#83 Foreign Policy in American History w/ Joyce Kaufman
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2018
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There is no question that Donald Trump's approach to foreign affairs is nothing we've seen from the Presidents who preceded him. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, Mark Landler argued that the Trump Administration has broken a 70-year tradition in America's foreign policy. Whether this is an abrogation of America's responsibility to the globe or a necessary change for the good of the country requires knowledge of what came before, so Bob & Ben caught up with Whittier College's Joyce Kaufman to learn about the origins of American diplomacy and the reasons that the US became so heavily involved abroad. It turns out America's approach to foreign relations in 2018 may have a lot in common with earlier periods of American history.
Dr. Joyce Kaufman is an expert on International Relations in the Department of Political Science at at Whittier College, where she has taught for more than 3 decades. She is the author of multiple books, including A Concise History of US Foreign Policy (4th edition, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). She previously served as a Foreign Affairs Specialist in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense (1977-79). Visit Dr. Kaufman's faculty page for more on her work and publications.
For more on this episode or others, visit www.TheRoadToNow.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Bob Crawford, and as always, I'm joined by Dr. Ben Sawyer. |
| 0:09.7 | Ben, when I think about the great diplomats, the great diplomatic moments in American history, |
| 0:17.9 | one thing that I could never imagine is, uh, my button is bigger than yours. |
| 0:27.9 | My button is bigger than yours. |
| 0:30.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:31.6 | I mean, that's like your mama smokes your popa cigars, you know? |
| 0:35.2 | Oh yeah. |
| 0:36.1 | Yeah, yeah. |
| 0:36.2 | I know. |
| 0:36.7 | I know. |
| 0:37.1 | It's hilarious. Uh, and aside from being like petty. I know. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know. I know. It's hilarious. |
| 0:38.7 | And aside from being like petty, as I said recently that it's like, it reminds me of, of the kid in, uh, in eighth grade who's got a flawn and stuff, but always knows he, he's going to say that his big brother can beat you up because he knows he's not going have to do the thump and somebody else is going to do it for him. |
| 0:55.6 | We're just coming off the Christmas holiday. |
| 0:57.4 | The Christmas... say that his big brother can beat you up because he knows he's not going to have to do the thump and somebody else is going to do it for him. |
| 1:12.2 | We're just coming off the Christmas holiday. The movie A Christmas Story. Yes. Are you familiar with it? Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Love that movie. Scott Farkas. Oh, no. Farkas. Donald Trump is Scott Farkas. well i I guess we're going to find out who Ralphie is, right? |
| 1:15.0 | That's right. |
| 1:16.2 | That doesn't sound good. |
| 1:18.2 | No, it doesn't. |
| 1:19.8 | So how was your break? |
| 1:21.6 | Man, it was great. |
| 1:23.6 | I got a little bit of free time, I guess, if you call it that. |
| 1:27.0 | I always find something to do. Been doing a little bit of work on, I guess if you call it that. I always find something to do. |
... |
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