This week, I’m casting the pod with author and foreign policy analyst Robert Kaplan. At the end of the Cold War, the United States was both the most powerful country in history and without a challenger. Since them, however, America’s reach in foreign policy has consistently exceeded the grasp of its bureaucrats and elected politicians. Qualified and influential people still tell us that Russia cannot remain a global player and Iran cannot become one, because their economies are based on hydrocarbons and are relatively small. So how is it that Russia and Iran achieve their goals, while the United States flounders?
As Robert Kaplan explains, the failures of American foreign policy are caused by the convergence of factors domestic and foreign. Domestically, Americans remain unwilling to accept that since 1945, the United States has functioned in the world as an empire, and to cultivate the ‘Machiavellian’ strategies by which empires prosper.
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