Philippines. As the occupation began, Americans dispatched tactical units and Military Government Teams to each prefecture to ensure that policies were faithfully carried out. By mid-September, General Eichelberger's 8th Army had taken over the Tokyo Bay region and began deploying to occupy Hokkaido and the northern half of Honshu. Then General Krueger's 6th Army arrived in late September, taking southern Honshu and Shikoku, with its base in Kyoto. In December, 6th Army was relieved of its occupation duties; in January 1946, it was deactivated, leaving the 8th Army as the main garrison force. By late 1945, about 430,000 American soldiers were garrisoned across Japan. President Truman approved inviting Allied involvement on American terms, with occupation armies integrated into a US command structure. Yet with the Chinese civil war and Russia's reluctance to place its forces under MacArthur's control, only Australia, Britain, India, and New Zealand sent brigades, more than 40,000 troops in southwestern Japan. Japanese troops were gradually disarmed by order of their own commanders, so the stigma of surrender would be less keenly felt by the individual soldier. In the homeland, about 1.5 million men were discharged and returned home by the end of August. Demobilization overseas, however, proceeded, not quickly, but as a long, difficult process of repatriation. In compliance with General Order No. 1, the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters disbanded on September 13 and was superseded by the Japanese War Department to manage demobilization. By November 1, the homeland had demobilized 2,228,761 personnel, roughly 97% of the Homeland Army. Yet some 6,413,215 men remained to be repatriated from overseas. On December 1, the Japanese War Ministry dissolved, and the First Demobilization Ministry took its place. The Second Demobilization Ministry was established to handle IJN demobilization, with 1,299,868 sailors, 81% of the Navy, demobilized by December 17. Japanese warships and merchant ships had their weapons rendered inoperative, and suicide craft were destroyed. Forty percent of naval vessels were allocated to evacuations in the Philippines, and 60% to evacuations of other Pacific islands. This effort eventually repatriated about 823,984 men to Japan by February 15, 1946. As repatriation accelerated, by October 15 only 1,909,401 men remained to be repatriated, most of them in the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the Higashikuni Cabinet and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru managed to persuade MacArthur not to impose direct military rule or martial law over all of Japan. Instead, the occupation would be indirect, guided by the Japanese government under the Emperor's direction. An early decision to feed occupation forces from American supplies, and to allow the Japanese to use their own limited food stores, helped ease a core fear: that Imperial forces would impose forced deliveries on the people they conquered. On September 17, MacArthur transferred his headquarters from Yokohama to Tokyo, setting up primary offices on the sixth floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Building, an imposing edifice overlooking the moat and the Imperial palace grounds in Hibiya, a symbolic heart of the nation.  While the average soldier did not fit the rapacious image of wartime Japanese propagandists, occupation personnel often behaved like neo-colonial overlords. The conquerors claimed privileges unimaginable to most Japanese. Entire trains and train compartments, fitted with dining cars, were set aside for the exclusive use of occupation forces. These silenced, half-empty trains sped past crowded platforms, provoking ire as Japanese passengers were forced to enter and exit packed cars through punched-out windows, or perch on carriage roofs, couplings, and running boards, often with tragic consequences. The luxury express coaches became irresistible targets for anonymous stone-throwers. During the war, retrenchment measures had closed restaurants, cabarets, beer halls, geisha houses, and theatres in Tokyo and other large cities. Now, a vast leisure industry sprang up to cater to the needs of the foreign occupants. Reopened restaurants and theatres, along with train stations, buses, and streetcars, were sometimes kept off limits to Allied personnel, partly for security, partly to avoid burdening Japanese resources, but a costly service infrastructure was built to the occupiers' specifications. Facilities reserved for occupation troops bore large signs reading “Japanese Keep Out” or “For Allied Personnel Only.” In downtown Tokyo, important public buildings requisitioned for occupation use had separate entrances for Americans and Japanese. The effect? A subtle but clear colour bar between the predominantly white conquerors and the conquered “Asiatic” Japanese. Although MacArthur was ready to work through the Japanese government, he lacked the organizational infrastructure to administer a nation of 74 million. Consequently, on October 2, MacArthur dissolved the Military Government Section and inaugurated General Headquarters, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, a separate headquarters focused on civil affairs and operating in tandem with the Army high command. SCAP immediately assumed responsibility for administering the Japanese home islands. It commandeered every large building not burned down to house thousands of civilians and requisitioned vast tracts of prime real estate to quarter several hundred thousand troops in the Tokyo–Yokohama area alone. Amidst the rise of American privilege, entire buildings were refurbished as officers' clubs, replete with slot machines and gambling parlours installed at occupation expense. The Stars and Stripes were hoisted over Tokyo, while the display of the Rising Sun was banned; and the downtown area, known as “Little America,” was transformed into a US enclave. The enclave mentality of this cocooned existence was reinforced by the arrival within the first six months of roughly 700 American families. At the peak of the occupation, about 14,800 families employed some 25,000 Japanese servants to ease the “rigours” of overseas duty. Even enlisted men in the sparse quonset-hut towns around the city lived like kings compared with ordinary Japanese. Japanese workers cleaned barracks, did kitchen chores, and handled other base duties. The lowest private earned a 25% hardship bonus until these special allotments were discontinued in 1949. Most military families quickly adjusted to a pampered lifestyle that went beyond maids and “boys,” including cooks, laundresses, babysitters, gardeners, and masseuses. Perks included spacious quarters with swimming pools, central heating, hot running water, and modern plumbing. Two observers compared GHQ to the British Raj at its height. George F. Kennan, head of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, warned during his 1948 mission to Japan that Americans had monopolized “everything that smacks of comfort or elegance or luxury,” criticizing what he called the “American brand of philistinism” and the “monumental imperviousness” of MacArthur's staff to the Japanese suffering. This conqueror's mentality also showed in the bullying attitudes many top occupation officials displayed toward the Japanese with whom they dealt. Major Faubion Bowers, MacArthur's military secretary, later said, “I and nearly all the occupation people I knew were extremely conceited and extremely arrogant and used our power every inch of the way.” Initially, there were spasms of defiance against the occupation forces, such as anonymous stone-throwing, while armed robbery and minor assaults against occupation personnel were rife in the weeks and months after capitulation. Yet active resistance was neither widespread nor organized. The Americans successfully completed their initial deployment without violence, an astonishing feat given a heavily armed and vastly superior enemy operating on home terrain. The average citizen regarded the occupation as akin to force majeure, the unfortunate but inevitable aftermath of a natural calamity. Japan lay prostrate. Industrial output had fallen to about 10% of pre-war levels, and as late as 1946, more than 13 million remained unemployed. Nearly 40% of Japan's urban areas had been turned to rubble, and some 9 million people were homeless. The war-displaced, many of them orphans, slept in doorways and hallways, in bombed-out ruins, dugouts and packing crates, under bridges or on pavements, and crowded the hallways of train and subway stations. As winter 1945 descended, with food, fuel, and clothing scarce, people froze to death. Bonfires lit the streets to ward off the chill. "The only warm hands I have shaken thus far in Japan belonged to Americans," Mark Gayn noted in December 1945. "The Japanese do not have much of a chance to thaw out, and their hands are cold and red." Unable to afford shoes, many wore straw sandals; those with geta felt themselves privileged. The sight of a man wearing a woman's high-buttoned shoes in winter epitomized the daily struggle to stay dry and warm. Shantytowns built of scrap wood, rusted metal, and scavenged odds and ends sprang up everywhere, resembling vast junk yards. The poorest searched smouldering refuse heaps for castoffs that might be bartered for a scrap to eat or wear. Black markets (yami'ichi) run by Japanese, Koreans, and For-mosans mushroomed to replace collapsed distribution channels and cash in on inflated prices. Tokyo became "a world of scarcity in which every nail, every rag, and even a tangerine peel [had a] market value." Psychologically numbed, disoriented, and disillusioned with their leaders, demobilized veterans and civilians alike struggled to get their bearings, shed militaristic ideologies, and begin to embrace new values. In the vacuum of defeat, the Japanese people appeared ready to reject the past and grasp at the straw held out by the former enemy. Relations between occupier and occupied were not smooth, however. American troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Much of the violence was directed against women, with the first attacks beginning within hours after the landing of advance units. When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence, and drunken brawling ensued. Newspaper accounts reported 931 serious offences by GIs in the Yokohama area during the first week of occupation, including 487 armed robberies, 411 thefts of currency or goods, 9 rapes, 5 break-ins, 3 cases of assault and battery, and 16 other acts of lawlessness. In the first 10 days of occupation, there were 1,336 reported rapes by US soldiers in Kanagawa Prefecture alone. Americans were not the only perpetrators. A former prostitute recalled that when Australian troops arrived in Kure in early 1946, they “dragged young women into their jeeps, took them to the mountain, and then raped them. I heard them screaming for help nearly every night.” Such behaviour was commonplace, but news of criminal activity by occupation forces was quickly suppressed. On September 10, 1945, SCAP issued press and pre-censorship codes outlawing the publication of reports and statistics "inimical to the objectives of the occupation." In the sole instance of self-help General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when locals formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, 8th Army ordered armored vehicles into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms. Misbehavior ranged from black-market activity, petty theft, reckless driving, and disorderly conduct to vandalism, arson, murder, and rape. Soldiers and sailors often broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape, and even murder were widely reported. Gang rapes and other sex atrocities were not infrequent; victims, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned to prostitution in desperation, while others took their own lives to avoid bringing shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer; Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely, and restitution for victims was rare. Fearing the worst, Japanese authorities had already prepared countermeasures against the supposed rapacity of foreign soldiers. Imperial troops in East Asia and the Pacific had behaved brutally toward women, so the government established “sexual comfort-stations” manned by geisha, bar hostesses, and prostitutes to “satisfy the lust of the Occupation forces,” as the Higashikuni Cabinet put it. A budget of 100 million yen was set aside for these Recreation and Amusement Associations, financed initially with public funds but run as private enterprises under police supervision. Through these, the government hoped to protect the daughters of the well-born and middle class by turning to lower-class women to satisfy the soldiers' sexual appetites. By the end of 1945, brothel operators had rounded up an estimated 20,000 young women and herded them into RAA establishments nationwide. Eventually, as many as 70,000 are said to have ended up in the state-run sex industry. Thankfully, as military discipline took hold and fresh troops replaced the Allied veterans responsible for the early crime wave, violence subsided and the occupier's patronising behavior and the ugly misdeeds of a lawless few were gradually overlooked. However, fraternisation was frowned upon by both sides, and segregation was practiced in principle, with the Japanese excluded from areas reserved for Allied personnel until September 1949, when MacArthur lifted virtually all restrictions on friendly association, stating that he was “establishing the same relations between occupation personnel and the Japanese population as exists between troops stationed in the United States and the American people.” In principle, the Occupation's administrative structure was highly complex. The Far Eastern Commission, based in Washington, included representatives from all 13 countries that had fought against Japan and was established in 1946 to formulate basic principles. The Allied Council for Japan was created in the same year to assist in developing and implementing surrender terms and in administering the country. It consisted of representatives from the USA, the USSR, Nationalist China, and the British Commonwealth. Although both bodies were active at first, they were largely ineffectual due to unwieldy decision-making, disagreements between the national delegations (especially the USA and USSR), and the obstructionism of General Douglas MacArthur. In practice, SCAP, the executive authority of the occupation, effectively ruled Japan from 1945 to 1952. And since it took orders only from the US government, the Occupation became primarily an American affair. The US occupation program, effectively carried out by SCAP, was revolutionary and rested on a two-pronged approach. To ensure Japan would never again become a menace to the United States or to world peace, SCAP pursued disarmament and demilitarization, with continuing control over Japan's capacity to make war. This involved destroying military supplies and installations, demobilizing more than five million Japanese soldiers, and thoroughly discrediting the military establishment. Accordingly, SCAP ordered the purge of tens of thousands of designated persons from public service positions, including accused war criminals, military officers, leaders of ultranationalist societies, leaders in the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, business leaders tied to overseas expansion, governors of former Japanese colonies, and national leaders who had steered Japan into war. In addition, MacArthur's International Military Tribunal for the Far East established a military court in Tokyo. It had jurisdiction over those charged with Class A crimes, top leaders who had planned and directed the war. Also considered were Class B charges, covering conventional war crimes, and Class C charges, covering crimes against humanity. Yet the military court in Tokyo wouldn't be the only one. More than 5,700 lower-ranking personnel were charged with conventional war crimes in separate trials convened by Australia, China, France, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Of the 5,700 Japanese individuals indicted for Class B war crimes, 984 were sentenced to death; 475 received life sentences; 2,944 were given more limited prison terms; 1,018 were acquitted; and 279 were never brought to trial or not sentenced. Among these, many, like General Ando Rikichi and Lieutenant-General Nomi Toshio, chose to commit suicide before facing prosecution. Notable cases include Lieutenant-General Tani Hisao, who was sentenced to death by the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the Nanjing Massacre; Lieutenant-General Sakai Takashi, who was executed in Nanjing for the murder of British and Chinese civilians during the occupation of Hong Kong. General Okamura Yasuji was convicted of war crimes by the Tribunal, yet he was immediately protected by the personal order of Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who kept him as a military adviser for the Kuomintang. In the Manila trials, General Yamashita Tomoyuki was sentenced to death as he was in overall command during the Sook Ching massacre, the Rape of Manila, and other atrocities. Lieutenant-General Homma Masaharu was likewise executed in Manila for atrocities committed by troops under his command during the Bataan Death March. General Imamura Hitoshi was sentenced to ten years in prison, but he considered the punishment too light and even had a replica of the prison built in his garden, remaining there until his death in 1968. Lieutenant-General Kanda Masatane received a 14-year sentence for war crimes on Bougainville, though he served only four years. Lieutenant-General Adachi Hatazo was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in New Guinea and subsequently committed suicide on September 10, 1947. Lieutenant-General Teshima Fusataro received three years of forced labour for using a hospital ship to transport troops. Lieutenant-General Baba Masao was sentenced to death for ordering the Sandakan Death Marches, during which over 2,200 Australian and British prisoners of war perished. Lieutenant-General Tanabe Moritake was sentenced to death by a Dutch military tribunal for unspecified war crimes. Rear-Admiral Sakaibara Shigematsu was executed in Guam for ordering the Wake Island massacre, in which 98 American civilians were murdered. Lieutenant-General Inoue Sadae was condemned to death in Guam for permitting subordinates to execute three downed American airmen captured in Palau, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1951 and he was released in 1953. Lieutenant-General Tachibana Yoshio was sentenced to death in Guam for his role in the Chichijima Incident, in which eight American airmen were cannibalized. By mid-1945, due to the Allied naval blockade, the 25,000 Japanese troops on Chichijima had run low on supplies. However, although the daily rice ration had been reduced from 400 grams per person per day to 240 grams, the troops were not at risk of starvation. In February and March 1945, in what would later be called the Chichijima incident, Tachibana Yoshio's senior staff turned to cannibalism. Nine American airmen had escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichijima, eight of whom were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot. Over several months, the prisoners were executed, and reportedly by the order of Major Matoba Sueyo, their bodies were butchered by the division's medical orderlies, with the livers and other organs consumed by the senior staff, including Matoba's superior Tachibana. In the Yokohama War Crimes Trials, Lieutenant-Generals Inada Masazumi and Yokoyama Isamu were convicted for their complicity in vivisection and other human medical experiments performed at Kyushu Imperial University on downed Allied airmen. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial, which began in May 1946 and lasted two and a half years, resulted in the execution by hanging of Generals Doihara Kenji and Itagaki Seishiro, and former Prime Ministers Hirota Koki and Tojo Hideki, for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes against peace, specifically for the escalation of the Pacific War and for permitting the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war. Also sentenced to death were Lieutenant-General Muto Akira for his role in the Nanjing and Manila massacres; General Kimura Heitaro for planning the war strategy in China and Southeast Asia and for laxity in preventing atrocities against prisoners of war in Burma; and General Matsui Iwane for his involvement in the Rape of Nanjing. The seven defendants who were sentenced to death were executed at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro on December 23, 1948. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, including the last Field Marshal Hata Shunroku, Generals Araki Sadao, Minami Hiro, and Umezu Shojiro, Admiral Shimada Shigetaro, former Prime Ministers Hiranuma Kiichiro and Koiso Kuniaki, Marquis Kido Koichi, and Colonel Hashimoto Kingoro, a major instigator of the second Sino-Japanese War. Additionally, former Foreign Ministers Togo Shigenori and Shigemitsu Mamoru received seven- and twenty-year sentences, respectively. The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals, including the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials, which tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never brought to trial, as MacArthur granted immunity to Lieutenant-General Ishii Shiro and all members of the bacteriological research units in exchange for germ-w warfare data derived from human experimentation. If you would like to learn more about what I like to call Japan's Operation Paper clip, whereupon the US grabbed many scientists from Unit 731, check out my exclusive podcast. The SCAP-turn to democratization began with the drafting of a new constitution in 1947, addressing Japan's enduring feudal social structure. In the charter, sovereignty was vested in the people, and the emperor was designated a “symbol of the state and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people in whom resides sovereign power.” Because the emperor now possessed fewer powers than European constitutional monarchs, some have gone so far as to say that Japan became “a republic in fact if not in name.” Yet the retention of the emperor was, in fact, a compromise that suited both those who wanted to preserve the essence of the nation for stability and those who demanded that the emperor system, though not necessarily the emperor, should be expunged. In line with the democratic spirit of the new constitution, the peerage was abolished and the two-chamber Diet, to which the cabinet was now responsible, became the highest organ of state. The judiciary was made independent and local autonomy was granted in vital areas of jurisdiction such as education and the police. Moreover, the constitution stipulated that “the people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights,” that they “shall be respected as individuals,” and that “their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness shall … be the supreme consideration in legislation.” Its 29 articles guaranteed basic human rights: equality, freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin, freedom of thought and freedom of religion. Finally, in its most controversial section, Article 9, the “peace clause,” Japan “renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation” and vowed not to maintain any military forces and “other war potential.” To instill a thoroughly democratic ethos, reforms touched every facet of society. The dissolution of the zaibatsu decentralised economic power; the 1945 Labour Union Law and the 1946 Labour Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to collective action; the 1947 Labour Standards Law established basic working standards for men and women; and the revised Civil Code of 1948 abolished the patriarchal household and enshrined sexual equality. Reflecting core American principles, SCAP introduced a 6-3-3 schooling system, six years of compulsory elementary education, three years of junior high, and an optional three years of senior high, along with the aim of secular, locally controlled education. More crucially, ideological reform followed: censorship of feudal material in media, revision of textbooks, and prohibition of ideas glorifying war, dying for the emperor, or venerating war heroes. With women enfranchised and young people shaped to counter militarism and ultranationalism, rural Japan was transformed to undermine lingering class divisions. The land reform program provided for the purchase of all land held by absentee landlords, allowed resident landlords and owner-farmers to retain a set amount of land, and required that the remaining land be sold to the government so it could be offered to existing tenants. In 1948, amid the intensifying tensions of the Cold War that would soon culminate in the Korean War, the occupation's focus shifted from demilitarization and democratization toward economic rehabilitation and, ultimately, the remilitarization of Japan, an shift now known as the “Reverse Course.” The country was thus rebuilt as the Pacific region's primary bulwark against the spread of Communism. An Economic Stabilisation Programme was introduced, including a five-year plan to coordinate production and target capital through the Reconstruction Finance Bank. In 1949, the anti-inflationary Dodge Plan was adopted, advocating balanced budgets, fixing the exchange rate at 360 yen to the dollar, and ending broad government intervention. Additionally, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry was formed and supported the formation of conglomerates centered around banks, which encouraged the reemergence of a somewhat weakened set of zaibatsu, including Mitsui and Mitsubishi. By the end of the Occupation era, Japan was on the verge of surpassing its 1934–1936 levels of economic growth. Equally important was Japan's rearmament in alignment with American foreign policy: a National Police Reserve of about 75,000 was created with the outbreak of the Korean War; by 1952 it had expanded to 110,000 and was renamed the Self-Defense Force after the inclusion of an air force. However, the Reverse Course also facilitated the reestablishment of conservative politics and the rollback of gains made by women and the reforms of local autonomy and education. As the Occupation progressed, the Americans permitted greater Japanese initiative, and power gradually shifted from the reformers to the moderates. By 1949, the purge of the right came under review, and many who had been condemned began returning to influence, if not to the Diet, then to behind-the-scenes power. At the same time, Japanese authorities, with MacArthur's support, began purging left-wing activists. In June 1950, for example, the central office of the Japan Communist Party and the editorial board of The Red Flag were purged. The gains made by women also seemed to be reversed. Women were elected to 8% of available seats in the first lower-house election in 1946, but to only 2% in 1952, a trend not reversed until the so-called Madonna Boom of the 1980s. Although the number of women voting continued to rise, female politicisation remained more superficial than might be imagined. Women's employment also appeared little affected by labour legislation: though women formed nearly 40% of the labor force in 1952, they earned only 45% as much as men. Indeed, women's attitudes toward labor were influenced less by the new ethos of fulfilling individual potential than by traditional views of family and workplace responsibilities. In the areas of local autonomy and education, substantial modifications were made to the reforms. Because local authorities lacked sufficient power to tax, they were unable to realise their extensive powers, and, as a result, key responsibilities were transferred back to national jurisdiction. In 1951, for example, 90% of villages and towns placed their police forces under the control of the newly formed National Police Agency. Central control over education was also gradually reasserted; in 1951, the Yoshida government attempted to reintroduce ethics classes, proposed tighter central oversight of textbooks, and recommended abolishing local school board elections. By the end of the decade, all these changes had been implemented. The Soviet occupation of the Kurile Islands and the Habomai Islets was completed with Russian troops fully deployed by September 5. Immediately after the onset of the occupation, amid a climate of insecurity and fear marked by reports of sporadic rape and physical assault and widespread looting by occupying troops, an estimated 4,000 islanders fled to Hokkaido rather than face an uncertain repatriation. As Soviet forces moved in, they seized or destroyed telephone and telegraph installations and halted ship movements into and out of the islands, leaving residents without adequate food and other winter provisions. Yet, unlike Manchuria, where Japanese civilians faced widespread sexual violence and pillage, systematic violence against the civilian population on the Kuriles appears to have been exceptional. A series of military government proclamations assured islanders of safety so long as they did not resist Soviet rule and carried on normally; however, these orders also prohibited activities not explicitly authorized by the Red Army, which imposed many hardships on civilians. Residents endured harsh conditions under Soviet rule until late 1948, when Japanese repatriation out of the Kurils was completed. The Kuriles posed a special diplomatic problem, as the occupation of the southernmost islands—the Northern Territories—ignited a long-standing dispute between Tokyo and Moscow that continues to impede the normalisation of relations today. Although the Kuriles were promised to the Soviet Union in the Yalta agreement, Japan and the United States argued that this did not apply to the Northern Territories, since they were not part of the Kurile Islands. A substantial dispute regarding the status of the Kurile Islands arose between the United States and the Soviet Union during the preparation of the Treaty of San Francisco, which was intended as a permanent peace treaty between Japan and the Allied Powers of World War II. The treaty was ultimately signed by 49 nations in San Francisco on September 8, 1951, and came into force on April 28, 1952. It ended Japan's role as an imperial power, allocated compensation to Allied nations and former prisoners of war who had suffered Japanese war crimes, ended the Allied post-war occupation of Japan, and returned full sovereignty to Japan. Effectively, the document officially renounced Japan's treaty rights derived from the Boxer Protocol of 1901 and its rights to Korea, Formosa and the Pescadores, the Kurile Islands, the Spratly Islands, Antarctica, and South Sakhalin. Japan's South Seas Mandate, namely the Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, and Caroline Islands, had already been formally revoked by the United Nations on July 18, 1947, making the United States responsible for administration of those islands under a UN trusteeship agreement that established the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. In turn, the Bonin, Volcano, and Ryukyu Islands were progressively restored to Japan between 1953 and 1972, along with the Senkaku Islands, which were disputed by both Communist and Nationalist China. In addition, alongside the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan and the United States signed a Security Treaty that established a long-lasting military alliance between them. Although Japan renounced its rights to the Kuriles, the U.S. State Department later clarified that “the Habomai Islands and Shikotan ... are properly part of Hokkaido and that Japan is entitled to sovereignty over them,” hence why the Soviets refused to sign the treaty. Britain and the United States agreed that territorial rights would not be granted to nations that did not sign the Treaty of San Francisco, and as a result the Kurile Islands were not formally recognized as Soviet territory. A separate peace treaty, the Treaty of Taipei (formally the Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty), was signed in Taipei on April 28, 1952 between Japan and the Kuomintang, and on June 9 of that year the Treaty of Peace Between Japan and India followed. Finally, Japan and the Soviet Union ended their formal state of war with the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, though this did not settle the Kurile Islands dispute. Even after these formal steps, Japan as a nation was not in a formal state of war, and many Japanese continued to believe the war was ongoing; those who held out after the surrender came to be known as Japanese holdouts.  Captain Oba Sakae and his medical company participated in the Saipan campaign beginning on July 7, 1944, and took part in what would become the largest banzai charge of the Pacific War. After 15 hours of intense hand-to-hand combat, almost 4,300 Japanese soldiers were dead, and Oba and his men were presumed among them. In reality, however, he survived the battle and gradually assumed command of over a hundred additional soldiers. Only five men from his original unit survived the battle, two of whom died in the following months. Oba then led over 200 Japanese civilians deeper into the jungles to evade capture, organizing them into mountain caves and hidden jungle villages. When the soldiers were not assisting the civilians with survival tasks, Oba and his men continued their battle against the garrison of US Marines. He used the 1,552‑ft Mount Tapochau as their primary base, which offered an unobstructed 360-degree view of the island. From their base camp on the western slope of the mountain, Oba and his men occasionally conducted guerrilla-style raids on American positions. Due to the speed and stealth of these operations, and the Marines' frustrated attempts to find him, the Saipan Marines eventually referred to Oba as “The Fox.” Oba and his men held out on the island for 512 days, or about 16 months. On November 27, 1945, former Major-General Amo Umahachi was able to draw out some of the Japanese in hiding by singing the anthem of the Japanese infantry branch. Amo was then able to present documents from the defunct IGHQ to Oba ordering him and his 46 remaining men to surrender themselves to the Americans. On December 1, the Japanese soldiers gathered on Tapochau and sang a song of departure to the spirits of the war dead; Oba led his people out of the jungle and they presented themselves to the Marines of the 18th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Company. With great formality and commensurate dignity, Oba surrendered his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgis, and his men surrendered their arms and colors. On January 2, 1946, 20 Japanese soldiers hiding in a tunnel at Corregidor Island surrendered after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water. In that same month, 120 Japanese were routed after a battle in the mountains 150 miles south of Manila. In April, during a seven-week campaign to clear Lubang Island, 41 more Japanese emerged from the jungle, unaware that the war had ended; however, a group of four Japanese continued to resist. In early 1947, Lieutenant Yamaguchi Ei and his band of 33 soldiers renewed fighting with the small Marine garrison on Peleliu, prompting reinforcements under Rear-Admiral Charles Pownall to be brought to the island to hunt down the guerrilla group. Along with them came former Rear-Admiral Sumikawa Michio, who ultimately convinced Yamaguchi to surrender in April after almost three years of guerrilla warfare. Also in April, seven Japanese emerged from Palawan Island and fifteen armed stragglers emerged from Luzon. In January 1948, 200 troops surrendered on Mindanao; and on May 12, the Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before. On January 6, 1949, two former IJN soldiers, machine gunners Matsudo Rikio and Yamakage Kufuku, were discovered on Iwo Jima and surrendered peacefully. In March 1950, Private Akatsu Yūichi surrendered in the village of Looc, leaving only three Japanese still resisting on Lubang. By 1951 a group of Japanese on Anatahan Island refused to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy to remove them. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the bodies of a Saipan-based B-29. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors from three ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan woman. Personal aggravations developed from the close confines of a small group on a small island and from tuba drinking; among the holdouts, 6 of 11 deaths were the result of violence, and one man displayed 13 knife wounds. The presence of only one woman, Higa Kazuko, caused considerable difficulty as she would transfer her affections among at least four men after each of them mysteriously disappeared, purportedly “swallowed by the waves while fishing.” According to the more sensational versions of the Anatahan tale, 11 of the 30 navy sailors stranded on the island died due to violent struggles over her affections. In July 1950, Higa went to the beach when an American vessel appeared offshore and finally asked to be removed from the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon arrival, told authorities that the men on the island did not believe the war was over. As the Japanese government showed interest in the situation on Anatahan, the families of the holdouts were contacted in Japan and urged by the Navy to write letters stating that the war was over and that the holdouts should surrender. The letters were dropped by air on June 26 and ultimately convinced the holdouts to give themselves up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, “Operation Removal” commenced from Saipan under the command of Lt. Commander James B. Johnson, USNR, aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Johnson and an interpreter went ashore by rubber boat and formally accepted the surrender on the morning of June 30, 1951. The Anatahan femme fatale story later inspired the 1953 Japanese film Anatahan and the 1998 novel Cage on the Sea. In 1953, Murata Susumu, the last holdout on Tinian, was finally captured. The next year, on May 7, Corporal Sumada Shoichi was killed in a clash with Filipino soldiers, leaving only two Japanese still resisting on Lubang. In November 1955, Seaman Kinoshita Noboru was captured in the Luzon jungle but soon after committed suicide rather than “return to Japan in defeat.” That same year, four Japanese airmen surrendered at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea; and in 1956, nine soldiers were located and sent home from Morotai, while four men surrendered on Mindoro. In May 1960, Sergeant Ito Masashi became one of the last Japanese to surrender at Guam after the capture of his comrade Private Minagawa Bunzo, but the final surrender at Guam would come later with Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi. Sergeant Yokoi Shoichi survived in the jungles of Guam by living for years in an elaborately dug hole, subsisting on snails and lizards, a fate that, while undignified, showcased his ingenuity and resilience and earned him a warm welcome on his return to Japan. His capture was not heroic in the traditional sense: he was found half-starving by a group of villagers while foraging for shrimp in a stream, and the broader context included his awareness as early as 1952 that the war had ended. He explained that the wartime bushido code, emphasizing self-sacrifice or suicide rather than self-preservation, had left him fearing that repatriation would label him a deserter and likely lead to execution. Emerging from the jungle, Yokoi also became a vocal critic of Japan's wartime leadership, including Emperor Hirohito, which fits a view of him as a product of, and a prisoner within, his own education, military training, and the censorship and propaganda of the era. When asked by a young nephew how he survived so long on an island just a short distance from a major American airbase, he replied simply, “I was really good at hide and seek.”  That same year, Private Kozuka Kinshichi was killed in a shootout with Philippine police in October, leaving Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo still resisting on Lubang. Lieutenant Onoda Hiroo had been on Lubang since 1944, a few months before the Americans retook the Philippines. The last instructions he had received from his immediate superior ordered him to retreat to the interior of the island and harass the Allied occupying forces until the IJA eventually returned. Despite efforts by the Philippine Army, letters and newspapers left for him, radio broadcasts, and even a plea from Onoda's brother, he did not believe the war was over. On February 20, 1974, Onoda encountered a young Japanese university dropout named Suzuki Norio, who was traveling the world and had told friends that he planned to “look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order.” The two became friends, but Onoda stated that he was waiting for orders from one of his commanders. On March 9, 1974, Onoda went to an agreed-upon place and found a note left by Suzuki. Suzuki had brought along Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who delivered the oral orders for Onoda to surrender. Intelligence Officer 2nd Lt. Onoda Hiroo thus emerged from Lubang's jungle with his .25 caliber rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades. He surrendered 29 years after Japan's formal surrender, and 15 years after being declared legally dead in Japan. When he accepted that the war was over, he wept openly. He received a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine. Onoda was reportedly unhappy with the attention and what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. He wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography published in 1974. Yet the last Japanese to surrender would be Private Nakamura Teruo, an Amis aborigine from Formosa and a member of the Takasago Volunteers. Private Nakamura Teruo spent the tail end of World War II with a dwindling band on Morotai, repeatedly dispersing and reassembling in the jungle as they hunted for food. The group suffered continuous losses to starvation and disease, and survivors described Nakamura as highly self-sufficient. He left to live alone somewhere in the Morotai highlands between 1946 and 1947, rejoined the main group in 1950, and then disappeared again a few years later. Nakamura hinted in print that he fled into the jungle because he feared the other holdouts might murder him. He survives for decades beyond the war, eventually being found by 11 Indonesian soldiers. The emergence of an indigenous Taiwanese soldier among the search party embarrassed Japan as it sought to move past its imperial past. Many Japanese felt Nakamura deserved compensation for decades of loyalty, only to learn that his back pay for three decades of service amounted to 68,000 yen.   Nakamura's experience of peace was complex. When a journalist asked how he felt about “wasting” three decades of his life on Morotai, he replied that the years had not been wasted; he had been serving his country. Yet the country he returned to was Taiwan, and upon disembarking in Taipei in early January 1975, he learned that his wife had a son he had never met and that she had remarried a decade after his official death. Nakamura eventually lived with a daughter, and his story concluded with a bittersweet note when his wife reconsidered and reconciled with him. Several Japanese soldiers joined local Communist and insurgent groups after the war to avoid surrender. Notably, in 1956 and 1958, two soldiers returned to Japan after service in China's People's Liberation Army. Two others who defected with a larger group to the Malayan Communist Party around 1945 laid down their arms in 1989 and repatriated the next year, becoming among the last to return home. That is all for today, but fear not I will provide a few more goodies over the next few weeks. I will be releasing some of my exclusive podcast episodes from my youtube membership and patreon that are about pacific war subjects. Like I promised the first one will be on why Emperor Hirohito surrendered. Until then if you need your fix you know where to find me: eastern front week by week, fall and rise of china, echoes of war or on my Youtube membership of patreon at www.patreon.com/pacificwarchannel.

China's Inroads In The AmericasIn this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College about what China (as well as Russia and Iran) is up to, politically and strategically, south of the U.S. border.BIO:Dr. R. Evan Ellis is Latin America Research Professor with the U.S. Army War College, where his research is focused on China's engagement with Latin America and other regional security issues. In the first Trump administration, he served on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff as the official responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as International Narcotics and Law Enforcement issues.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary speak with returning guest Michael Kimmage, about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the evolution of the conflict over the past three and a half years. Zachary sets the tone by re-reading the poem from the first episode about the conflict in Ukraine, entitled "Our Ukrainian Love Story" to reflect on the initial days of the invasion and how perceptions and realities have shifted. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America, and the once-former-and-future director of the Kennan Institute. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability.

The state of the U.S. economy will come into full view this week as a wave of crucial economic data is set for release, including the jobs report, inflation, consumer confidence and corporate earnings. Where is the U.S. in terms of the global economic order? And how did we get to this point? Aya Ibrahim served as senior advisor on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff in the Biden-Harris administration, led President Biden's Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and Digital Assets Executive Order. She is also a former senior policy advisor at the National Economic Council. Ibrahim joins WITHpod to talk about her view on what Democrats need to do now, the United States' standing in terms of technology, finance and more.

We Must Save the Books. That's Michael Kimmage's SOS message from Trumpian Washington in this issue of Liberties Quarterly. Kimmage, former director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, describes the surreal experience of being hired in January 2025 only to see his institution shuttered by Trump's administration three months later. He reflects on the "American ruin" created as a consequence of abandonment of the Wilson Center's 30,000 book library. And Kimmage connects the rapid destruction of foreign policy institutions like USAID and the U.S. Institute of Peace to a broader assault on expertise and nonpartisan learning, warning that without such institutions, "an abyss opens" in American governance and international relations. Five Key Takeaways* Institutional Destruction was Swift and Unexplained - The Wilson Center, USAID (reduced from 10,000 to 15 employees), and U.S. Institute of Peace were shuttered within months with no clear rationale provided, creating a "nightmare-like" quality where decisions happened without accountability.* America's First Modern Ruin - Kimmage describes the abandoned Wilson Center library as unprecedented in American experience - a functioning institution in the heart of Washington D.C. suddenly left as a tomb-like ruin, unlike anything seen in a country never defeated on its own soil.* Books Were Saved, But Expertise Was Lost - While the 30,000-volume library was eventually rescued and distributed to universities, the real loss was the destruction of nonpartisan expertise and institutional knowledge that took decades to build.* Echoes of 1950s McCarthyism - The assault on expertise mirrors McCarthyism, with direct connections through Roy Cohn's mentorship of Trump, but differs in scale since it's driven by a president rather than a senator.* The Death of Learning in Government - The shutdowns represent a fundamental rejection of the idea that careful, nonpartisan study of international affairs is essential to effective policymaking, potentially creating an "abyss" in American foreign policy capacity.Michael Kimmage is Director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute. Prior to joining the Kennan Institute, Michael Kimmage was a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He has been a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the German Marshall Fund; and was on the advisory board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. He publishes widely on international affairs and on U.S. policy toward Russia. His latest book, Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability, was published by Oxford University Press in March 2024. He is also the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy, published by Basic Books in 2020, and The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism, published by Harvard University Press in 2009.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Mr. Edward Fishman joins us to discuss the evolving landscape of economic warfare and the United States' strategic use of economic tools against China and other global actors. Drawing from his new book, Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare, he explains how sanctions, tariffs, and export controls have become central to great power competition and explores how today's hyper-globalized economy has created chokepoints—critical areas where one state holds a dominant position, allowing for few alternatives. He examines the most potent weapons in the U.S. economic arsenal, and how their use—or mere threat—can compel adversaries to shift behavior. Mr. Fishman provides an insider's account of the Trump administration's economic warfare strategy against China and the rationale behind its approach. He also analyzes China's dual-track approach to economic warfare, the Biden administration's use of economic warfare against Russia, and the role of U.S. firms in carrying out Washington's policies. He concludes with recommendations for how the U.S. can refine its strategy to more effectively compete with China. Edward Fishman is a leading authority on economic statecraft and sanctions. He teaches at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and is a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy. He also advises companies on geopolitical strategy and invests in early-stage technology startups. Previously, he served at the U.S. State Department as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, at the Pentagon as an advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at the U.S. Treasury Department as special assistant to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. His writing and analysis are regularly featured by outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Politico, and NPR. He holds a BA in History from Yale, an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge, and an MBA from Stanford.

The international community has focused on the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas following Hamas’ massacre of civilians and taking of hostages on October 7th, 2023. However, after Hezbollah joined Hamas’ attack “in solidarity” by launching rockets and artillery at Israelis on October 8th, a second front opened. Fighting raged along Israel’s northern border through much of the past year, displacing large civilian populations for months. Innovative Israeli tactics – including the use of exploding pagers and walkie-talkies and the targeted killing of Hassan Nasrallah and other senior figures – captured the world’s attention, garnering condemnation from some and admiration from others. Our panel of experts will discuss these developments, with a specific focus on the principles of the law of armed conflict and the prospects for peace in an evolving regional landscape.Featuring: Dr. Peter Berkowitz, Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former Director of Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of StateProf. Diane Desierto, Professor of Law and Global Affairs Faculty Director, LL.M. in International Human Rights Law; Global Director, Notre Dame Law School Global Human Rights Clinic, Notre Dame Law SchoolModerator: Daniel G. West, Managing Director, SCF Partners

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Michael Kimmage of the Kennan Institute about the dynamics of, and potential problems with, the burgeoning strategic alliance between Vladimir Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China. BIO: Michael Kimmage is the director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was previously a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio. His most recent book is Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability (Oxford University Press, 2024). 

Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and White House correspondent Phillip Wegman discuss the upcoming confirmation hearings of Robert F. Kennedy, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard.  Then they discuss the White House's plans for sweeping deportations of illegal immigrants, and this weekend's row between Columbian president Gustavo Petro and Donald Trump over the return of roughly 160 illegal migrants from the U.S. to Columbia. Then, a conversation about JD Vance's first interview as Vice President of the United States with Margaret Brennan of CBS News. Finally, Andrew Walworth talks with Peter Berkowitz, former Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department, about Trump's plan to resettle Palestinians, which represents a radical departure from past U.S. policy.

This week, Kelly looks back on the major events of 2024 with Amy Mackinnon and Ellen Laipson. Amy Mackinnon is an award-winning national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. She has reported from across Eastern Europe and was previously based in Moscow and in Tbilisi, Georgia, as senior editor for the crisis reporting site Coda Story. Mackinnon is a recipient of the duPont-Columbia award for her reporting on homophobic vigilantes in Russia. She is a regular commentator for BBC World Service radio and television and her work has been published and broadcast by Coda Story, Slate Magazine, Vice News, and CNN among others. Ellen Laipson is the Director of the International Security Program at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. She joined GMU after a distinguished 25-year career in government and as President of the Stimson Center (2002-2015). Her last post in the US government was Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council (1997-2002). She also served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, the National Security Council staff, and the Congressional Research Service. She was a member of the CIA External Advisory Panel from 2006 to 2009, President Obama's Intelligence Advisory Board from 2009 to 2013, and the Secretary of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board from 2011 to 2014. Ellen currently serves on the ISD board of advisers. Amy and Ellen's recommended books for the holidays: The Ecology of Nations by John M. Owen IV The Achilles Trap by Steve Coll The Cure of Troy by Seamus Heaney The opinions expressed in this conversation are strictly those of the participants and do not represent the views of Georgetown University or any government entity. Produced by Freddie Mallinson and Theo Malhotra. Recorded on December 16, 2024. Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world. Funding support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. For more, visit our website, and follow us on Linkedin, Twitter @GUDiplomacy, and Instagram @isd.georgetown

An Interview with Peter Berkowitz The US Constitution is one of the greatest governing documents in history. No other charter has so deliberately advanced the belief that the government's main purpose is to protect the individual rights of its citizens. The founders, recognizing the natural rights of mankind, created a seminal document that protects an individual's unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.   Despite the exceptionalism of the Constitution and its battle-tested endurance, there are grave threats that could severely undermine and weaken it.  As we continue our 20th anniversary celebration of Bradley Prize winners, our guest on this episode of Voices of Freedom is Peter Berkowitz, one of the country's leading political thinkers and Constitutional scholars. Berkowitz warns that a decades long movement to distort the meaning of rights, the weaponization of the legal system, and a general lack of understanding of our rights, pose serious challenges to the preservation of the Constitution.     Topics Discussed on this Episode:  ·         What drew Berkowitz to the study of the Constitution and America's founding principles  ·         Current threats to the Constitution  ·         Politicization of the Supreme Court  ·         Expansion of the administrative state  ·         Differences on the right about the role of government and foreign policy  ·         America's role in the world  ·         Pro-Palestinian protests and anti-American sentiment  ·         Opportunity for higher education reform  ·         Will the Constitution endure?  Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He previously served as the Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. Berkowitz is a columnist for RealClear Politics and is a 2017 Bradley Prize winner.   

Daniel Pipes taught history at Harvard University and the University of Chicago, served on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff under President Reagan, administered Fulbright Fellowships, and founded the Middle East Forum. Israel Victory is his nineteenth book. A decent Gaza is possible, but first, the Palestinians must lose" - NEW BOOK - Israel Victory

Jared Cohen is Co-Head of the Office of Applied Innovation and President of Global Affairs at Goldman Sachs. He also serves on the Management Committee of the firm. Jared is also the most senior Goldman executive to visit Israel since October 7. But Jared did not just visit Israel – and meet with a range of senior Israeli political leaders and security officials – he also was in Ramallah, in the West Bank to meet Palestinian Authority officials and Jordan – just before Jordan participated in the extraordinary multi-national defense of Israel, despite tense relations between the Israeli and Jordanian governments. And since then, Jared has traveled extensively throughout the Persian Gulf States, where he has a long history of deep relationships. It was interesting to get a fresh take from Jared on this region in transition. Prior to joining Goldman, Jared was an executive at Alphabet, before which he was Google's first Director of Ideas and Chief Advisor to Google's then CEO and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. From 2006 to 2010, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Jared is a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including "One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide," "Children of Jihad," "The New Digital Age: Transforming Nations, Business, and our Lives," which he co-authored with Eric Schmidt, and, most recently, "Life After Power: Seven Presidents and their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House," which you can order here: https://tinyurl.com/5xm8v7ft OR https://tinyurl.com/2ua6mzjd Paper discussed in this episode: "The rise of geopolitical swing states" -- https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/the-rise-of-geopolitical-swing-states.html

Dr. Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, former Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, executive secretary of the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights, and senior adviser to the Secretary of State. Naturally we talk about princess Kate. But we also cover additction to technology, the growing tensions between secular and religious Israelis, and the bad and worse options in Gaza. Joing the AAJ conversation on Susbtack! askajew.substack.comEmail us your questions askajewpod@gmail.com ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Want to help us grow? Rate and review us 5 stars on Apple podcasts and Spotify ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In late July 2013, Vladimir Putin visited Kiev. There he celebrated the 1,025th anniversary of Christianity coming to the Kievan Rus. There he and Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych stood shoulder to shoulder and celebrated the unity of Russia and Ukraine. At that moment–my guest Michael Kimmage writes– Putin and Yanukovych, Russia and Ukraine, seemed to be “twin protagonists of the same story.” Seven months later things were very different indeed. This was because of what my guest Michael Kimmage describes as a series of collisions which resulted in the war that began in 2014, and which accelerated in 2022. The first collision was between Russia and Ukraine; the second between Russia and Europe; and the third between Russia and the United States. Michael Kimmage is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America where is chair of the department. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He was last on Historically Thinking in Episode 165 to discuss his book The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy. His most recent book is Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability, and it is the subject of our conversation today.   For Further Investigation The list of Historically Thinking conversations either directly connection or tangentially related to this conversation with Michael Kimmage is vast. Here are just a few... Episode 211: The (Quiet) Russian Revolution Episode 212: The Perennial Russian Pivot to Asia Episode 284: The Greatest Russian General, in War and Peace Episode 345: The Ecology of Nations

In Collisions, Michael Kimmage, traces the origins of the Russia-Ukraine war. He unpicks the development of Ukraine and Russia's fractious relationship back to the end of the Cold War, through the central events that led to Vladimir Putin seizing Crimea in 2014 and, eight years later, initiating the most intensive and widescale military confrontation of the post-WWII era. This conflict ushers in a new age of global instability, and a collision between Russia and the Western alliance that is far hotter than confrontations during the Cold War. ---------- Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America. Michael is author of books and articles about international affairs, Soviet and Russian politics, and the European-American relationship. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State. He is a senior non-resident associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. ---------- CHAPTERS: 00:01:55 The fractious relationship with Russia never really went away 00:04:21 External peace and internal Terror during the interwar period 00:07:18 Impact of Putin's speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference 00:10:25 Were the signs of impending conflict accumulating in 2021? 00:14:36 Putin has used distraction and lying to fool West since 2014 00:16:57 The stages of Putinism with increasing internal repression 00:23:35 Grienance and victimhood that underpins Putin's worldview 00:29:24 The European contradiction - wealth but low defence investment 00:32:04 Lack of strategy and a concept of victory among the allies 00:34:29 Is there a chance in Europe's attitude to the war and Ukraine 00:40:05 Is 'Bidenism' just as risky for Ukraine as 'Trumpism'? 00:43:44 Is there a problem in Washington with the idea of taking Crimea? 00:49:35 Are we paying too little attention to weakness in Russian economy? ---------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/mkimmage https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-kimmage-66654a5/ https://www.csis.org/people/michael-kimmage https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/michael-kimmage https://history.catholic.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-profiles/kimmage-michael/index.html https://global.oup.com/academic/product/collisions-9780197751794?cc=gb&lang=en& https://www.gmfus.org/find-experts/michael-kimmage ---------- ARTICLES: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/authors/michael-kimmage https://www.americanpurpose.com/authors/michael-kimmage/ ---------- BOOKS: Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (2024) The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020) ---------- SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtain https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- LINKS: https://twitter.com/general_ben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hodges https://cepa.org/author/ben-hodges/ https://warsawsecurityforum.org/speaker/hodges-ben-lt-gen/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-hodges-1674b1172/ ---------- TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND: Save Ukraine https://www.saveukraineua.org/ Superhumans - Hospital for war traumas https://superhumans.com/en/ UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukraine https://unbroken.org.ua/ Come Back Alive https://savelife.in.ua/en/ Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchen https://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraine UNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyy https://u24.gov.ua/ Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation https://prytulafoundation.org ---------- PLATFORMS: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CurtainSilicon Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconcurtain/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/4thRZj6NO7y93zG11JMtqm Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkjonathan/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtain ---------- Welcome to the Silicon Curtain podcast. Please like and subscribe if you like the content we produce. It will really help to increase the popularity of our content in YouTube's algorithm. Our material is now being made available on popular podcasting platforms as well, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Do we really need more jeremiads exposing the Randian greed of Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg & Travis Kalanick? Rob Lalka's THE VENTURE ALCHEMISTS is about how big tech turned profits into power. but this has been the alchemy of American economic life for two hundred years. What isn't clear to me is how we are supposed to distinguish good big tech guys like Bill Gates, Pierre Omidyar, Craig Newmark, & Reid Hoffman from the evil Peter Thiel, Travis Kalanick and Elon Musk. Lalka's fetishization of “ordinary people” might be well meaning, but it doesn't really address today's alchemic challenge of democratizing the economic benefits of technological innovation. Rob Lalka is Professor of Practice in Management and the Albert R. Lepage Professor in Business at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business and the Executive Director of the Albert Lepage Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He has twice received the A.B. Freeman School's Excellence in Intellectual Contributions Award and is the author of a forthcoming book, The Venture Alchemists: How Big Tech Turned Profits Into Power, from Columbia University Press. Lalka moved to New Orleans from Washington, DC, where he was a director at Village Capital and a senior advisor at the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. Prior, he served in the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Partnerships and was on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, for which he was recognized with the State Department's Superior Honor Award and its Meritorious Honor Award. Lalka currently serves on the boards of Public Democracy, Inc., Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, and Venture For America in New Orleans. He graduated from Yale University, cum laude with distinction in both history and English, holds his master's degree in public policy from Duke University, and earned executive education certificates from Harvard Business School.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown childrenKeen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/russian-studies

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One war, three collisions: Russia with Ukraine, Europe, and the US. On the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion, Michael Kimmage analyses the disparate factors that led to war in Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (OUP Press, 2024). "After a few anomalous years of peace, Europe became in 2022 what it has always been, an epicentre of conflict, the fault line around which the biggest and worst geopolitical earthquakes tend to occur". A member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio from 2014-2016, Michael Kimmage is now a Professor of History at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. *The authors' book recommendations are Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan (Random House, 2002) and The Russo-Ukrainian War by Serhii Plokhy (Allen Lane, 2023). Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors, who also writes the twenty4two newsletter on Substack and hosts the In The Room podcast series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

In this week's episode, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Michael Kimmage to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "For a War of Worlds" Dr. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2017, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. Dr. Kimmage is the author of: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009); In History's Grip: Philip Roth's Newark Trilogy (2012); The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020). His forthcoming book is Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (2024).

This podcast episode is a joint and cross-over episode between the CSIS ChinaPower Podcast and the German Marshall Fund's China Global Podcast. We are joined by Bonnie Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas Christensen to discuss their recently released article titled “Taiwan and the True Sources of Deterrence.” The authors underline the article's key point, that assurances, alongside threats, are an integral part of effective deterrence. They emphasize that in order for deterrence to work, the threat of punishment must be not only credible but also conditional. Finally, the authors outline what actions each of the three actors- the U.S., China, and Taiwan- should take to effectively convey assurances to one another. Ms. Bonnie Glaser is the managing director of the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific program. She is also a nonresident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a senior associate with the Pacific Forum. She was previously senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS. Ms. Glaser has worked at the intersection of Asia-Pacific geopolitics and U.S. policy for more than three decades. Dr. Jessica Chen Weiss is a professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Formerly, Dr. Weiss served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars. Dr. Thomas Christensen is a professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the China and World Program at Columbia University. Prior to this, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research and teaching focus is on China's foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security.

This podcast episode is a joint and cross-over episode between the CSIS ChinaPower Podcast and the German Marshall Fund's China Global Podcast. We are joined by Bonnie Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas Christensen to discuss their recently released article titled “Taiwan and the True Sources of Deterrence.” The authors underline the article's key point, that assurances, alongside threats, are an integral part of effective deterrence. They emphasize that in order for deterrence to work, the threat of punishment must be not only credible but also conditional. Finally, the authors outline what actions each of the three actors- the U.S., China, and Taiwan- should take to effectively convey assurances to one another.Ms. Bonnie Glaser is the managing director of the German Marshall Fund's Indo-Pacific program. She is also a nonresident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a senior associate with the Pacific Forum. She was previously senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS. Ms. Glaser has worked at the intersection of Asia-Pacific geopolitics and U.S. policy for more than three decades.Dr. Jessica Chen Weiss is a professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government at Cornell University. She was previously an assistant professor at Yale University and founded the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. Formerly, Dr. Weiss served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars.Dr. Thomas Christensen is a professor of Public and International Affairs and Director of the China and World Program at Columbia University. Prior to this, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs with responsibility for relations with China, Taiwan, and Mongolia. His research and teaching focus is on China's foreign relations, the international relations of East Asia, and international security. 

RealClearPolitics president and co-founder Tom Bevan, Washington bureau chief Carl Cannon, Peter Berkowitz, former director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Mary Kissel, Executive Vice President at the global financial firm Stephens Incorporated and former senior addvisor to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, join Andrew Walworth on today's RCP Takeaway podcast.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by Dr. Michael Kimmage to discuss the current state of the Ukraine War, and potential paths for it going forward. Zachary sets this scene with his poem entitled, "For Yegor." Dr. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2017, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. Kimmage is the author of: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009); In History's Grip: Philip Roth's Newark Trilogy (2012); The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020). He writes frequently for Foreign Affairs and other major publications. He has a forthcoming book on the history of the Ukraine War, Collisions.

Professor Russell A. Berman joins the Psychedelic Podcast to explore the captivating life and works of controversial German writer Ernst Jünger. Find episode links, summary, and transcript here: https://thethirdwave.co/podcast/episode-201-russell-a-berman-phd/ Jünger's initial career as a German officer shaped his early books examining war and politics. After the war, Jünger continued writing prolifically, exploring genres like science fiction and nature. He remained a contentious figure due to his conservative and military background. However, in his later years, Jünger became interested in drugs and altered states of consciousness. His book “Approaches,” later edited by Professor Berman, serves as an autobiography through the lens of his experiences with mind-expanding substances. As the episode unfolds, Professor Berman and Paul F. Austin unpack the book “Approaches” and Jünger's psychedelic perspectives. Russell A. Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he co-directs the Working Group on the Middle East and the Islamic World. He formerly served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State, focusing on transatlantic relations, and as a member of the Commission on Inalienable Rights. He is also a member of the National Humanities Council. Berman has been awarded a Mellon Faculty Fellowship at Harvard and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for research in Berlin. He has also been honored with the Federal Service Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany. His books include The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma and Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture—both of which won the Outstanding Book Award of the German Studies Association. He has edited several translations of works by Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt. Highlights: Dr. Berman frames Jünger's life; world wars, political activism, and literary works. Professor Berman reflects on the history of drug culture. Jünger's writings on psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and more. How altered states impacted Jünger's religious life and philosophy. Jünger's relationship with Albert Hofmann, the man who first synthesized LSD. Examining Jünger, Hofmann, Timothy Leary, & Richard Alpert's (Ram Dass) shared history and psychedelics perspectives. Jünger's nuanced place in German political history. Why Dr. Berman is fascinated with Jünger's life and writings. Dr. Berman reads selections from Junger's book Approaches. Links: Professor Berman's website: https://profiles.stanford.edu/russell-berman Jünger's Book, “Approaches: Drugs and Altered States” (edited by Russell A. Berman): https://amzn.to/3XfccPH Jünger's Book, “The Storm of Steel”: https://amzn.to/44bdzRS Jünger's Book, “The Adventurous Heart”: https://amzn.to/42PuzMi Jünger's Book, “On the Marble Cliffs”: https://amzn.to/3phqXF9 Jünger's Book, “Forest Passage”: https://amzn.to/44t2CLF Jünger's Book, “Eumeswil”: https://amzn.to/3CKMcC9 “The Decadent Society” byRoss Douthat: https://amzn.to/42Vdhxg Book, “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare “ by Henry Miller: https://amzn.to/3peswDL Eleusinian Mysteries: https://amzn.to/3pd485B (Blog) The History of LSD: From Hero to Villain & Back Again: https://thethirdwave.co/the-history-of-lsd/ These show links contain affiliate links. Third Wave receives a small percentage of the product price if you purchase through the above affiliate links. Episode Sponsors: CURED Nutrition's Serenity Gummies. Get 15% off by using coupon code “THIRDWAVE” at checkout.

With the Ukrainian counter offensive underway, we've brought on Michael Kimmage to discuss the ins and outs of the Ukraine War, Putin & Zelensky, Nuclear War,  and finally what the future of the war will look like. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history and department chair at the Catholic University of America. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. His latest book, The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy, was published by Basic Books in April 2020. He is the chair of the Kennan Institute Advisory Council.TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 The Ukraine War and Russia's Shifts3:38 Paradoxical War in Ukraine and Russia10:28 Putin and Zelensky in Ukraine Conflict22:16 Ukraine and Russia Situation32:11 Russian-Ukrainian Conflict and Consequences40:26 The War in UkraineSupport the show:https://www.patreon.com/TheAftermathDailyAftermath Daily Social Media:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJPpxQ0gV0jiO-IcObsv4CAhttps://www.instagram.com/afterpoddaily/https://www.instagram.com/theaftermathdaily/https://twitter.com/DaiIyAftermathSupport the show

Dr. William Inboden discusses President Reagan's strategy and approach to defeating the Soviet Union towards the end of the Cold War. About the Lecture: With decades of hindsight, the peaceful end of the Cold War seems a foregone conclusion. But in the early 1980s, most experts believed the Soviet Union was strong, stable, and would last into the next century. Ronald Reagan entered the White House with a different view. Rather than seeing the Soviet Union as a rival superpower to be contained, Reagan viewed Soviet Communism as a vile idea to be defeated. Accordingly, he developed a comprehensive strategy designed to deter Soviet strengths, exploit Soviet weaknesses, and bring Soviet communism to a negotiated surrender. About the Speakers: Dr. William Inboden is Executive Director and William Powers, Jr. Chair at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas-Austin. He also serves as Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and Editor-in-Chief of the Texas National Security Review. Inboden's other roles include Associate with the National Intelligence Council, Member of the CIA Director's Historical Advisory Panel, and member of the State Department's Historical Advisory Council. Previously he served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning on the National Security Council at the White House, at the Department of State as a Member of the Policy Planning Staff, as a staff member for Representative Tom DeLay and Senator Sam Nunn, and as a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and his commentary has appeared in numerous outlets including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Review, NPR, CNN, and BBC. Inboden is the author or co-editor of four books. His most recent book is The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink (Dutton, a Penguin Random House imprint 2023). Inboden received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in history from Yale University and his A.B. in history from Stanford University. ***Learn more about IWP graduate programs: https://www.iwp.edu/academic-programs/ ***Make a gift to IWP: https://interland3.donorperfect.net/weblink/WebLink.aspx?name=E231090&id=18

The early 1980s was a time of great political uncertainty. With the threat of nuclear destruction seemingly imminent, the emergence of global terrorism, and the rise of proxy conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, Ronald Reagan entered the White House with many global security problems on his hands, and very few clear solutions. He wasn't alone, though. Throughout the end of the Cold War, Reagan was supported by a national security team with competing ideals to solve these looming crises. Recently declassified documents and interviews with many of these senior Reagan administration officials have revealed a new storyline toward the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War and the remaking of the world order. Guiding us through today's conversation is Dr. William Inboden. William Inboden is a historian of national security and professor at the UT Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs. Prior to joining the UT faculty, he has served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council, worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and served as a congressional staff member. He also served as head of the London-based Legatum Institute, and as a Civitas Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Inboden's commentary has been featured in op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and more. As a professor, he has been awarded the “Texas 10” Award by the Texas Exes Alumni Association, selected as “Lecturer of the Year” at the LBJ School, and his classes Presidential Decision-making in National Security and Ethics and International Affairs have been voted as "Best Class in the LBJ School" and “Class Most Likely to Challenge Your Assumptions.”He is the author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink and Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment. Visit his pages on the University of Texas at Austin website and on the Clements Center website.  

This week, Mike and Jude are joined by Kurt M. Campbell, Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs in the National Security Council, and Mira Rapp-Hooper, Senior Adviser on China at the U.S. Department of State's Policy Planning Staff.  They begin by discussing educational and professional experiences that build the groundwork for successful careers in international relations.  They then discuss the recent one-year anniversary of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, noting that the approach reflects the recognition of “a new strategic era” in the region. They underline the Strategy's focus on alliances and emphasize the importance of promoting broader regional engagement and shared interests beyond the framework of competition with China. Next, they discuss the implications of China's evolving diplomatic approach towards the United States and regional partners. They conclude the conversation by exploring recent narratives of China's overreach, and how U.S. strategy might react to a course correction in Beijing that would present China as a stronger, more reliable partner in the Indo-Pacific.

For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.”David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass' experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. He's even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass' experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Works mentioned during this episode:The book The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens by Richard HaassThe book Foreign Policy Begins at Home by Richard HaassThe movie History of the World: Part IThe book Thinking in Time by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. MayThe TV show Full Swing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jeremi and Zachary are joined by guest Dr. Michael Kimmage to discuss The Russo-Ukrainian War. Zachary sets the scene with his poem entitled, "A Year After the War Began." Dr. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2017, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. Kimmage is the author of: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009); In History's Grip: Philip Roth's Newark Trilogy (2012); The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020). He writes frequently for Foreign Affairs and other major publications.

It seems like the past century has been least kind to Ukraine, of all the countries in Europe. Fought over repeatedly in WWII by rampaging armies, which came off the back of revolution, civil war, terror, and genocide in the Holodomor. Ukraine has bene plagued with monumental events — wars, famines, political upheavals. But there's a recurring theme – its struggle to break away from Russia – which, like an abusive husband, refuses to let Ukraine go, while threatening to destroy everything in retribution. Putin is just the latest incarnation of a leaders pursuing a monstrous policy of imperialism, domination, and genocidal action whenever they felt Ukraine slipping out of their control. Andrew S. Weiss is James Family Chair and Vice President for Studies at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. There he leads an international team of experts on Russia, Ukraine, and the wider region. He has previously been a Director at the RAND Centre for Russia and Eurasia. Andrew's career has spanned both public and private sectors. He served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.

This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, Chuck and Sam are joined by William Inboden, author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, and Chris Stirewalt of the American Enterprise Institute. -William Inboden joined the LBJ School faculty after many years of working as a policymaker in Washington, DC, and directing a foreign policy think tank overseas. He is the William Powers, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and a distinguished scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. He is also a National Intelligence Council associate and serves on the CIA's Historical Advisory Panel and State Department's Historical Advisory Committee.Dr. Inboden previously served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council, worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and served as a congressional staff member. His think-tank experience includes the American Enterprise Institute and running the London-based Legatum Institute. He is a Council on Foreign Relations life member and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and his commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Weekly Standard and USA Today, and on NPR, CNN and BBC. His classes, "Ethics & International Relations" and "Presidential Decision-Making in National Security," have been selected in recent years as the Best Class in the LBJ School. His most recent book, on the Reagan administration's national security policies, is The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World (2022).-Chris Stirewalt is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he focuses on American politics, voting trends, public opinion, and the media. He is concurrently a contributing editor and weekly columnist for The Dispatch. Before joining AEI, he was political editor of Fox News Channel, where he helped coordinate political coverage across the network and specialized in on-air analysis of polls and voting trends.Before joining Fox News Channel, Mr. Stirewalt served as political editor of the Washington Examiner, where he wrote a twice-weekly column and led political coverage for the newspaper. He also served as political editor of the Charleston Daily Mail and West Virginia Media. Mr. Stirewalt began his career at the Wheeling Intelligencer in West Virginia.A well-known political commentator, Mr. Stirewalt wrote about his personal experience of the 2020 election in the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of “Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists” (Twelve Books, 2018), in which he looks at American populism through the history of seven famous populists.Mr. Stirewalt is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where he studied history.-Connect with us:www.breakingbattlegrounds.voteTwitter: www.twitter.com/Breaking_BattleFacebook: www.facebook.com/breakingbattlegroundsInstagram: www.instagram.com/breakingbattlegroundsLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/breakingbattlegrounds This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingbattlegrounds.substack.com

In this special end of the year episode of .think Atlantic, our host Thibault Muzergues is joined by special guest, none other than IRI President Dr. Daniel Twining to review the transatlantic space's most influential events of the year. Dr. Twining's expertise regarding political parties, autocracies, and strategies as we enter the New Year will be the center of this episode's discussion. Dr. Daniel Twining joined the International Republican Institute as President in 2017, where he leads the Institute's mission to advance democracy and freedom around the world. He heads IRI's team of over 800 global experts to link citizens and governments, motivate people to engage in the political process, and guide politicians and government officials to be responsive to citizens. Previously, Dr. Twining served as counselor to the president and director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund, as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, as the foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain, and as a staff member of the U.S. Trade Representative. He has been an associate of the National Intelligence Council, taught at Georgetown University, and served as a military instructor associated with the Naval Postgraduate School. He serves on the Bush Institute's Human Freedom Advisory Council and the Wilson Center's Asia Advisory Board. He has been a columnist for Foreign Policy and Nikkei and served as an advisor to six presidential campaigns. From 2004-7, he was the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar at Oxford University. Find Dan on Twitter: @DCTwining Find IRI on Twitter: @IRIglobal Find Thibault on Twitter: @tmuzergues Visit IRI's website at www.iri.org

Who is Vladimir Putin? In the West's collective imagination, Putin is a deceitful cartoon villain, constantly plotting to destroy his enemies not only in Ukraine but around the world. But how did a mid-level KGB officer become one of the most powerful leaders in Russian history? In a unique graphic novel format, Russian expert Andrew Weiss chronicles Putin's political rise and reveals the truth behind the persona that Putin has spent his career cultivating. Weiss offers a compelling look at the myths surrounding Putin as a take-no-prisoners political mastermind and exposes who is really behind the façade. Andrew Weiss is the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. He previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff and was a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Longtime Russia watcher Andrew Weiss took an unconventional approach to his new biography, Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir Putin. Teaming up with illustrator Box Brown, Weiss wrote a graphic novel that tells the story of Putin's rise from an impoverished childhood in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to the undisputed authoritarian ruler of Russia. A big theme of the book is how Putin imagined an idea of himself as a strongman through spy movies and pulp novels that he devoured as a young person. The graphic novel seems a particularly fitting format for exploring Putin, who has successfully cultivated a caricature of himself in the West as a cunning, sophisticated, hyper-masculine leader. But, as Weiss writes, “seeing Putin as he wants us to see him, rather than as he is,” makes it harder to confront the challenge Russia poses to Western interests and security in Europe. Shane Harris talked to Weiss about his own childhood in California and why he was drawn at an early age to studying Russia. Weiss previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. He's now the James Family Chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees research on Russia and Eurasia. Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.Among the works mentioned in this episode:Andrew Weiss' graphic novel on Putin: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250760753/accidentalczar Weiss' bio: https://carnegieendowment.org/experts/824 Weiss on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Illustrator Brian “Box” Brown: https://www.boxbrown.com/ Other graphic novels that inspired Weiss:Maus by Art Spiegelman: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/171065/the-complete-maus-by-art-spiegelman/ On Tyranny Graphic Edition by Timothy Snyder, Illustrated by Nora Krug https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653012/on-tyranny-graphic-edition-by-timothy-snyder-illustrated-by-nora-krug/Movies and TV shows discussed in this episode: The Shield and the Sword: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166790/ Seventeen Moments of Spring: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069628/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Executive Director and William Powers, Jr. Chair, Clements Center for National Security; Associate Professor at the University of Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public AffairsWilliam Inboden joined the LBJ School faculty after many years of working as a policymaker in Washington, DC, and directing a foreign policy think tank overseas. He is the William Powers, Jr. executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and a distinguished scholar at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law. He is also a National Intelligence Council associate and serves on the CIA's Historical Advisory Panel and State Department's Historical Advisory Committee.Dr. Inboden previously served as senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council, worked on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and served as a congressional staff member. His think-tank experience includes the American Enterprise Institute and running the London-based Legatum Institute. He is a Council on Foreign Relations life member and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, and his commentary has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Foreign Affairs, The Weekly Standard and USA Today, and on NPR, CNN and BBC. His classes, "Ethics & International Relations" and "Presidential Decision-Making in National Security," have been selected in recent years as the Best Class in the LBJ School. His most recent book, on the Reagan administration's national security policies, is The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan in the White House and the World (2022).

This week, Jeremi and Zachary talk with Dr. Michael Kimmage about how the Ukraine War has developed over the course of the year, and how they predict things will progress in the future. Dr. Michael Kimmage is a professor of history at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. He is also a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and chair of the Advisory Council for the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. From 2014 to 2017, Kimmage served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He publishes widely on international affairs, U.S.-Russian relations and American diplomatic history. Kimmage is the author of: The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers and the Lessons of Anti-Communism (2009); In History's Grip: Philip Roth's Newark Trilogy (2012); The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy (2020). He writes frequently on the Ukraine War and related topics for Foreign Affairs.

In Washington, there is a growing fatalism that a confrontation with China is unavoidable—and perhaps even necessary. What does success look like in a world where the United States is reflexively countering China's every move? Is catastrophic conflict the only acceptable destination? Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific studies at Cornell University, believes today's debate over how best to deal with China is far too narrow. She recently completed a yearlong post working on the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department. She observed that in policy circles in Washington, debate is often stifled as no one wants to appear “soft” on China. As she writes in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, the result is that “the instinct to counter every Chinese initiative, project, and provocation remains predominant, crowding out efforts to revitalize an inclusive international system that would protect U.S. interests and values.” We discuss how U.S.-Chinese relations have become especially fraught, the potential consequences of zero-sum competition, and what the costs are to American democracy.  You can find transcripts and more episodes of “The Foreign Affairs Interview” at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

This week, we discuss what organizations like the International Republican Institute are doing to help curb the malicious actions of states who repress their people. What are the roles of interests and values in the context of America's foreign policy? What can democratic countries do to counter authoritarian regimes? What is the role of the U.S. Congress in shaping foreign policy, and how this arrangement uniquely American? Dr. Daniel Twining is President of the International Republican Institute. Previously, Dr. Twining directed the German Marshall Fund's Asia program, was a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and served as a foreign policy advisor to the late U.S. Senator John McCain. We are thrilled to have him join to answer these questions! Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Amy Searight is a leading U.S. expert on Southeast Asia and U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. Dr. Searight served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia from 2014 to 2016, before which she served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, USAID, and on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. Today, Amy is a senior associate for Asia at CSIS. On this episode, Amy offered a preview of the historic U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit, which U.S. President Joe Biden will host in Washington on May 12-13. In addition to expectations for the summit, we discussed the challenges facing ASEAN, its members' views on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and economic framework, China's relations with the bloc, the Philippines election, and more.

Dr. Amy Searight is a leading U.S. expert on Southeast Asia and U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region. Dr. Searight served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia from 2014 to 2016, before which she served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, USAID, and on the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. Today, Amy is a senior associate for Asia at CSIS. On this episode, Amy offered a preview of the historic U.S.-ASEAN Special Summit, which U.S. President Joe Biden will host in Washington on May 12-13. In addition to expectations for the summit, we discussed the challenges facing ASEAN, its members' views on the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy and economic framework, China's relations with the bloc, the Philippines election, and more.