Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor in Chief of Current Affairs Magazine. I am joined today by Van Jackson, distinguished fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand,

and Defence and Strategy Fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies.

Ben Jackson is also the author of the new book,

Pacific Power Paradox, American Statecraft, and the fate of the Asian peace available

from Yale University Press. And I'm just hoping that my P's haven't popped because P is the

worst letter to try and pronounce on a microphone. So to our editor, if Pacific Power Paradox comes out well, they've done a good job.

So, Ben Jackson, thanks for joining us today on Current Affairs.

Thanks, man, longtime fan.

Hey, and we here at Current Affairs are fans of your work, too.

If people want to understand U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific, they need to turn to your book

and to your writings in Foreign Affairs Magazine and elsewhere.

You have been, over the last few years, highly critical of U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific.

But I think that Americans generally, I have to say, probably on average,

aren't aware that we have a policy in the Indo-Pacific.

So I think if you ask the average, because we know that foreign

policy just really is not discussed much in American political discourse or discussed in the mainstream.

So I think where I want to start is by asking you, what is important that you think everyone

ought to know? This is going to be hard because they need to

read your book to understand the full scope of things. So we're going to boil it down. You know,

but where do we start in what everyone ought to know about what the U.S. stance in the Pacific is?

Man, that is a big question.

It's important to start, I guess, with an understanding that, like, when American policy officials talk about America's role in Asia and in the Pacific, they lean heavily on the

...