America’s Foreign Policy Has a Cold War Hangover
Angry Planet19 Jul 2019

America’s Foreign Policy Has a Cold War Hangover

Thinking about geopolitics is all about picking the right metaphor. After World War II, America’s elite conceived of a world engaged in a Cold War, where the United States and Soviet Union played a game of spies and skirmishes to spread political ideology across the planet. In the 19th century, the British and Russian Empires engaged in the Great Game, a political and diplomatic game of shadows that played out in Afghanistan and its neighboring territories. The problem with metaphors is that the map is not the territory. The menu is not the meal and if you get caught up in a great power competition, it can be hard to see the world any other way.


Here to help us sort through this, and try to figure out what metaphors best fit our troubled times, is Ali Wyne. Wyne is a policy analyst at RAND, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on International Security, and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute. His work, especially on this topic, has appeared in The National Interest.


You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.



Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episoder(493)

Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’

Puffins, Zyn, and ‘Polar War’

Greenland fever has faded for now but it will return. The world’s polar region, you see, is pretty damn important. As the planet heats and the ice melts, what was once an impassible warren of ice and ...

6 Feb 55min

Online Culture Is the Whole Culture

Online Culture Is the Whole Culture

There was a time, just before the pandemic, when folks would say “Twitter isn’t real life” as a means of dismissing the horrors of social media. This was a cope, a way to ignore the worst political an...

30 Jan 1h 24min

How We Thought the First Year Would Go

How We Thought the First Year Would Go

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comOn January 28, 2025, I sat down with Aram Shabanian to talk about how we thought the first year of the Trump administration would go...

16 Jan 1h 2min

On Spectacles of Cruelty

On Spectacles of Cruelty

On the last Angry Planet of 2025, novelist and Marine Corps veteran Phil Klay returns to reflect on a year of spectacle and cruelty.Between the Pentagon’s boat strikes and the administration’s constan...

9 Jan 52min

Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine

Google’s Former CEO Is Dancing in Ukraine

Earlier this year journalist Ben Makuch caught a glimpse of Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, dancing at a club in Kyiv. It was a surreal moment, a snapshot of a tragic war that the West thinks ...

19 Des 20251h 9min

‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’

‘Capitalism Is a Series of Regime Changes’

Another week and another Angry Planet about the horrifying systems that rule our lives.Is there a depressive theme running through the work right now? Possibly. I promise we’ll soon replace it with ra...

12 Des 202548min

The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain

The US Government’s AI Grand Bargain

The White House is portraying the race to adopt AI as an existential crisis. It’s the next Manhattan Project, they say, a technology so important it will require an unprecedented build out of energy i...

6 Des 202554min

Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West

Deadwood: The Town that Made the Wild West

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comThis week on Angry Planet we’re taking a break from the horrors of the present to explore horrors of a past distant enough now that ...

21 Nov 202551min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
i-retten
stopp-verden
forklart
aftenpodden-usa
nokon-ma-ga
popradet
det-store-bildet
dine-penger-pengeradet
fotballpodden-2
aftenbla-bla
rss-ness
rss-gukild-johaug
hanna-de-heldige
rss-dannet-uten-piano
frokostshowet-pa-p5
e24-podden
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
grasoner-den-nye-kalde-krigen