open source is sponsored by listeners like you.

Pitch in to keep the world's first podcast going strong.

15 years and counting, find us at patreon.com slash radio open source.

And thank you.

I'm Christopher Lighten. This is open source.

The legend of our guest, Chas Freeman,

derives from the moment in Beijing 50 years ago

when as a young foreign service officer,

still in his 20s, he interpreted Richard Nixon and Mao Zai Tong

to each other in the breakthrough conversations of 1972.

Even then, Chas Freeman was a master of languages,

history, strategy, and diplomacy.

A great career ensued and it isn't over.

He's a writer and lecturer now,

often sharper and more believable than the news media.

About the quasi-war between the United States and China,

for example, becoming a proxy war in the Middle East of all places.

As he wrote this fall, the US is estranged now from Turkey,

Saudi Arabia, and Israel in various degrees.

China is now the largest trading partner

and foreign investor in the Middle East in Israeli technology

and Saudi arms production among other things.

...