Power Problems

Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses her book First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, forthcoming from Yale University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dartmouth College's Daryl Press and George Washington University's Nicholas Anderson discuss their modeling of an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula, assess the balance of power between the North and South, and explore the implications for the US military alliance with South Korea.

Show Notes
Nicolas Anderson, Daryl Press, “Lost Seoul: Assessing Pyongyang’s Other Deterrent,” Texas National Security Review Vol 8 Issue 3, Summer 2025.
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Rosemary Kelanic, Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, discusses the Israel-Iran war, U.S. involvement, whether regime change is the objective, and the risks of escalation.

Show Notes

Rosemary Kelanic, “A U.S. War With Iran Would Be a Catastrophe ,” New York Times, June 14, 2025.
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Samuel Seitz, a fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program, explores so-called “madman behavior” in international politics and whether it’s effective in gaining leverage in international confrontations. He explains why problems of signaling, credibility, and reassurance tend to make madman tactics ineffective and he discusses examples from the Cold War to Trump’s first and second administrations.

Show Notes

Samuel Seitz, Caitlin Talmadge, “The Predictable Hazards of Unpredictability: Why Madman Behavior Doesn’t Work,” The Washington Quarterly 43:3, 2020.
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Christopher Chivvis and Lauren Morganbesser of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discuss the foreign policy attitudes of Gen Z, the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, and the increasing salience of transnational issues, among other topics.

Show Notes

Christopher Chilis and Lauren Morganbesser, “What Gen Z Thinks about U.S. Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 17, 2025
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