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American Prestige

E246 - Cold War Liberal Empire w/ Daniel Bessner and Michael Brenes

American Prestige

Daniel Bessner & Derek Davison

Politics, History, News

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Subscribe now to skip the ads and get all of our episodes. Derek speaks with Danny and Mike Brenes about Cold War liberalism, its shaping of the American empire, and more from their new co-edited volume. They talk about the meaning of “Cold War liberalism,” the book’s essays, the relationship between liberalism and mass democracy, emergency politics, the continuity between New Deal liberalism and Cold War liberalism, military Keynesianism, U.S. empire, neoconservatism, Joe Biden, and the persistence of Cold War liberal ideas in long after the end of the Cold War itself. Buy the volume Cold War Liberalism: Power in a Time of Emergency and use discount code BESSNER26  Don’t forget to download our Marx Prestige miniseries. Final episode out today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to American Prestige. To listen ad-free, you can subscribe at Americanprostagepod.com.

0:08.4

Find the link in our show notes.

0:11.5

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0:30.3

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0:36.2

Let's find the conversation to your soul.

0:40.3

Hello American Prest prestige listeners. It's Derek. And look, in the annals of the printed word,

1:03.0

there have been a few great milestones. Obviously, the Gutenberg Bible, Don Quixote, Harry Potter. We're here today to talk about what I think is going to be the next great milestone in the printed word. It's a little book called Cold War Liberalism, Power, in a time of emergency. I'm joined by the two editors of this volume. You will be familiar with at least one of them.

1:30.3

Mike Brennis is the co-director of the Brady Johnson Program

1:33.3

and Brand Strategy and Lecture and History at Yale University.

1:36.3

He's been on the program several times.

1:38.3

He's the author for Might and Wright, Cold War Defense Spending

1:42.3

and the Remaking of American democracy.

1:44.7

He's also co-edited another volume with our second guest,

1:48.7

Rethinking U.S. World Power, Domestic Histories of U.S. foreign relations.

1:52.2

Our second guest is maybe not as familiar to you. Daniel Bessner.

1:56.2

He is the N.H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the N.H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle, associate professor, an American foreign policy at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He's also the author of Democracy and Exile, Hans Spire, and the rise of the defense intellectual. I think he hosts a podcast, co-hosts a podcast. I don't, I'm not, I don't have all that information. But Mike, Danny, thank you so much for coming on the program.

2:19.2

Thanks, Derek. I know you didn't mention the Bible, just pointing that out. That's like, come on. A little bit of an oversight. What, I didn't mention the Bible. I did. I said the Gutenberg Bible. Oh, you said the Gutenberg Bible. Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't mention the whole thing.

2:32.4

Okay, okay, I take it back.

2:33.5

Don Quixote.

2:34.3

Now we're in,

...

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