The Foreign Affairs Interview

By some measures, there is more war in the world today than at any point since World War II. Today’s wars have brought a level of destruction, disruption, and global risk that would have been hard to imagine not long ago, often in places where such combat seemed a thing of the past. Policymakers once again worry about nuclear use, and military planners once again contemplate war between great powers, including the United States and China, and NATO and Russia. And all of this comes as the Trump administration dismantles key pieces of the international system and technology scrambles expectations about how wars start, unfold, and end. 

No one has left a greater mark on our understanding of wars past and present than Lawrence Freedman. Freedman has written a slew of definitive books on military strategy and history, and he has offered some of the most penetrating analysis of Iran, Ukraine, and more, in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. He is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London.  

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Freedman on Monday, September 14, about the course of today’s conflicts; about what is and is not changing in the nature of war; and about why policymakers, military officers, and strategists so often start wars based on bad assumptions—and how those bad assumptions explain some of the biggest calamities in global security today. 

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz six months ago, the world seemed on the verge of an energy crisis that would upend economies, governments, and much else. It was, as Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff pointed out in Foreign Affairs at the time, the largest disruption of global energy flow in history.

The world’s ability to manage that disruption has been surprising—the crisis many expected has not come. But in just the last few years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fits and starts of the green transition, and the AI buildout have remade energy markets and the politics undergirding them—and shown energy to be a devastating economic weapon. Bordoff and O’Sullivan have mapped out this new energy order across a series of essays for Foreign Affairs. They warn that the relative stability of recent months cannot be cause for complacency.

Bordoff is director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and was senior energy adviser in the Obama administration. O’Sullivan is director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center and was the deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to them on Tuesday, September 8, about the future of the Strait of Hormuz; China’s clean-energy dominance and the Trump administration’s Venezuela oil deal; and how the return of the energy weapon is transforming geopolitics and national security.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month.

Many analysts of U.S. China policy have reacted to this reversal with dismay. But Jessica Chen Weiss sees it as an opportunity to forge a more sensible approach. Weiss, a professor and the faculty director of the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former State Department official, has warned of the dangers of zero-sum thinking about China in a series of essays for Foreign Affairs. Her most recent essay, in the September/October issue, focuses on the myth and the reality of China’s critical mineral dominance.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Weiss on August 31 about what China wants—which is also the title of her forthcoming book—and what U.S. foreign policy can do to meet those ambitions without resorting to dangerous confrontation.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the country remains dire, and the collective forgetting of the United States’ longest war carries costs of its own.

Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith have each spent many years working on and within Afghanistan. Miller, now president of the Asia Foundation, was a longtime U.S. diplomat who became a top official focused on Afghanistan from 2013 to 2017. Smith worked as a political affairs officer for the United Nations in Afghanistan from 2015 to 2018 before serving as an Afghanistan analyst for the International Crisis Group.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Miller and Smith on Tuesday, August 25, about the lessons and legacy of the American war in Afghanistan, how the country has changed under Taliban rule, and the questions that U.S. policymakers should grapple with moving forward.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term?

Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, two senior officials in the Biden administration, argue that the U.S. alliance system will not just survive Trump but can emerge stronger, even better suited to countering China and its partners. Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argues that policymakers in allied capitals and beyond must accept that the United States has fundamentally changed—and get ready to survive a more turbulent and contested world. 

Dan Kurtz-Phelan wanted to bring Campbell, Doshi, and Leonard together in one conversation to lay out and test these contrasting arguments. They spoke on August 12 about possible futures for U.S. foreign policy—and what those paths mean for a global order built by a very different United States.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.