Crashing the War Party

Experts are now speculating that America's reputation in the world, particularly in the Middle East, is taking a hit worse than when it invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003. Giorgio Cafiero, head of Gulf State Analytics and a keen observer of politics in the region, tells the podcast this week that President Biden is becoming more hated than George W. Bush during that era. This threatens to get even worse each day that the Israeli bom...

A popular narrative after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and ensuing retaliation by Israel has been that the U.S. had dropped the ball because it had 'pivoted away' from the Middle East over the last three administrations. That is simply not true. According to our guests this week, CATO researchers Jon Hoffman and Jordan Cohen,  Washington has maintained a status quo in the Middle East that had become untenable. It has been fueling the re...

There are currently 2,500 American troops in Iraq and another 900 in Syria. Their bases have come under repeated fire in both countries since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. According to Pentagon officials, Iranian-backed militias are to blame, and they expect more as fighting ramps up in Gaza and the West Bank. Adam Weinstein, a senior fellow on Middle East issues at the Quincy Institute and an Afghanistan War veteran, spoke w...

In this special episode, Kelley and Dan update the headlines from the Gaza strip and talk about how U.S. policy in the region has become increasingly effective in terms of pushing for a two-state solution and helping to restrain the more extreme impulses of the Israeli government ahead of the Hamas attacks on Israel and retaliatory strikes in Gaza over the last week.

In the first segment, we talk to Mark Hannah, senior fellow of the...

It took the Ukraine war to show how broken the U.S. war machine really is. President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1961 and we know that it is ten times as worse as he even imagined. But after almost two years of war in Ukraine and tens of billions of American weapons transfers, we now know how limited -- if not dysfunctional -- the MIC really is. Yale scholar and lecturer Michael Brenes joins us to dis...

The Ukraine War has exposed a lot when it comes to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — otherwise known as NATO. Aside from the "renewed mission" and "unity" that has emerged to help Ukraine confront the Russian invasion, there are downsides. NATO has a limited capacity of weapons stores and manpower and the US is taking on a disproportionate share of the leadership and resource sharing. Dr. Maitra Sumantra, a senior fellow at ...

We welcomed back to the show this week the co-hosts of Conflicts of Interest podcast, Kyle Anzalone & Connor Freeman, who both write and edit and support the Libertarian Institute. We ask them about the rancorous split among libertarians over Ukraine, a fissure not seen in the Global War on Terror. We also talked about signs of fraying support for a forever war situation in Ukraine, on Capitol Hill and outside the Beltway, increasi...

Ask anyone in Washington and they'll tell you, in varying levels of panic, that China is a threat to the United States. Some will say it's the greatest threat ever or, in military-speak, the "pacing threat." So who is right? And if China is a challenge or even a threat, to its neighbors if not America directly, then how does the Biden Administration rationally deal with that? 

We asked longtime China security studies expert Michael ...

This week, President Joe Biden announced that he was unfreezing $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds as part of a broader deal that involves an important prisoner swap. The deal has drawn howling from the usual suspects, those who believe any diplomatic course with Iran spells weakness and blunder. Sina Toossi, an expert in U.S.-Iran relations and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, joined us this week to talk about...

We are excited to sit down (metaphorically) with veteran, whistleblower, peace activist, and foreign policy dissident Matthew Hoh. He has spent the last few years helping to build the Eisenhower Media Network, which is designed to promote and give voice to veterans with a critical point of view of U.S. wars, foreign policy, and the military-industrial complex. Hoh has been at the forefront of the anti-war movement since serving as ...

For the last two decades, the U.S. military has been heavily invested in Africa — in training, weapons sharing, and basing — per its "war on terrorism." Unfortunately, the places in Africa that have had the most U.S. investment in this regard are now among the most unstable on the planet. Somalia continues to be wracked by militia violence and a fragile (at best) government, while the Sahel in West Africa has experienced no less th...

Eighteen months into the war in Ukraine and the picture is grim. After so many US officials — including former military — pumped up the prospects of the Ukraine counteroffensive — it looks like the conflict is headed into a bloody stalemate if not a Russian rout. Lyle Goldstein, Director of the Asia Engagement program at Defense Priorities, has been one of the more sober voices calling for a diplomatic pathway rather than a commitm...

Last week, the Biden administration announced a deal with the Iranian regime that would free five Iranian-American prisoners in Tehran in exchange for several Iranian prisoners here in the U.S. The deal would also free up $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds to be used solely for humanitarian purposes in Iran. Brussels-based foreign policy analyst Eldar Mamedov joins us this week to talk about the Republican-hawk backlash against the...

Does Washington have a plan B if the Ukrainian counteroffensive doesn't work out? Kelley and Daniel talk to foreign policy and politics writer James Carden about continued maximalist talk in the Beltway, setting up the Ukraine war for another forever war. He also talks about the "peace conference" in Saudi Arabia last weekend and his disappointment that there is no real diplomatic push on behalf of the major powers. Moreover, how p...

The Senate just passed a defense spending bill with a top line of $886 billion. Added to other national security-related funds like nuclear weapons modernization and homeland security, the U.S. is poised to spend more than one trillion on defense in 2024, with more than half going to military contractors. Julia Gledhill, a Pentagon spending expert with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), joins us this week to bring us up to...

In lieu of promising Ukraine President Zelensky NATO membership, the alliance has promised 300,000 high-alert troops and a ton of new assistance and security guarantees. What kind of hole is the West digging here, for itself, and Ukraine? The CATO Institute's Justin Logan joins us again to talk about the quandary of dangling NATO and long-term security guarantees in front of NATO. He also talks about how the American people seem to...

The media distortion field and the fog of war. We hear these terms quite often but it's been a long time since we saw them both so fully in action. As a result, there is little known on the real casualty figures in the war in Ukraine, how much of American/Western weapons and equipment has been destroyed, and most importantly, whether Ukraine is "winning" as it contends to be. We talk to (Ret.) Col. Doug Macgregor this week and his ...

Despite all of his assurances to the contrary — that Washington would return to its role as a steward of global democratic reform — Biden has mostly continued what every previous American president has done: prop up autocrats to keep "stability" in the Middle East. Cato Institute policy analyst Jon Hoffman came on the show this week to point out one of the most blatant of Biden's contradictions: his support for Egyptian president A...

On Thursday, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi comes to Washington and will address a joint session of Congress. There are a lot of expectations for this visit, as Washington really wants India to be a strategic partner in its China containment strategy. But India has its own interests, and while it is more than happy to work with the U.S. on trade, economic development, and even military tech and industrial capabilities, it ha...