Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael
Society & Culture
On this edition of Parallax Views, Christopher Mott, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy and author The Formless Empire: A Short History of Diplomacy and Warfare in Central Asia, joins Parallax Views to discuss his recent CovertAction Magazine piece "Samantha Power and the Cosmopolitan Crusaders". Applying his knowledge as someone who has worked inside the U.S. State Department, Chris explains the foreign policy thought of the diplomat and government official Samantha Power, whose influential book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide was foundational to R2P (Responsible to Protect) doctrine. R2P, Mott explains, holds that powerful nations (ie: the U.S. and NATO-aligned states) have a duty to stop human rights abuses around the world. Although a noble cause in theory, Mott argues that R2P in practice has not always worked perfectly in practice. In this regard Mott examines the Obama-era intervention into Libya on humanitarian grounds and how Libya has turned into a chaotic failed state that's led to the return of the slave trade to North Africa. In addition to all of this Mott and I also discuss:
- Fear of another Weimar moment haunting beltway foreign policy circles and the role that plays in driving interventionist policymaking
- The question of isolationism, the specter of WWII, and Stephen Wertheim's Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy
- Foreign policy realism and its variations including offensive realism and defensive realism
- Sun Tzu, the risks of war, diplomacy vs. military force, and the question of grand strategy
- The role of ideological, systemic, and economic factors in U.S. foreign policy
- Democratic Peace Theory, American exceptionalism, and Kantian liberal cosmopolitanism
- Sanctions, the potential critique of their effectiveness in achieving state policy goals, and the Iran deal/JCPOA; sanctions as a form of economic warfare
- Jihadism, cosmopolitanism, and state collapse
- U.S.-China relations, human rights rhetoric, and whataboutisms
- American exceptionalism as having a right, left, and center form
- U.S. foreign policy, puritanical morality plays, and protagonist syndrome
- Tyler Cowen's Bloomberg op-ed arguing for using "Wokeism" (a very vague term removed from its original context on Black Twitter) to rebrand American exceptionalism
- And much, much more!
A Critique of Anne Applebaum's Autocracy, Inc. w/ Samuel McIlhagga
A Critique of Rachel Maddow's PREQUEL w/ Brandan P. Buck
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite w/ Musa al-Gharbi
Israel/Palestine, Christian Zionism, and the Effort to Build Bridges Between Palestinian Activists & Evangelical Christians w/ Gregory Khalil
The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding w/ William Hogeland
The Mainstream Media's Coverage of the Gaza War & Anti-Palestinian Bias w/ Dr. Assal Rad
Havana Syndrome Hoax?: Mass Panic, Shoddy Journalism, Media Sensationalism, and 60 Minutes w/ Robert E. Bartholomew
The Problem of the Revolving Door Phenomena and Matthew Yglesias's Strange Defense of It w/ Henry Burke
Project 2025 as Pax Romana, Militarization & the War on the Poor, the Christian Nationalist Agenda, & More w/ Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
Israel's Black Panthers: The Radicals Who Punctured a Nation's Founding Myth w/ Asaf Elia-Shalev
Techno-Authoritarianism, Balaji Srinivasan's Network State, and the Big Tech Oligarchs Backing MAGA w/ Gil Duran
Starvation Being Used as a Weapon of War in Sudan w/ Stan Cox
The RealPage Scandal, the Emerging AI Price Fixing Dystopia, and the Importance of the Antitrust Movement w/ Lee Hepner
The Last of the First Israeli Anti-Zionists: A Conversation w/ Moshe Machover About Israel, Jabotinsky's Iron Wall, Colonialism, and Matzpen
The OKC Bombing, Fed Shenanigans & Entrapment Plots, Right-Wing Hawks Co-Opting of Antiwar Politics, Peter Thiel & the Oligarchic War Machine, & More w/ Scott Horton
"Storm the Capitol" Turns the January 6th Insurrection Into a Board Game w/ Walker and Z. Behl
Judge Declares Google a Monopolist in Major Antitrust Victory w/ Emily Peterson-Cassin/Waffle House Workers Organize to Fight Unfair Labor Policies w/ Macy Stacher
Exposing the Grotesqueries of American Political Life Through Cartoons w/ Eli Valley
Venezuela's Election, Maduro, and What the U.S. Gets Wrong About Venezuela & Chavismo w/ Alejandro Velasco
Beyond the Water's Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy w/ Paul R. Pillar
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