The Foreign Affairs Interview

The Democrats’ sweeping victory in the midterm elections this week marks not only the start of a new phase for Donald Trump’s foreign policy. It also kicks off a more intensive discussion among both Democrats and Republicans about the future of American foreign policy beyond Trump.
 
Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with two foreign policy veterans who have participated in these debates inside and outside government, including in Foreign Affairs. Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, served in the State Department and on the National Security Council under George W. Bush. Tom Wright was senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council under Joe Biden and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
 
All of these debates will have to contend with big questions about specific policies, from China and the Middle East to AI and defense spending. They also involve deep and often bitter fissures between and within parties. Meanwhile, the war in Iran is far from resolved and the specter of an already unpredictable president’s lame-duck period introduces even more uncertainty about what the world will look like when Trump leaves the White House for good in January 2029.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

William McRaven spent four decades in the U.S. military as a Navy SEAL, a four-star admiral, and head of U.S. Special Operations Command. He led the 2003 operation that captured Saddam Hussein and oversaw the 2011 operation that killed Osama bin Laden. But in a new essay in Foreign Affairs, McRaven focuses not on the potential of military force but on its limits—limits that American policymakers frequently disregard, at immense cost. He warns of a persistent “American delusion—our excessive faith in the capacity of military power to achieve victory and thereby fundamentally political ends.” And while the Trump administration’s war in Iran may offer a particularly stark example of this delusion, McRaven worries that the problem will get worse rather than better in the future.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with McRaven on October 26 about the war in Iran and Ukraine; about the damage to civil-military relations and military culture under President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; about how technology is, and is not, transforming the battlefield; and about the risks of a strictly transactional foreign policy for the durability of American power.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is facing his biggest challenge since taking office in 2014. But in an essay in Foreign Affairs, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that the youth protests that have swept New Delhi don’t just pose a test for Modi’s authority—they may also mark an inflection point for India itself. “The future of Indian democracy,” Mehta writes, “hinges on whether this contest opens up more democratic space or leads to greater repression.”

Deputy Editor Kanishk Tharoor spoke with Mehta, an analyst of Indian politics and University Lecturer at Princeton University, on October 19 about Modi’s power, about what these protests can and cannot achieve, and about what the battle in India means for the future of liberal democracy around the world. 

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Nearly eight months since it began, the war in Iran has settled into a grim stalemate. Two essays in the new issue of Foreign Affairs consider just how long this stalemate could continue—and what decision-makers in Tehran think they can achieve in the coming months. In “The New Forever War,” Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group argues that Iran prefers deadlock to any plausible compromise with Washington. In “Why Iran Escalates,” Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar of Texas A&M argues that Tehran will pursue a more ambitious goal: forcing the United States out of the Middle East altogether.

Senior Editor Daniel Block spoke with Tabaar and Vaez on Monday, October 12 to discuss U.S. and Iranian strategies, the future of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, and the durability of a regime that Western policymakers have often underestimated.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine almost five years ago, Russia has mounted ever more aggressive attacks in Europe, far from the battlefield. These attacks were long talked about as a form of “hybrid warfare.” But as Julianne Smith, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, notes in a new piece in Foreign Affairs, they have reached a level of risk and flagrancy where that label may no longer apply. And these attacks come in the context of escalation in Ukraine and dissension in the transatlantic alliance, as the Trump administration calls into question basic commitments to Europe.

Smith has warned of the dangers of Russian escalation and urged NATO to do more in response. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to her on Tuesday, October 6, about the options for raising the cost on Russia—as well as about the future of the war in Ukraine and the prospects for the United States and Europe in the wake of President Donald Trump.

You can find sources, transcripts, and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.