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The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Podcast: The Need for Pragmatic Engagement Amidst Global Uncertainty

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

History, Military, International Relations, Government, Constitutional Law, News, International Law, Current Events, Politics, Rule Of Law, Law, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, National Security, Intelligence, Terrorism

4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2016

⏱️ 42 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week on the podcast, Lawfare’s Ben Wittes interviews Amy Zegart and Stephen Krasner, both of the Hoover Institution, about their recently released national security strategy called Pragmatic Engagement Amidst Global Uncertainty: Three Major Challenges. The document, which was produced by the Hoover Institution’s Working Group on Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy, presents three key challenges to the future of U.S. security—China, Russia, and unconventional threats—and outlines three principles that should guide the United States’s response, ultimately calling for a pragmatic foreign policy that does not go in search of monsters abroad.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The following podcast contains advertising.

0:04.0

To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast,

0:08.0

become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair.

0:14.0

That's patreon.com slash law fair.

0:18.0

Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings,

0:22.0

rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath.

0:29.0

And one of the things we found in looking at history of grand strategy in this group

0:35.0

is that it's not an accident that the United States was positioned to be a world power

0:40.0

at the end of World War II.

0:42.0

That the strategy from the founding to World War I was really one of

0:46.0

let's stand for democratic principles, but let's not impose them in other places.

0:52.0

And that's how we were able to expand our territory, keep European powers out of the Western hemisphere,

0:57.0

ensure freedom of navigation, etc.

1:00.0

And so what we're arguing here is that we're not anti-democratization and human rights,

1:05.0

but we have to be much more prudent about how we go about promoting those values.

1:10.0

And if recent history is any guide, we really are not good at imposing democracy on countries from the outside.

1:17.0

And it's not just that it's against American interests, it's that hundreds of thousands of people

1:22.0

in these countries in the Syrian Civil War, in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan have suffered also.

1:29.0

I'm Cody Poplin, and this is the Law Fair Podcast March 26, 2016.

1:36.0

That was the voice of Amy Zegart, arguing that the United States should be unapologetic

1:41.0

in its pursuit of economic and security interests and more tempered in the pursuit of ideals.

1:47.0

This week on the podcast, Law Fair's Ben Wittis interviewed Zegart and Stephen Krasner,

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