The Jackpod: The meddler’s trap
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From the annexation of the Philippines in 1898, to looming confrontation with Iran today, On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on U.S. leadership, vested military interests, and unintended military entanglements.
About:
Hosted by Meghna Chakrabarti, On Point is WBUR’s award-winning, daily public radio show and podcast. Its unique combination of original reporting, first-person stories, and in-depth analysis creates an experience that makes the world more intelligible and humane. Deep dives. Original stories. Fresh takes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Funding for this podcast comes from Math Works, creators of Mat Lab and Simulink software, |
| 0:06.0 | accelerating the pace of engineering and science. Learn more at Math Works. |
| 0:11.0 | com. Work's dot com. I'm Magna Chakrabardi and this is the jackpot where on point news analyst Jack Beaty helps us connect history, literature, and |
| 0:25.2 | politics in a way that brings Jack's unique clarity to the world we live in now. |
| 0:30.3 | Hello there Jack. Hello Magna. Okay so we're at episode 19. What's your headline for today? |
| 0:37.5 | The medlers trap. The medlers trap. Okay, what is that? Well, it is a concept that is as relevant to us today as |
| 0:51.1 | could be. |
| 0:53.1 | Secretary Anthony Blinken yesterday commented, |
| 0:56.6 | he said, I would argue that we have not |
| 0:59.5 | seen a situation as dangerous as the one we're facing now across the region since at least |
| 1:06.0 | 1973. He's talking about the confrontation, possible war that's building with Iran. |
| 1:16.0 | That behind that war is the meddlers trap. |
| 1:20.4 | It explains how it is we found ourselves in this what what does he say most dangerous |
| 1:26.2 | situation in the region in 50 years the medler's trap broadly broadly defined, well let's go to the definition, and I quote here from a very timely article in the journal International Security, it's called the medlers trap McKinley, the |
| 1:46.2 | Philippines, and the difficulty of letting go by Arup Mukheraji whoaji, who's a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and International |
| 1:57.6 | Affairs Fellow, and a diligent researcher. |
| 2:02.4 | And he's taking us back to McKee. a diligent researcher and |
| 2:15.8 | and he's taking us back to McKinley and the Philippines because yes he is because it's it's a paradigm case of the medler's trap. Here's how he defines it. The medler's trap denotes a situation of self-entanglement whereby a military intervention abroad to solve one problem |
| 2:26.3 | inadvertently creates a new problem that the leader feels he can solve. |
| 2:34.0 | President McKinley had a decision to make and his decision, which was to annex the Philippines, |
| 2:45.0 | underlines and sort of prefigured recurring features |
| 2:51.0 | of U.S. interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and essentially |
... |
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