Marshall and Saga here. Welcome back to the realignment.

This week we sat down with Michael Durran, one of the rights foremost Middle East security experts and senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

Mike is taught at Princeton, New York University, and the University of Central Florida.

He served President George W. Bush as a senior director in the National Security Council,

and also held roles in the administration's defense and state departments.

Mike's experience after the Bush administration, along with the election of Donald Trump,

led him to examine how the populist dissatisfaction at home was impacting US foreign policy abroad.

Mike advocates for he describes as a third way foreign policy that navigates between the isolationist and interventionist tendencies of the left and right.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to the realignment.

Great to be here. Thank you.

Mike, the reason we wanted to have you on was there's a lot of interesting discussions here that we focus on.

The changing discussion around policy areas like economics and trade, but a lot of these are more in the domestic sphere.

There hasn't been as much of a grappling with how foreign policy is changing in a realignment world.

And so you have been, you've worked in the academic space, you worked in the DOD, now you work here at the Hudson Institute.

How have you seen the conservative foreign policy consensus change over time since you began in your work?

Well, I came to Washington in 2005 to work for the Bush administration, and I came on the co-tails of the NEOKONs.

I wrote some stuff. I was teaching at Princeton, and I wrote some things about the Middle East, that's my area of expertise, and it got the attention of the NEOKONServatives.

And I went to work in the White House for Elliott Abrams.

And I think the biggest thing that when I look at it from my point of view, the biggest thing I see is the undermining of the NEOKON point of view.

I don't know how long that will last.

And what is the NEOKON point of view?

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