The

The Hello and welcome to a Restorationist edition of Behind the News. Two guests, two segments.

My name is Doug Henwood. Anato Levin will review the Trump administration's national security strategy published last week,

and Susanna Glickman will examine the transformation of the executive branch into a private equity firm.

Before that, a note. Some people have gotten in touch to complain that in his comments in

Milwaukee's Suez Socialism era 1910 to 1960, Eric Blanc failed to notice how its guiding light,

Victor Berger, was a virulent racist. Eric will be back soon to respond, but for now the

TLDR version is, yes, he started that way, but evolved considerably into an anti-racist.

More on all this soon.

On December 4th, the Trump administration released its 2025 National Security Strategy.

The document is a real bricolage.

Here to make sense of it all, insofar as sense can be made of it, is a frequent behind-the-news

guest, Anatole Levin, director of the Eurasia program at the

Quincy Institute.

I learned from Trump's intro to the 2025 National Security Strategy, and the dating is

little weird since we're just weeks from 2026, but leave that aside, that Trump has brought

us back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster and restored our strength and respect

around the world. Do you think he might

be exaggerating a bit? Just a little bit, yes. So far, Trump's achievements have been, to put it mildly,

in foreign affairs very limited. The only thing that can be said for him, I suppose, is that

he has initiated and may be able to bring to a conclusion a peace process

for Ukraine, which would not have happened without him. Certainly, the Biden administration

...