Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of

Currude Affairs magazine. It is my great privilege and pleasure to be joined today by Professor

Daniel Bessner.

He teaches in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies

at the University of Washington.

There's a new book out, an edited volume called Cold War Liberalism, Power in a Time of Emergency. And last year he also wrote an excellent

article on the Cold War, on the origins and responsibility for the Cold War in the Ideas Letter.

Oh, also co-host to the American Prestige podcast, the widely respected and acclaimed American Prestige podcast.

Daniel Best and welcome to Kurt Affairns.

Always a pleasure to be here, Nathan. Nice to see you.

I smiled, as I read, where you teach, because I didn't realize you teach at the Henry M. Jackson

School. That's kind of fun, isn't it? I teach at the Jackson School, And it is something that that comes up. I mean,

obviously, as you can imagine, given the changes in academia, I'm not sure Scoop would love the

perspective of the professors who now teach there. But yeah, it is, you know, he was into

international affairs and he was a local big wig and he funded, I think his foundation is big into the school.

I don't actually know the relationship, but he himself was a big proponent of sort of education for international affairs.

Very different from what you have today.

I always joke during the Cold War, at least we got, you know, the socialistic elements of the welfare state,

because they thought, you know, you needed area studies to defeat the Soviet Union.

Nowadays, we don't even get that.

You know, they just defund the university.

They don't even care about, you know, knowing China or whatever it may be.

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