453 | Benn Steil: The Rise & Fall of Henry Wallace and the Inevitability of the Cold War

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Benn Steil, author of The World That Wasn't: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century and Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins The Realignment. Benn and Marshall discuss the origins of the Cold War and postwar U.S. foreign policy through the career of Henry Wallace, FDR's VP before Harry Truman. They discuss despite claims from critics of U.S. foreign policy like the director Oliver Stone, a Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was inevitable.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.
0:05.0	Hey everyone, welcome back to the show.
0:10.0	Some of my favorite realignment episodes are once where we take a break from the public policy
0:14.8	topic of the week and instead focused on how history can inform how we think about present day challenges.
0:20.3	I think today's conversation with the author Ben Seal he's written a book
0:24.4	The Word that Wasn't Henry Wallace and the fate of the American century perfectly fits
0:28.6	into this framework so number one this is just an examination of especially the period during Harry S. Truman's first term after he replaced
0:37.6	FDR, entered World War II, and of course began America's entry into the Cold War period.
0:43.0	Any time we could spend in that period,
0:45.0	which culminated in a close-limited election,
0:47.0	which is an election, which definitely resonates with today's
0:50.0	the 2024 election,
0:51.0	it is incredibly helpful.
0:52.0	I think that I'm going to take as many
0:53.2	opportunities possible to focus on that period. Secondly though, Henry Wallace
0:58.1	the character provided in the book and we spend time talking about during this
1:01.3	conversation is an interesting what if of
1:03.7	history figure especially because if he had not been replaced on the Democratic ticket
1:08.1	and people before by Harry Truman we could have seen an entirely different man and
1:12.0	entirely different approach to US foreign policy at the start of the Cold War era.
1:16.0	So in a time in the 20-20s, a lot of folks are going around terms like Great Power Competition, Cold War II, etc. etc.
1:24.0	I think it's important we always remember that there are choices and figures individual
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