Co-Founder of Neoliberal School on the Foreign Policy of Presidents from F.D.R. to Trump | Joseph Nye
Hidden Forces
Demetri Kofinas
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 June 2020
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 141 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joseph Nye, the co-founder of the international relations theory of neoliberalism who is credited with developing the concept of "soft power."
In his latest book "Do Morals Matter?," Dr. Nye meticulously weighs the ethics of the foreign policy decisions of American presidents from F.D.R. to Donald Trump. He argues that good moral reasoning should be three-dimensional, weighing and balancing the intentions, the means, and the consequences of a president's decisions. "A moral foreign policy is not a matter of intentions versus consequences but must involve both as well as the means that were used," professes Joseph Nye.
In this conversation, Demetri and professor Nye discuss the presidencies of Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. Nye compares and contrasts the various presidents, their tenures, policy challenges & opportunities, as well as the moral dimensions of some of their most consequential decisions.
The second hour of today's episode, which is available to our premium subscribers, deals primarily with the Obama and Trump presidencies, including a detailed discussion about the contemporary challenges facing the United States in a multi-polar world.
You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week's episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.
Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 06/08/2020
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's episode of Hidden Forces is made possible by listeners like you. |
| 0:04.4 | For more information about this week's episode or for easy access to related programming |
| 0:09.7 | visit our website at hidden Forces. I.O. and subscribe to our free email list. |
| 0:16.4 | If you listen to the show on your Apple Podcast app, remember, you can give us a review. |
| 0:21.5 | Each review helps more people find the show and join our |
| 0:24.9 | amazing community. And with that, please enjoy this week's episode. And the What's up everybody? My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is yet another important figure in the field of foreign affairs |
| 0:56.0 | who we are fortunate enough to welcome to this program. |
| 0:59.9 | Joseph Nye is the co-founder of the International Relations Theory of Neol liberalism, and he's credited |
| 1:05.9 | with developing the concept of soft power in the late 1980s. |
| 1:09.9 | He served under several presidents, including Jimmy Carter, as an undersecretary of state |
| 1:14.4 | where he also chaired the National Security Council group on nonproliferation of |
| 1:18.8 | nuclear weapons and also served under the Bill Clinton administration as an assistant secretary of defense. |
| 1:25.2 | He's the former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard |
| 1:29.3 | and until very recently the chairman of North America for the Trilateral Commission. |
| 1:34.7 | He serves currently as the co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group and is a board member of the |
| 1:39.5 | Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Center for Strategic and International |
| 1:44.7 | Studies. |
| 1:45.7 | So I feel very lucky to have a chance to pick his brain for the next two hours. |
| 1:51.8 | Professor Nye, welcome to Hidden Forces. It's nice to be with you. We did it. We made it. |
| 1:58.0 | It's been quite an adventure for the two of us on the audio front. It's one of the challenges of doing these things remotely, but you're a trooper. I appreciate you working with me to get it resolved. |
| 2:08.0 | Well, I'm learning. How many interviews have you done since the book published? |
| 2:13.4 | Oh, I've given probably three or four interviews for podcasts and probably about a dozen or two dozen |
... |
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