Support The Bulwark and subscribe today.
  Join Now

The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy (with Michael Mandelbaum)

January 13, 2023
Notes
Transcript

Eric and Eliot welcome their SAIS colleague Michael Mandelbaum to talk about his recent book, The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy. Among other topics, they discuss realism and idealism in U.S. policy, the historical origins of American policymakers’ traditional reliance on the economic instruments of national power, the prospects for U.S. policy towards Russia-Ukraine, China, and Iran, baseball, and mystery fiction.

Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at [email protected].

Links:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:07

    Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, a counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. A Bulwark contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. And my co host and partner in this enterprise Elliot Cohen, the Robert e Ozgood professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International, Studies in Washington DC and the early Berkshire in Strategy at Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliot, welcome.
  • Speaker 1
    0:00:50

    How are you?
  • Speaker 2
    0:00:51

    I’m just great, Eric. I was just at a retreat actually for CSIS. It was a very serious workshop. We had a bonding exercise that one afternoon. And which I discovered I’m actually pretty good at throwing axes.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:05

    So I’m not quite sure what I will do with that skill, although I have some dark thoughts now and again. It’s Well, you had an axe to grind, but there we go. How long’s ground and, you know, can end up where it needs to go. It’s a great pleasure to introduce a a friend, a former colleague. And if he won’t be embarrassed that I mentioned a former teacher, Michael Mandelbaum, who I first met when I think you were a brand new assistant professor maybe at Harvard.
  • Speaker 2
    0:01:34

    I believe you you read a letter of recommendation to get me into graduate school. So you have that responsibility on your conscience. Michael Vanderbaum’s had an extraordinarily distinguished career educated at Yale, at Harvard, at Cambridge University, He taught he taught at Harvard. He also has had senior positions at the House on Farm Relations, Carnegie Corporation. I could go on author of many, many books, on nuclear strategy, on American Farm Policy, on baseball.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:09

    So someone with very wide interest, but I hope that the peak of his career as of mine was teaching at Johns Hopkins University, school of advanced international studies where he was the Christian Herder, professor of American Foreign Policy. And as I said, a a friend and a colleague, the two don’t always go together, I have to point out. And he has just written a great book the four ages of American foreign policy. So Michael welcome. Thank you.
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:39

    I did have the pleasure
  • Speaker 3
    0:02:41

    of teaching you at the very beginning of my teaching career and needless to say, from that point, my teaching career went downhill. As it could only do after teaching you,
  • Speaker 2
    0:02:53

    Elliot. Well, too kind of you to say. So you’ve written this this book the four ages of American foreign policy, I don’t think I’d give away too much. If if I say you divide it, you divide the history of American foreign policy, the history is a weak power as a great power super power during the cold war and then the hyper power And I think it’s also fair to say that in some ways that one of the thesis of the book is we actually do pretty well as a weak power, pretty well as a great power, pretty well as a super power kinda blow it as a hyper power that may be a bit of an exaggeration. Let me ask a completely out of left field, if I can use baseball metaphor in your presence.
  • Speaker 2
    0:03:35

    Sort of question, you know, you you begin with the early republic Is there anything about American foreign policy we should learn from the colonial period? Or do you think? I mean, I actually tend to think there is, but I’m curious if you think so as well.
  • Speaker 3
    0:03:51

    Well, I would say there are two things to learn from the colonial period. One is the United States was a weak power. And the strategies that weak powers employ are quite different from the strategies of great powers and super powers and hyper powers. And we were, as you say, good at them. We managed to get free of the British by demonstrating to the British that we would fight even though we couldn’t help really.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:26

    We couldn’t hope really. It’s finally to defeat them. And most important of all, we managed to get great power allies. And that was crucial. We could not have won the revolutionary wars we did without the French.
  • Speaker 3
    0:04:40

    That’s not relevant to American strategy now, but it’s important because it’s the kind of strategy that other countries employ against us. The Vietnamese and the Vietnam War, the Rockies, in the south and the civil war, all employed some version of the strategies of the week, which I outlined in the first part of the book. The second way that the early period is relevant to us, is that I believe that there have been three major continuities in American foreign policy over the two hundred fifty years that I cover, and they recur throughout the book. I say that the United States has compared with other countries conducted an unusually ideological foreign poll See, that is the spread of American ideas has been important to us. An unusually economic foreign policy, which is to say that More than other countries, we have tried to use economic instruments to achieve political goals.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:00

    And an unusually democratic foreign policy by which I mean that in the conduct and the formulation of American foreign policy. In comparison with other countries, the public, the American public has played an unusually large role. Now, it seems to me that one importance of the early period is that those continuities, those tendencies showed up at the very beginning. We can trace or at least I do trace. Those three continuities all the way back to the eighteenth century and the revolutionary period.
  • Speaker 3
    0:06:40

    America has changed remarkably since then, and of course, has grown increasingly powerful, and that makes a huge difference. But those three continuities are still with us two hundred fifty years later. You know, I I completely agree with that.
  • Speaker 2
    0:06:57

    Before I throw it over to Eric, I I’d say there’s one other continuity. And I’d be curious to hear your reaction, which is even in the colonial period and for sure thereafter whether Americans wanted it to be this way or not we were engaged in great power politics. That is to say, you know, if you look at the great wars between England and France, starting at the end of the seventeenth century. But going through, you know, what the war, the Spanish succession, which we called Queen Ann’s War, the Seven Years War, which was the French and Indian war in North America, in each of these major conflicts, we got engaged. And in some cases, they actually started in North America.
  • Speaker 2
    0:07:38

    And I I I think the the reason why I I would just mention that is, and maybe this would be a good transition for Eric. The contrary to the notion that even if if I’m not mistaken, people like Steven Woodward said, well, you know, the United States had this period of isolation from the world that we only kinda break into it fitfully and during world war one and then seriously after nineteen forty. That’s not really true that we’re an internationally engaged nation from the outset just as you
  • Speaker 3
    0:08:10

    say in rather different ways at different times and in ways that are quite distinct. You’re absolutely right and it’s an important point to me. The United States has never been isolated, never could isolate itself, never really want it to isolate itself, certainly not completely. North Americans speak English because of the seven years war, which was a great European and global war, which is note was begun in North America by a detachment of the Virginia militia led by colonel George Washington.
  • Speaker 1
    0:08:44

    The
  • Speaker 3
    0:08:47

    revolutionary war was won because it became involved in great power politics. The British were willing to give Americans their independence grudgingly to be sure because by the times seventeen eighty three rolled around whether or not the thirteen colonies were an independent country. It was a distinctly secondary importance to the British, secondary to their conflict with the French, which they wanted to be free to pursue. And then between seventeen ninety three and eighteen fifty in the United States was against its will drawn into the Napoleonic Wars. And that led to a flurry of diplomacy and it led to the war of eighteen twelve, which, as I say in the book, was in my view, the most misbegotten foreign policy in the history of the United States.
  • Speaker 3
    0:09:45

    But the United States whether it wanted to or not was wrapped up and deeply affected by great power politics. Now it’s true that between eighteen fifteen and nineteen fifteen, it was less involved in great power politics. But trade especially with Britain was always important. And the United States was able to avoid great power politics because the European power stayed out of the Western hemisphere. Now the Monroe Doctorate of eighteen twenty three declared the Western hemisphere off limits for colonization to the great powers of Europe after Spain had lost its Latin America and possessions.
  • Speaker 3
    0:10:31

    But the Monroe doctrine was enforced until almost the end of century, not by the United States, which certainly didn’t have the military wherewithal to enforce it, but by the royal navy. There was a coincidence of interest between the United States and Great Britain, and Great Britain made sure that other European grade powers stayed out of the western hemisphere. The British were very active there, but they didn’t want colonies in Latin America. They only wanted to tray. So even in the period when the United States have least to do with the great powers of Europe and power politics, that was courtesy of the greatest maritime power of all, great Britain.
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:17

    Yeah. Elliott, your reference to the late Van Woodward, who was actually one of my teachers at Yale in graduate school. I think as a reference to his nineteen sixty american historical association presidential address in which he says that the United States for most of its history up until the twentieth century enjoyed what he called free security. But the point Michael has just made, I I think, is been always the great answer to that, which it was free security because the cost was borne by Britain and the Royal Navy.
  • Speaker 2
    0:11:47

    Michael,
  • Speaker 1
    0:11:47

    I wanna pick on one thread of your discussion with Elliott when you talked about the three continuities born in the in the sort of revolutionary period or the early period of American history. And that is the use of the economic instrument in foreign policy and national security affairs. And it it starts really early with one could trace it, I suppose, to a sentiment which clearly was in common at the time of the declaration of independence. Tom Payne writes in common sense, that as long as it’s the habit of Europeans to eat, the United States will always be, you know, be in a commanding position because it will be able control, you know, European’s access to food. Europe was urbanizing, so they weren’t producing as much food they were gonna need American agricultural exports to to survive.
  • Speaker 1
    0:12:42

    And in eighteen twelve, this comes up. Right? Because this is Jefferson and Madison are playing the weak hand in terms of a a weak military power by trying to use the economic mechanism, whether it’s the embargo or the nonrecourse act, trying to use either the export or the dependence on American exports by the Europeans as a as an instrument military power. But as you argue in the book, this is like the almost the first instinctive recourse of American policy makers in almost any situation. Is that still the case do you think?
  • Speaker 1
    0:13:21

    Sure. Look at these sanctions on
  • Speaker 3
    0:13:24

    Russia. Now the sanctions on Russia are more effective or we hope they will be more effective than other economic sanctions and trade embargos have been in the past because other countries have adopted them. And of course, the broader economic sanctions are, the more effective they are, and I think it’s probably true to say that the broadest sanctions maybe in history have been the ones imposed on Iran. But it does the the American impulse to to try to achieve political goals by economic means. It goes all the way after the beginning.
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:04

    When the parliament imposed taxes that the millennials regarded as unjust. And this was, of course, the root cause of the American revolution. An initial an initial response was a boycott of British goods on the theory that this would put pressure on British merchants, to put pressure on the Parliament, to repeal them, and it had some success. I think the reason there there there are three reasons for this reflexive recourse to economic sanctions. First, when the United States was weak, it didn’t have any military instruments that it could use.
  • Speaker 3
    0:14:46

    Then when it became strong and a global power, It often wished to express its disapproval of things that other countries were doing, but not to the extent of going to war. So this was a second best response. It was a way of saying, I’m very, very angry at you. And third reason is that United States has been, from the beginning, a commercial republic. And therefore Americans prone like every other people to mirror imaging have persistently assumed that what mattered to them must matter and must matter as much to other peoples.
  • Speaker 3
    0:15:27

    And that means that the United States has frequently overestimated the leverage that it could get on other countries foreign policies by wielding the economic instrument. Two other things that are worth noting here. One is that perhaps the most disastrous overestimation. From the point of view of the government doing the overestimating of the impact of the economic instrument on foreign policy was the Confederate states of America on Great Britain. But the confederacy needed great Britain needed British recognition to have a chance of winning.
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:09

    And as soon it would get such recognition and the British government seriously considered it. But the the confederacy decided that the way to assure Britain being on their side was to impose an embargo on the cotton ship to the Lancashire mills. And the British would feel the pain so acutely that they would do what the confederacy wanted. It didn’t work that way. It turned out that they’d shipped too much in eighteen sixty.
  • Speaker 3
    0:16:41

    So the British didn’t need the cotton in eighteen sixty one, and the British then turned to alternative suppliers. Egypt, and India in particular. And so they were free to decide their policy on the American Civil War on other grounds, not economic grounds. And ultimately, they and I believe Palmerston was the one who made the decision as foreign secretary. Decided not to intervene on the side of the confederacy because after eighteen sixty three and probably after Gettysburg, they thought that the union would win and they didn’t wanna alienate the union.
  • Speaker 3
    0:17:17

    So that’s a long winded way of saying that economic sanctions are as old and as American as apple pie. Before
  • Speaker 1
    0:17:26

    I kick it back to to Elliot, I wanna get your thoughts. I mean, this book is a book about America’s passage through different levels of power, essentially, different military and economic power at different stages of its historical experience. And the way that has led it to approach its interactions with the rest of the countries in the nations in the international system. And so from that point of view, people might look at it and say, this is a realist history, a realistic analysis of of US foreign policy. But in part because you stressed so much the ideological dimension, it departs quite a bit from, you know, academic realism, which we hear so much about these days.
  • Speaker 1
    0:18:19

    In terms of discourse about American foreign policy. How would you characterize your own approach to this vis à vis the so called realists? Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:18:28

    I think everybody who knows anything about any kind of history is a realist in the sense that in international politics and ethnicities, power matters. The more power you have, the more you can do, the less power you have, the more vulnerable you are, that exergs of powerful influence on your foreign policy, and countries do tend to defend their own interests and try to husband and where possible, expand their own power. I certainly part company with some realist who think that all countries are what has been called an offensive or offensive realist. They try to expand as far as possible. The historical record doesn’t bear that out.
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:14

    But power is important. And to the extent that realism says power is important, it is, of course, correct. But it’s not all important all the time. And one of the things that distinguishes my analysis of two hundred fifty years of American foreign policy is that I believe that the United States has had from the beginning and especially since the United States became a major force in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century. Two approaches to the conduct of foreign policy.
  • Speaker 3
    0:19:49

    One is realism. The other is what is sometimes called idealism, realism, I associate in the book with Peter Roosevelt, who spent a lot of his presidency, trying to contrive a stable balance of power in East Asia. Idealism is identified with Woodrow Wilson. And it is sometimes called Wilsonianism. And Wilson believed that the purpose of American foreign policy was to spread American values.
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:17

    Most particularly democracy within countries and peace among them. Now, where there has been a conflict between the realist impulse and the idealist impulse. Realism has usually won out. Americans have been willing to sacrifice their values in support of their interests. Example, a the alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union in World War two.
  • Speaker 3
    0:20:48

    But American ideals and American ideas have always been important. They’ve always been matters of consideration. They’ve always been on the agenda. No president since Woodrow Wilson has ever dismissed them entirely, and so they are an important part of the American tradition an important part of American foreign policy. And because the United States has been so important in the world, really since the beginning of the twentieth century twentieth century, but especially since the middle, these ideas in this tradition have been an important not a dominant, but an important part of international politics.
  • Speaker 3
    0:21:30

    Two points to follow-up here. That that are relevant, I think, and indeed relevant to to our current foreign policy. In wars. Every single major American war without exception, and I count twelve, has provoked dissent. Descent is also as American as Apple Pie, although it’s taken different forms, dissenters in the revolutionary war for example, simply went to Canada.
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:01

    And the descent about World War two was fiercest before the United States formally entered the war after Pearl Harbor, America first disappeared. But the descent is baked into the American political DNA. But in American wars where idealism and realism have been aligned. There has been wider support when it’s been either one or the other. World War II, the Cold War examples.
  • Speaker 3
    0:22:33

    And I think so far, Ukraine is an example. The United States is supporting the Ukrainians both out of American interests and out of American values. And I think that accounts for the breadth of support. Another example, I do indeed think that American foreign policy was successful until the fourth era, the era of the American Hyperpowers leads to a paradox that America has been least successful when it was most powerful. United States fought very minor wars of values, humanitarian intervention.
  • Speaker 3
    0:23:14

    And in those wars, especially in the Clinton administration, the calculation was that the maximal number of American casualties from American military action was zero. And that I think was an accurate appraisal and it was based ultimately on the fact that it was American values, not American interests that were
  • Speaker 2
    0:23:39

    at state. Building on that observation that, you know, as you depicted, the American foreign policy is less successful when it’s a hyper power than the previous three periods. Could you say a little bit about why is that the case? I mean, on on the one hand, you know, they’re the usual things, hubris, mediocre leadership. On the other hand, can you say, well, you know, rise of China, there wasn’t a whole lot we were gonna do about it.
  • Speaker 2
    0:24:05

    That we could do about even if we wanted to. How do you explain that period and Do you think that the this is a second question, I suppose. Do you think that that era of hyper power is coming to an end after a relatively short period of time? Well, let
  • Speaker 3
    0:24:23

    me answer the second question. First, I think it has ended, and that’s why I end the book in two thousand fifteen. The era of American hyper power, the twenty five years between nineteen ninety and two thousand fifteen, were I argue a period when the United States have no serious challengers and faced no serious security threats. I take two thousand fifteen slightly arbitrary to be sure as the point at which it became clear that China and Russia in different ways were security threats that power politics have returned and we also, as as you both know well, faced a third serious security threat in the Middle East in the form of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But before that, I distinguish the period as one in which we did not regard Russia or China as actual or potential threats.
  • Speaker 3
    0:25:23

    Now why the failure in that period. Well, I think there’s one major reason. The United States had a particular project during that period, and that project was to spread to different countries in different parts of the world, a particular form of government. A form of government wherein the state the government is chosen by free and fair elections wherein the government respects the rights of its citizens, wherein the government helps to foster an economic climate that permits prosperity and where in the government is at peace with its neighbors. In other words, our form of government.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:10

    It wasn’t crazy after the fall of communism to think that history was moving in that direction. It wasn’t crazy for example to think that bringing China into the global economy would push it toward a democratic form of government. I call that in the book the liberal theory of history turned out to be wrong, but it wasn’t crazy. There was some evidence to support it. And it wasn’t crazy to think that that was the appropriate goal for American foreign policy.
  • Speaker 3
    0:26:41

    Because if Russia, China, and Iran had Democratic rights protecting peace loving governments, the world would be much different, and the burdens on American foreign policy would be much lighter. So it wasn’t wrong to try that or even to believe or hope that it could be accomplished, but it could not be accomplished. And the reason it could not be accomplished is that this form of government. Our form of government has certain preconditions. In order to have such a form of government, a country has to have certain values, certain institutions, and certain experiences.
  • Speaker 3
    0:27:23

    And lots of countries unfortunately, including Russia and China, do not. And this form of government cannot be fostered overnight. It takes at least a generation to build up the values, the institutions, and the experiences and it cannot be transplanted wholesale as we tried to do in a few places. So although I think the American mission, the American project, the the the purpose of American foreign policy in the fourth era of American foreign policy was logical. It was a last mission impossible.
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:04

    So could you just quickly follow-up and then back to Eric, is it too soon to try to characterize the fifth period? Well, I think it was that number. But I think I didn’t try to characterize it. You gotta end somewhere, and I did end it. And also by ending it in two thousand fifteen, I didn’t have to include in the book you know who, whose name does not appear.
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:28

    In the index. Certainly, we are back to an era of power politics. Certainly, it has some family resemblances to the cold
  • Speaker 2
    0:28:39

    war, partly
  • Speaker 3
    0:28:40

    in the sense that the cold war resembled all periods of power politics in some basic ways. I would say the differences so far are that we’re not facing the kind of ideological threat that militant Marxism, Leninism, Maoism. At the height of the Cold War. We’re facing so far, I think, three regional threats, not a single global one, although that could change. And most important of all, the Soviet Union and the communist block were not part of the global economy and so economic issues didn’t matter anything like to to anything like the extent they do now when China is central to the global economy, and Russia has or has to add a a serious o four lesser role.
  • Speaker 3
    0:29:27

    More than that, I I don’t think I can say. I I do not aspire to be the George Kennon of the post post post cold war era.
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:37

    I I wanna
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:38

    come back to the challenges of China, Russia, and Iran in a minute because you’ve written about that, Michael, as
  • Speaker 2
    0:29:46

    well, and not
  • Speaker 1
    0:29:46

    this most recent book, but the previous book you wrote. And I think given the events of the day, it it would be good to have you comment on them. But I I wanna go back to something that Elliott touched on that you touched on in the book in this period of US hyper power, the post cold war, one of the things you talk about and you’ve written about in another book, is the fact that the United States assumed this role. It wasn’t necessarily a given that it would take on this you know, very large role in the world given American history. But in part, it was at the behest of friends and allies.
  • Speaker 1
    0:30:28

    Because the United States had been providing, as you’ve put it, in another context, global public goods of a security framework that people found conducive to their own security and prosperity. So my question is a little bit different than Elliott. I’m not asking you to characterize this period we’re at now. But is it still the case that the United States is providing sort of these global public goods? And if so, for how long can we expect that to continue given all these multiplicity of challenges?
  • Speaker 1
    0:31:02

    Well, that’s
  • Speaker 3
    0:31:03

    the sixty four trillion dollar question. United States does still provide those global goods and other countries still do look to the United States. And I think we saw a kind of shock of recognition in Western Europe after February twenty fourth when the European said or less out loud, something that they hadn’t been saying out loud for decades, which is o m g, we really need the United States. The United States is crucial. For us.
  • Speaker 3
    0:31:33

    We started that role after nineteen forty five because we thought that that was the way to prevent World War three. The cold war was regarded by Americans as worth waging because it was defensive and it it it it warded off another terrible war. And even when it became clear that another terrible war wasn’t around the corner. Americans were willing to go along with it because to withdraw could set in motion events that could lead to another war. In any way, it wasn’t all that difficult.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:11

    It wasn’t all that expensive. When the cold war ended, the founding rationale for the American provision of global goods disappeared, But the American rule continued partly because of inertia, partly because foreign policy, like other policy, tends to be disproportionately influenced by elites and the American foreign policy elite despite all the differences among and within its members. Tends to be in favor of a major American role in the world. Tends to be, there are exceptions And third, because it didn’t cost that much. We didn’t have to do much beyond what we were doing.
  • Speaker 3
    0:32:56

    In fact, the proportion of the GDP devoted to defense was cut in half after the end of the Cold War. So if an aid broke, don’t fix it. Now it’s becoming more expensive and we’re seeing at the margins voices in the political arena who don’t want us to do as much as we’ve been doing. So I think it’s possible that we will have a serious debate about just how much the United States should do, I would say, for the first time since nineteen fifty two, when Robert TAF contested the Republican presidential nomination with Dwight Eisenhower. And when TAF really didn’t want to do as much as the United States was doing, he wanted to roll back the things that Truman had done, including NATO.
  • Speaker 3
    0:33:50

    I think that’s possible. I don’t know. And of course, the more expensive and the more dangerous the American role becomes. The more likely it is that we will hear dissenting voices about this role in general. But let me add to caveat.
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:12

    Here. First of all, Americans tend to
  • Speaker 1
    0:34:16

    dissent,
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:17

    not against a global role, but against specific policy. And in wars since the middle of the twentieth century. They have descended against wars where American casualties were higher than they thought was worth the candle. So it’s particular wars that have provoked dissent, not providing global public goods. And second, Americans tend to be rather Well, I won’t say aggressive, but they don’t like to back down.
  • Speaker 3
    0:34:52

    That is when if a country says wags its fingers, somebody like Vladimir Putin says, you better stop helping Ukraine or you really be in trouble. Americans don’t take that well. They say, you say that. Watch us. We’re gonna double down.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:06

    On what we’re doing. So I think there is part of the American national character. Maybe it’s what Walter Russell Meade called the Jacksonian foreign and American foreign policy that says, no. No. No.
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:19

    We’re not we’re not being pushed around by boys. We’re
  • Speaker 2
    0:35:22

    gonna stand up. Since you mentioned Putin, I was wondering before we get on to some other subjects, I mean, you’re somebody who’s followed Russia very closely throughout your career. What’s your take right now
  • Speaker 3
    0:35:35

    on Russia and Ukraine and what American policy ought to be? Well, I certainly don’t have any special wisdom, especially compared with the two of you. It I I would say a number of things. First, as in all wars, what is crucial is what happens on the battlefield, and it radiates out from that. So it’s to the extent that Ukraine does well, that will have an impact on the other two battles fields, Western opinion, and Russian opinion.
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:11

    So it’s a good idea to help the Ukrainians do as well as possible. Second, it seems to me hard to imagine
  • Speaker 2
    0:36:25

    an end
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:25

    to this war, let alone a satisfactory conclusion while Putin is in power. So the necessary condition for ending the war on anything like reasonable terms is getting rid of Vladimir Putin. That may not be a sufficient condition. We just don’t know. But I think it’s a necessary condition.
  • Speaker 3
    0:36:44

    So the question is, how do we do that? And there are two ways. One is the Russians will take matters into their own hands. There have got to be lots of people who are upset about what’s happening in Russia. And I would think and I would be interested in in both of your views about this.
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:04

    The army
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:04

    must be very upset because they’re losing their troops. They’ve lost most of their equipment and basically for nothing. So maybe there’s some colonel somewhere who will get it into his head to to take matters into his own hands. Although we can be confident that Putin spends a lot of time and resources guarding against that. The other thing where we simply don’t we simply don’t know how to evaluate this, it’s true that the Russian peasant now, the the the the the the inhabitant of deeper Russia, not the the suffocates in in Moscow and Saint Peter’s where many of whom, of course, have left.
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:47

    But Ivan Ivanovich,
  • Speaker 2
    0:37:50

    on the Volga, has
  • Speaker 3
    0:37:51

    a lot of tolerance for bad times. Suffering is something in any of that extreme discomfort is something that the Russians are used to. But surely, even with them, there’s a limit. There has to be a point at which so many kids from their little towns or villages are not coming back when the sanctions really do affect even them out there in the Russian hinterland that they get angry. And they manifest their anger in some fashion.
  • Speaker 3
    0:38:26

    I don’t know how. In other words, I do not believe that Russia has a bottomless capacity to absorb sanctions. I don’t know where the breaking point is. I don’t know when it will come. I don’t know if it will come.
  • Speaker 3
    0:38:44

    But I don’t think that in this case, sanctions are purely virtue signaling by we by by we in the west. I think they they have had some impact And my guess is that their impact will grow over time and somehow that will have an impact on Russia’s conduct of the war, on how it’s being conducted and more to the point who’s conducting it. You know,
  • Speaker 1
    0:39:10

    Michael, I was struck as I was reading your book. Particularly in the section on World War two, by your characterization of Hitler’s launching Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of the Soviet Union in June of nineteen forty one, which he expected to lead to a rapid collapse of the Soviet state, an easy occupation by the Wehrmacht. And that in the US, the state of opinion inside the US government, that is to say in the Department of State, Department of War, was that it would only be a matter of days before the Soviet Union just completely collapsed. And it did strike me that as Mark Twain repeatedly said history may not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes, you know, this is clearly what Putin thought was gonna happen in Ukraine. Which was that the Ukrainian state was artificial, that it was gonna collapse.
  • Speaker 1
    0:40:04

    They told the Russian troops to pack their dress uniforms so that they could have a big parade in Kiev when they liberated it from the so called Nazis and Ukraine. I mean, is is this an instance of history rhyming? And if if so, does that tell us anything about how this might play out?
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:25

    Well, it’s a very interesting comparison. Although, I can’t imagine saying this under any other circumstances, I think you’re being a little unfair to Hitler. In the sense
  • Speaker 2
    0:40:36

    — Right. — as a person podcast. He had
  • Speaker 3
    0:40:40

    seen the the Red Army in action against Finland and it had done very poorly. He had seen Stalin purge all of his competent officers. So it wasn’t it wasn’t foolish to think that the Russian would collapse and to a very great extent they did collapse. And I think it’s important to note. And I can’t remember whether I say this in the book we’re discussing now or in the book that I’m now finishing, which has chapters on Hitler and Churchill.
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:08

    Hitler came very close to winning his war. December fifth nineteen forty one was crucial moment because that was the time when the Russians for the first time launched a counterattack outside the gates of Moscow. Had the Russians taken Moscow, I think they could have won the war. Stalin and in the Polypearl would have retreated beyond the Urals but they wouldn’t have been able to organize a serious resistance. And at that point, I think that the Red Army might well have collateral.
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:42

    It’s at least arguable that it would have. And in that case, Britain
  • Speaker 2
    0:41:46

    might have
  • Speaker 3
    0:41:47

    become disheartened and chucked out Churchill who was never gonna come to terms with Hitler and put in Halifax or somebody. And, of course, John Lukashe late John Lukashe has written a book called five days of May, in nineteen forty, May nineteen forty when the Italian ambassador surfaced the idea of the British negotiating with Hitler through Mussolini, and there was a lot of interest in doing it in Britain. And Churchill put his foot down and managed to prevent it. So that was a crucial moment. But I think it’s It’s a backing, by the way, of Chamberlain.
  • Speaker 3
    0:42:26

    I mean, he he it was Chamberlain who backed him in that cabinet debate against Halifax. And — Yes. — although that wasn’t you know, Chamberlain, as you know, had one in Halifax, not Churchill to be prime minister, and Churchill was not popular among the tories. And Churchill, as you recall, pulled off this stunt of going outside the work cabinet, going to the cabinet as a whole, giving them a pep talk, getting them to line up behind his war policy, and then going back to the smaller war cabinet and saying, you know, the whole camera is behind me. We can’t possibly change course.
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:04

    It’s also worth noting here, we’re digressing a bit, but It was important both for Churchill becoming prime minister and for turning down the the Italian overture that this was a coalition cabinet, that the the labor party was well represented, and they were more anti fascists than the tories, and they were not going to knuckle under to Mussolini and Hitler. In
  • Speaker 2
    0:43:30

    any event,
  • Speaker 3
    0:43:32

    So I think it it is the case that Putin dramatically and let us hope fatally misread Ukraine and it brings up one of the few axioms of social science that I think does hold up. And that is high coercion systems or low information systems. Before the war, and I presume even today, people don’t want to give the maximal leader the bad news. And if the truth is bad news, they won’t tell and Putin after all was was isolated for a couple of years with only some crazy Russian nationalists to keep him company. So My guess is that he genuinely believed that this would be a walkover.
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:21

    But after all, our government thought so too. We were sending out signals to to to the Ukrainians, to the Ukrainian president, Zelensky saying, you know, we’ll provide a plane for you. And Zelensky even more or less said, I don’t need a ride. I need guns. So There’s another as long as I’m plotting my copied book, let me quote, the only line of Hitler’s that I’ve ever thought was worth repeated.
  • Speaker 3
    0:44:51

    And that is starting of wars like entering a dark room. You just don’t know what’s on the other side. I’m
  • Speaker 2
    0:44:59

    gonna try to move this to someone safer group. I’m doing that. You know, Michael, you’ve had an extremely distinguished academic career. You’ve been at the top institutions. Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, I suppose, I’ll concede Yale and Columbia as well, Cambridge University.
  • Speaker 2
    0:45:17

    But I think it’s fair to say that this is something that I think the two of us have thought a lot about the academic world that we entered is just not like the academic world of today. I mean, we were, you know, we were fortunate to be at Johns Hopkins Society Even that institution, I think, is changing. What what is your take on the academic world the ability of academics such as yourself to contribute to debates about foreign policy and our understanding of it. And the general to engage with the real world as opposed to simply the axioms of social science? Well,
  • Speaker 3
    0:45:55

    viewed from a distance because I’ve been retired now for going on six years. And I taught for twenty five years at SICE, which since you both also taught there, you know, is different from a political science department in a major research university My impression is that what you say is correct. In fact, you’ll recall Elliott that at the end of our time at size, we had trouble doing searches because the what had always been the feeding ground for size faculty. That is political science departments weren’t producing people that we could hire. We couldn’t hire not only because you and I weren’t interested in what they were doing, But because our students wouldn’t be interested, we wouldn’t, you know, students wouldn’t come to size if that was what was being taught.
  • Speaker 3
    0:46:45

    Why is that so? I think there are three reasons, or at least this is my hypothesis. One, universities are in big trouble because of the woke revolution. And the woke revolution has no time for conflict or America being anything other than a hell hole for military history. So that’s that’s a problem.
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:08

    But that’s a bigger, that’s a big problem for the United States as a whole. Second, there is what’s happened in political science. For a variety of reasons, political science has succumbed to what somebody called physics in the and has become entirely quantitative, which is really irrelevant to public policy. And third, the end of the cold war meant that issues of war and peace seem not to be as relevant as before. I think you can date the falling off of interest in foreign policy the end of the Coldwell.
  • Speaker 3
    0:47:52

    I know that’s true at Harvard. It’s probably true at other places. And I’m proud to say as Yale Lunda And I’m sorry to say there are a lot of things about you. I’m not proud of it. But even during the Cold War, Paul Kennedy and John Gas, conceived and organized the grant strategy program, which does deal with all these issues.
  • Speaker 3
    0:48:17

    So I I I think for all those reasons, universities are now completely irrelevant to foreign policy, and it’s all migrated to think tanks. And just as you Elliott and you Eric have migrated from size to think tanks. That’s where serious consideration of foreign policy is going. I’m happy that we have big tanks which are very good I wish we had the old universities back. Maybe we will someday, but when and how, I don’t know.
  • Speaker 1
    0:48:51

    Part of the problem at Yale speaking as a a lump is that the folks at Grand Strage particularly with the passing of Charlie Hill last year, the third sort of musketeer of the grand strategy effort there, they can’t replace themselves. I mean, they literally can’t get themselves replaced in part because there aren’t people like them coming out of academia anymore, but also they can’t get them hired. In the history department, Med Yale, given some of the trends you’ve talked about, Michael. Before I kick it to Elliott to ask his I question I know he’s dying to to ask you, which will get us away from the world of policy and into the world of arts and letters. Which is great.
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:34

    Before you wrote this book, you wrote another very interesting book a year or so or two ago, think it did it come out just before COVID, I think. Yeah. The rise
  • Speaker 3
    0:49:45

    and fall of peace on earth is the title, and you, Eric, were kind enough to be on a panel to discuss it. Yeah. And, you
  • Speaker 1
    0:49:53

    know, you also had a version of it in foreign affairs, a a a short article that gave the gist of it But would I be reading it wrong to say that these three
  • Speaker 2
    0:50:04

    big problems
  • Speaker 1
    0:50:05

    we’ve been talking about US facing and podcast today, Russia, China, Iran, and its search for a nuclear weapon, that in the end of the day, the only real policy option that makes sense is as you were saying about Putin is that we have to somehow either wait or try and hasten the change of regime in all three places. If we’re actually gonna have any kind of real accommodation that allows us to imagine a sort of less conflictual relationship. Would that be a misreading of No. That’s
  • Speaker 3
    0:50:43

    an accurate reading and a better summary than I’ve given. Of my view. Now our our policy ought to be deterrence with the hope of eventual regime change. But we don’t know how to bring about regime change. And that’s not to say that we can’t do some business with these countries, especially China where there’s a lot of economic business to do.
  • Speaker 3
    0:51:10

    But as long as these regimes are what they are, they will present a military threat. And as long as they do that, someone, some group of countries, will have to counter that military threat with military forces of its own and or of their own. And although alliances are extremely important for the United States, and although the United States can and should confront those countries as part of a coalition, unless the world gets turned upside down, it is the United States that will be to mix metaphors, the tempo of that coalition. Okay.
  • Speaker 2
    0:51:54

    So, Mike, I get to ask the final question. Among your many interests, I’m not confident to talk about base ball, but I can’t talk about mystery fiction. And you are a tremendous aficionado of mystery fiction. You write reviews. At the end of the year for the American treasury, we always recommend a bunch of books.
  • Speaker 2
    0:52:11

    So I I’m gonna ask you two questions. One, explain the appeal of mystery or if you will, detective fiction. What is it that that engages you about? Is there some, you know, deeper meaning there? And then if you could recommend just reauthor to our listening audience, I think they and Wing would be extremely
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:34

    grateful. Well, thank you. W. H. Auden and gosh.
  • Speaker 3
    0:52:42

    I’m I’m blanking on the name. The guy who was at Columbia for years and years and wrote from Dawn to decadence. Jack Jack Barzin, we’re both mystery afis Yanados, and one of them, I think it was Auden said every man of sensibility and culture is a mystery fan.
  • Speaker 2
    0:53:01

    Now why am I
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:01

    on this move fan? And and why are so many people in this mystery fans? Well, I have a hypothesis. And it goes back to my interest in sports, which you were kind enough to mention, and I will plug a two thousand four book I written called the meaning of sports, why Americans watch baseball, football, and basketball, and what they see when they do. I argued that this that Team Sports are a particular form of mass entertainment because they are coherent and they are authentic that as people really do what you see them do, and there was one other.
  • Speaker 3
    0:53:44

    I can’t remember what the third was. But Coherence is important, and I think that’s where mysteries in sports overlap. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They’re all rule governed sports formally, mysteries informally. And in the end, no, you’re gonna find out what happened.
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:07

    So it’s like having an itch that ultimately gets scratched. You know, you you try to figure out who done it. And you’re usually wrong. But at the end, you find out and that’s, I think, an emotionally satisfying experience, especially since we live in a world in which things are not so neat. I I my my argument is that modernism has a cultural phenomenon whether you take joys or Caso or Atonal Music is all a reflection of incoherence.
  • Speaker 3
    0:54:49

    It’s it’s it says the world is incoherent and we’re gonna portray it. Plots are or old have. We don’t have those anymore. But I think there’s a human need for coherence, for things holding together. That’s why there are so many myths in societies because they always explain things and have a conclusion.
  • Speaker 3
    0:55:13

    And I think that mysteries as a genre are the equivalent in some sense amidst for illiterate societies. Anyway, such is my thought. Well, that’s that’s
  • Speaker 1
    0:55:26

    convincing
  • Speaker 2
    0:55:26

    you know, you could wrap it up by giving us three authors that you think are extremely curious and open minded listeners would should read. Okay.
  • Speaker 3
    0:55:38

    Well, Angus and Christie is very good on plots. Porro, Elanco Porro is wonderful And I think that unusually the televised ploros in some ways as good as or even better than the plural of print. David Sucher is a marvelous plural, so I would recommend those. I recommended Peter Lovesie who’s a British mystery author who has a tactic called Peter Diamond. They’re twenty one Peter Diamond mysteries, and they take place in bath, which is interesting because you learn a lot about bath.
  • Speaker 2
    0:56:20

    I’m
  • Speaker 3
    0:56:20

    now reading a series by Philip Kerr, who died recently, This is the Bernie Gunther series. Bernie Gunther is a German detective in Berlin, and this takes you all the way from Weimar through the war to the nineteen fifties and take you to Latin America and briefly to the United States as well. The mysteries are pretty good, and it has these books have two additional features that recommend themselves to me. One, stylistically, he is the true heir to the greatest of all American detective authors, namely Raymond Chandler. Bernie Gunther is more like Philip Marlow.
  • Speaker 3
    0:57:10

    Channelers detective than than anybody else. Second, it’s a way to learn a lot about Germany and what it was like to live in Germany and to live through the Weimar and Nazi periods and and even in the war because he’s in the war where you are a non Jewish anti Nazi, he’s a social democrat, but you you decide that leaving isn’t for you. And therefore, you experience it all with a jaundice
  • Speaker 2
    0:57:42

    on. Terrific. Eric, close it out. Well, that brings
  • Speaker 1
    0:57:46

    us to the end of this particular episode of Shield of the Republic. You know, come for the historical analysis of national security policy and stick around for the literary criticism. It’s just, you know, a perfect way to end this. Our guest has been Michael Mandelbaum, the author of the four ages of American foreign policy, weak power, great power, super power, and hyper power. It is among other things that excellent read.
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:12

    Michael, thank you for taking the time to join us. Well, thank
  • Speaker 3
    0:58:16

    you for for having me on and I have to say It’s daunting to be interviewed by two people who know at least as much about American history as I do, but I feel I’ve gotten through it. Thanks,
  • Speaker 2
    0:58:29

    Mike. Thank you.
  • Speaker 3
    0:58:30

    If
  • Speaker 1
    0:58:31

    you have enjoyed shielded Republic, please make sure to give us a like on Apple Podcasts or modify or wherever you get your podcast from, and drop us a line at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com. We read all of the emails we get, and Elliot occasionally even answers some of them, which is a way of saying that I’ve been negligent in getting back to some of our listeners. But thanks Elliot and thanks Michael for a great conversation. Thank you.