This week, our guest is Daniel Bessner, Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. We discuss Trump, American empire, Washington’s Asian fixation, and the possibility of “mutual ruin of the contending classes” among other subjects.

Time Stamps:

• 00:01:12 Childhood interest in history
• 00:03:45 The US foreign policy ecosystem and the effectiveness of the Quincy intervention
• 00:06:48 Progressive foreign policy during Trump part two
• 00:09:30 Marxism and other influences
• 00:10:58 Origins of the American empire
• 00:11:56 The US was never isolationist
• 00:13:32 The US v other British settler colonies
• 00:14:54 Trump isn’t fascist, he’s a 1980s New Yorker
• 00:17:37 Has the state become too complex to control?
• 00:20:00 Why the US is an empire
• 00:21:34 American imperial decline and the “Pivot to Asia”
• 00:25:48 How are Russia and China seen from DC
• 00:27:23 Climate change and mutual ruin

*The Trialogue Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.

**The first twelve episodes of this podcast were published by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.