This is the Kato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, December 21st, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The choice for American foreign policy shouldn't be framed as simply imperialism versus disengagement.

Christopher Coyne in his new book In Search of Monsters to Destroy discusses what he views

as workable, serious ways to engage with the world that don't involve expanding or maintaining an American

empire.

We spoke earlier this month.

When we talk about economics broadly, we talk about like what rules govern the relations that we might engage in as

human beings and sort of come to the conclusion that a good rule is one that allows for a lot of transactions.

When it comes to animosities between countries, you want the opposite of that.

And our rules in in many cases, are meant to prevent or at least give us due consideration,

give us time for due consideration before making a potentially disastrous decision on behalf of a government.

So I guess how do you view the incentives and the rules that we that governments around the world accept when it comes to

animosities that might bubble up. Yeah, well that's a big question, one that has troubled scholars for centuries.

And so on the one hand you can see the argument that as you put it quite nicely when there's

animosities you need rules for engaging that but also who is going to engage

it and and in the world we live in now people typically view nation states as having a

critical role and really a few nation states in the in the post you know cold

war period the United States and so what's known kind of is the

unipolar moment where the US government was the dominant government of the world

and you know they make an argument a lot of people make an argument that the US

government has a global and international role to both establish rules and enforce those rules.

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