The Trump administration has released a new National Security Strategy that is a marked shift

not only from earlier administrations but also Trump’s first term in office. While the new policy

statement eschews the goal of global hegemony, it promotes culture war in Europe by

promising support of anti-immigration political parties, economic rivalry in Asia with China, and

a renewal of US military hegemony in the Western hemisphere. To survey this document and

Trump’s often contradictory foreign policy, I spoke to frequent guest of the show Stephen

Wertheim, who is American Statecraft senior fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International

Peace.

Only a few years ago, European elites were patting themselves on the back for fending off the

tide of right-wing anti-system parties (often styled as populists). But recent polls in France,

Germany and the United Kingdom show that that the far right is once again gaining traction,

thanks in no small part centrist governments that have demoralized the population and

legitimized xenophobia. David Broder, author of Mussolini's Grandchildren and European editor

of Jacobin, wrote a wide-ranging essay on this for The New York Times. I spoke to David about

both the dismal decisions of mainstream parties and also possible alternatives.

The famed economist Larry Summers, not for the first time, finds himself the center of a

scandal. He’s had to take a leave from Harvard, where he teaches, because of embarrassing

emails he had with his late friend Jeffrey Epstein.

I talked to economic journalist and Nation contributor Doug Henwood, a long-time Summers

watcher, about the career of this controversial and influential figure. Summers has been one of

the most influential policy makers of his era, serving as Treasury Secretary and President of

Harvard. He has also embodied the major intellectual and political limitations of the ruling class.

The scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, who trafficked and abused children and died in a prison cell

in 2019, has never gone away. It continues to explode now that House Democrats have

released thousands of emails from Epstein and his cronies. But while the political class and

mainstream media are understandably focused on the sex scandal, another dimension of the

scandal goes uncovered except by independent media outlets such as Drop Site: Epstein’s deep

ties to the national security state. I talked to international relations scholar Van Jackson about

this crucial part of the story.

Much has been written about how the Israel/Palestine conflict is dividing the left, but the

same is true of the right. Tucker Carlson’s interview with the antisemitic critic of Israel Nick

Fuentes has created an intense debate on the right about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism,

currently playing itself out in turmoil at the Heritage Foundation. I spoke with the historian

David Austin Walsh, whose book Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far

Right provides a crucial background for this story.

Donald Trump claims he wants to be the peace president and has even lobbied for a Nobel

Peace Prize. But his foreign policy has been wildly contradictory. While the United States is

clearly retrenching from many parts of the world, violence against hemispheric neighbors is

increasing. I talked to Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy

Institute for Responsible Statecraft, for a wide-ranging discussion on why American hegemony

is declining but also why the push for retrenchment hasn’t gone far enough.

On Friday, the self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced the US was sending an aircraft carrier to bolster its attacks on Venezuelan boats (which the Trump administration alleges, without evidence, are trafficking drugs). I spoke to international relations scholar Van Jackson (whose work can be found here) about the motives for this new war as well as the muted opposition to it from Democrats.

The fragile ceasefire negotiated between Israel and Hamas hasn’t ended the violence, but it has

for now lessened it. But even if the ceasefire holds, the need for a political solution to

Palestinian dispossession remains. To discuss the issue of accountability, I spoke to Yousef

Munayyer, who is the head of the Palestine/Israel Program and Senior Fellow at Arab Center

Washington DC. We talked about how the shocking events of the last two years have shifted

global public opinion, including in the United States. Both parties are heading towards a long-

delayed debate about the value of the US/Israel relation.