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 Perspective from Palestine w/ Fathi Nimer
Netanyahu’s Clampdown on Israeli Dissidents, the History of Hamas, and the Blowback of Netanyahu’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy w/ Zachary Foster
Israel/Palestine, the Bombing of Gaza, Hamas, and the Danger of Irrationality in the Current Moment w/ Ian S. Lustick
Israel/Palestine, Hamas, the Bombing of Gaza, 9/11, and Blowback w/ Scott Horton
The Calculus of Hamas and the Strategy of Atrocity in Warfare w/ Christopher W. Jones
Continued Coverage of Hamas Attack, Israel’s Retaliation in Gaza, and Events Unfolding in the Middle East w/ ReThinking Foreign Policy’s Mitchell Plitnick
Hamas Attack, Israel’s Retaliation in Gaza, and More w/ Abe Silberstein
The Hamas Attack, Israel/Palestine, U.S. Foreign Policy, and How Hamas Got Power in the First Place w/ Prof. Stephen Zunes
Hamas’ Unprecedented Attack on Israel and How It May Change Middle East Geopolitics Irrevocably w/ James M. Dorsey
The Secret History of Watergate: Nixon, Howard Hughes, and Blackmail in Politics w/ Jonathan Marshall
The Political Right and Equality: Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity w/ Matt McManus
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Persecution of Armenians w/ Alfred de Zayas, Former UN Independent Expert on International Order
U.S. Foreign Policy, Great Power Competition, and the Azerbaijani Ethnic Cleansing of Armenians w/ Mark Movsesian
Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories w/ Mike Rothschild
The Afghanistan Ouroboros, the BCCI, and 9/11 w/ Blowback’s Noah Kulwin
Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times
War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine w/ Norman Solomon
Military Carbon Emissions & Congressional Blocking of DoD Emission Reduction Efforts w/ Hanna Homestead
Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored w/ Ray McGinnis
No Justice, No Police?: The Politics of Protest and Social Change w/ Matt Clement
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