American Foreign Policy: The Nuclear Threat

The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast

Hillsdale College

Government, Society & Culture, Education, History, Courses

4.6 • 621 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation before introducing Michael Anton.

We often treat foreign policy as a mystery that can only be understood by an enlightened few who have committed their lives to understanding the complexities of international life. This view is dangerous because it encourages citizens to ignore a critical aspect of American political life that it’s our duty to understand. And it’s false because the basics of foreign policy are commonsense and a joy to learn. For the Founders, the basic premise of foreign policy is simple—we must make every decision with a view towards securing the equal, natural rights of American citizens. This understanding requires that America’s leaders remain accountable to the people, and it places essential limits on our interventions abroad. Yet, for over a century, this traditional understanding of American foreign policy has been challenged by new and more ambitious doctrines that argue for increased American involvement and leadership abroad.

The rise of nuclear power and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction kept the Cold War from erupting into outright war between the great powers. The superior industrial and technological capacity of the United States enabled America to outlast the Soviet Union.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. I'm Jeremiah Regan, and I'm Juan
0:13.3	Lavalos. We're back with American Foreign Policy, Lecture 7, the nuclear threat. Nuclear
0:18.0	weapons represent a substantial change in the way of war and the threats
0:22.6	that human beings pose to one another. But I'm going to take umbrage with Christopher Nolan,
0:27.2	calling Oppenheimer the most important or most consequential man in world history. Yes, nuclear
0:33.2	weapons give vast power to those who possess them. But if we look at classical philosophy,
0:40.5	the Bible, early American political theory, or common sense, we know that human beings are
0:46.5	always looking for ways to get things from other human beings. And one of the ways that you get
0:50.9	things from other human beings is to harm them physically or kill them.
0:54.9	Nuclear weapons are an expansion upon that principle or that human tendency, but it's not a
1:01.0	creation of a new human tendency. You could look at the evolution of warfare from swords and
1:07.2	spears and axes to slings and bows, that's a change, the invention of gunpowder,
1:12.1	steam power and ships. All of these change the paradigm for what is necessary for human beings
1:17.6	to defend themselves from others. And nuclear weapons are an acceleration of that trend,
1:22.4	but they are just another marker in the way that human beings can destroy one another.
1:27.4	Yeah, it does create a change in the way that human beings can destroy one another.
1:34.0	Yeah, it does create a change in the way nations, especially nuclear nations,
1:40.6	relate to each other because once America develops the nuclear bomb and then the Soviets and then other countries follow after that, you have this idea that every nation now
1:47.2	wants to have nuclear weapons and they want to have them in a large quantity and that leads to the
1:55.0	nuclear race between the U.S. and the Soviets. And it really has a huge effect on foreign policy because of the threat
2:03.1	that it poses. It is a threat that is massive. If we would get into a nuclear war, which
2:09.2	thankfully hasn't happened yet, it would be life-changing. And it's something that once Pandora's
	...

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