Walter Russell Mead on the Past and Future of American Foreign Policy
Conversations with Tyler
Conversations with Tyler
4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
A leading expert in foreign policy, Walter Russell Mead believes his lack of a PhD—and interest in actually going places—has helped him avoid academic silos and institutional groupthink that’s rendered the field ineffective for decades. Mead’s latest book, which explores the American-Israeli relationship, is characteristically wide-ranging and multidisciplinary, resulting in
“less a history of U.S.-Israel policy than a sweeping and masterfully told history of U.S. foreign policy in general”, according to a New York Times review.
He joined Tyler to discuss how the decline of American religiosity has influenced US foreign policy, which American presidents best and least understood the Middle East, the shrewd reasons Stalin supported Israel, the Saudi secret to political stability, the fate of Pakistan, the most likely scenario for China moving on Taiwan, the gun pointed at the head of German business, the US’s “murderous fetishization of ideology over reality” in Sub-Saharan Africa, the inherent weakness in having a foreign policy establishment dominated by academics, what he learned from attending the Groton School, and much more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded August 31st, 2022
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, |
| 0:09.4 | bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems. |
| 0:13.5 | Learn more at mercatis.org. |
| 0:16.3 | For full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit ConversationsWithT Tyler.com. |
| 0:26.5 | Hello everyone and welcome back to ConversationsWithT Tyler. Today I'm very happy to be here in person with Walter Russellneed. |
| 0:33.8 | Walter is a professor at Bard College, foreign policy columnist for the Wall Street Journal, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, |
| 0:42.0 | and he has a new and excellent book called The Ark of a Covenant, United States Israel and the Fate of the Jewish People. |
| 0:49.0 | Walter, welcome. |
| 0:50.5 | It's good to be here, Tyler. It's really great to see you. |
| 0:52.8 | A simple and very general question. |
| 0:54.8 | What does an average working class American actually gain from American hegemony? |
| 1:00.1 | Well you can ask yourself maybe better what do they lose if we don't have it? |
| 1:04.7 | For example, World War II, when Germany and Japan tried to break the international system, |
| 1:11.1 | working class Americans in the millions were conscripted into a war, had their lives disrupted. |
| 1:17.5 | But now we have nuclear weapons, right? So that one happened again. Say we kept half our nuclear weapons. |
| 1:21.7 | He said he had the defense budget in half. |
| 1:23.9 | Well, you know, if you believe that people are rational actors perhaps. |
| 1:29.9 | But when I think about nuclear weapons, I asked myself if Adolf Hitler had had a couple of nuclear weapons |
| 1:35.9 | in the spring of 1945, would he have used them? He absolutely would. |
| 1:40.9 | So I think the idea that the existence of nuclear weapons means that we can all forget international politics just doesn't work. |
| 1:47.9 | How has the decline of American religiosity influenced US foreign policy? |
| 1:52.9 | Well, the most important way is that it has diminished our coherence as a society and sort of undermine the psychological strength of individuals in our foreign policy world. |
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