This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Michael J. Mazarr, author of the book Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy, which examines the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003. Mike is a senior political scientist at the Rand Corporation and a former professor at the National War College, and he warns of certain parallels between what happened 20 years ago and the growing sense of urgency and moral imperative to confront China that he now senses in Washington.
3:40 – Patterns that lead to poor decision-making in the realm of foreign policy and warfare
8:30 – Parallels between American discourse on Iraq and China
13:54 – American exceptionalism and the missionary mindset
15:51 – Much like the US experience after 9/11, could an equivalent “deeply felt imperative” trigger catastrophic conflict with China?
21:15 – The danger of moralistic thinking overriding rational cost-benefit analysis
27:37 – What does Washington hope to gain from the imputation of CCP illegitimacy?
31:47 – Debunking the claim that Washington exaggerates threats for the sake of increasing the defense budget
35:49 – The role of media and Congress in the lead-up to the Iraq war
40:49 – The difference between effective policymaking and policy negligence: assessing the Bush and Biden administrations
47:29 – Adapting the liberal “rules-based international order” to reflect contemporary realities
52:27 – The shortcomings of a reductionist “democracy vs. authoritarianism” foreign policy
A full transcript of this podcast is available at TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Mike: Mr. X and the Pacific by Paul Heer; The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment by Geoffrey Kabaservice
Kaiser: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Podcast Golden Week: Middle Earth #16
Is China the Enemy? Featuring Ezra Vogel and Orville Schell
Christian Shepherd on Xinjiang and China's changing ethnic policy
Introducing 'Strangers in China'
‘Mirrorlands’: Ed Pulford on the Sino-Russian border
Trade war economics, with Andy Rothman
Making the world safe for autocracy: Jessica Chen Weiss on what Beijing wants
Matt Sheehan on California's role in U.S.-China relations
The world according to Jeremy Goldkorn
Wealth and Power: Intellectuals in China
China correspondent Emily Feng: From the FT to NPR
Michael Swaine on the ‘China is not an enemy’ open letter
An update on the Hong Kong protests
Searching for roots in China
Military Strategy and Politics in the PRC: A Conversation with Taylor Fravel
Umbrella Revolution 2.0 – or something else? Antony Dapiran on the Hong Kong demonstrations
A voice of reason within the Beltway: Ryan Hass vs. the so-called bipartisan consensus
A student leader 30 years after Tiananmen: Wu’er Kaixi reflects on the movement
China's New Red Guards: Jude Blanchette on China's Far Left
Charlene Barshefsky on Trump’s Trade War
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free