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You know, you need a real estate license to sell real estate, but not to practice foreign policy. You're listening to war college, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front

lines. Here are your hosts, Matthew Galt and Jason Fields. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. Jason Fields is busy today.

In the year of our Lord 2018, America's at war all over the planet with no sign of stopping.

One of our closest allies allegedly killed an outbreak. because at war all over the planet with no sign of stopping.

One of our closest allies allegedly killed an outspoken journalist before dismembering him with a

bone saw, and the commander-in-chief is questioning NATO, pulling out of the

intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty Treaty and destroying old trade agreements.

How the hell did we get here and how the hell did we get out?

Here to help us answer that question is Stephen M. Walt. Walt is the Robert and Renea Belfer Professor of International

Relations at Harvard University, a contributor at foreign policy, and the author of the new book,

The Hell of Good Intentions, Americans Foreign Policy Elite elite, and the decline of U.S. primacy.

Sir, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to be talking with you.

So, Walt, how the hell did we get here? What is going on? What's the big picture?

Well, the inspiration for the book was to try and answer that very question.

That why was the extraordinary optimism with which we greeted the end of the Cold War and looked ahead from the early 1990s

disappointed in so many ways if you just compare where we were in 1993-94 and where we are today, it's really quite striking.

Back then, 25 years ago, we had a reasonably good relations with Russia and China. Democracy was spreading around the world.

...