The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

Has Washington's foreign policy Blob begun to internalize far-right politics? Have the most militarist sections of the Blob succeeded in infiltrating the Trump administration's foreign policy? On whom does the Iran war hang, or the trillion-dollar military budget? What function do think tanks provide? And what is the relationship of the Blob to the capitalist establishment and the power of the national security state? Jonathan Guyer joins Dr. Van Jackson to make sense of how Washington foreign policy works, especially in the wake of the Democrats' sweeping electoral victories in the 2026 mid-term elections. Watching Recommendations: Netflix's Animals; the Scream franchise. Listen to Jonathan on None of the Above: https://www.noneoftheabovepodcast.org/ Read Jonathan's essay in New York Review of Books: https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/10/27/trumps-blob-foreign-policy/?lp_txn_id=1701697 Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Obama comes out against the Iran war, MAGA foreign policy, and Pete Hegseth's grooming obsession. New estimates suggest that even if the Iran War ended today, its cost would exceed one-trillion dollars. The war has already cost US households $147 billion is excess energy costs. Global dockworkers across 111 countries on five continents have coordinated a strike against all the wars. Dr. Van Jackson explains it all. Also this episode: Un-Diplomatic Newsletter appears in the New York Review of Books; shoutout to Morgan Spector. Watching recommendations: Drop Dead Gorgeous; Carrie. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

The State Department is now vetting career employees for political loyalty to the president...in the past and now, against the law. The Pentagon is deploying corporate spies in China to steal tech secrets. Saudi Arabia is rendering Yemen into its Gaza--a site of exceptional war crimes. And why Netanyahu could go to jail, but for corruption in a submarine deal, not war crimes. Matt Duss is back with Dr. Van Jackson to explain it all. Watching recommendations: Netflix's Below; Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey; Rick & Morty; NAZA. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Dr. Van Jackson revisits his predictions about the start of the Iran war and explains five secrets about war with Iran that account for why the war happened, who benefits from it, and what comes next. Also this episode: Understanding why the student-led riots in France will grow then fail; what Antonio Gramsci tells us about riots; and what makes a riot different from a strike. Watching recommendations: The Drop on Hulu; Netflix's Below; V For Vendetta. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0zI9vqD3y78?si=TpALK2ZcpKVOQWDB Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

The Trump administration's new geopolitical concept of "Greater North America" is fascist imagineering of international relations. It's imperialist, but a variation that differs meaningfully from liberal empire..and the implications are dire. Dr. Van Jackson breaks down his new essay in Foreign Policy magazine, "Trump's Greater North America is Fascist Geopolitics." Also this episode: Why the costs of the Iran War reveals it as a war for oligarchy; on Trump's willingness to sacrifice LA and San Diego to keep fighting Iran; and Senator Chris Murphy was barred from a US military base in the UAE in order for the Trump administration to avoid democratic accountability for the Iran War. Watching/listening recommendations: The Drop on Hulu; the Mother Country Radicals podcast series; and the song "Ain't Nobody" by Chaka Khan and Rufus. Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: @un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Separating truth from fiction in Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's "State of the Force" speech at Quantico. How is a crisis of capitalism driving a crisis of American militarism? Why is he accusing journalists of treason, lying about the Iran War, or bragging about slashing staff while inflating the military budget? Why are right-wing oligarchs (Elon Musk, Palmer Lucky, and Newt Gingrich) appointed to be the Pentagon's brain trust in charge of "Project Meridian?" And how does Hegseth narrate the role of the military in peripheralizing the imperial core, making Alabama more like the new Guam or Philippines? Julia Gledhill is back with Van Jackson to break it all down, including her new investigation for The Baffler magazine on the role of "autonomous manufacturing" in transferring wealth from taxpayers to venture capitalists via the national security state. Read Julia’s piece in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/latest/up-against-the-wall-gledhill Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

Making sense of the Trump summit with China's Xi Jinping--why MAGA respects Chinese power and why an imperialist peace between the great powers is no peace at all. Marco Rubio rejects international order at the United Nations. Against data centers or A.I.? Then the US security state is coming for you! Russian hybrid aggression has spilled out of Ukraine and into Europe--why the "sandbox theory" of support for Ukraine was always going to be self-defeating. And YouTuber Alec The Pen satirizes the "Secret Society of Democratic Centrists."  Alec The Pen's short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j5bXSIkpPJk Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

A new campaign just launched called Drop The Genocide 20. It demands banning the leading officials from the Biden administration most responsible for Gaza policy since October 7, 2023--and every person with a policy background should sign the pledge to keep these genocidaires away from the halls of power. The Center for Working Class Politics is tracking four key working-class candidates running as Democrats for the mid-term elections--here's how they're doing and what it means for the popularity of economic populism and whether we're really in a left populist moment. Public debate has been consumed with the question of whether artificial intelligence will destroy the world. But that debate distracts from the real ways in which AI is ending the world right now--by destroying critical thinking capacities, by deskilling white-collar workers, by inflating the worst financial bubble in economic history...and according to a new MIT research paper, causing "cognitive surrender" in students who are addicted to using AI to avoid the difficulty of learning. Finally, a new big report in The International Policy Journal makes an airtight case for why New Zealand should become a model for non-offensive defense; avoid acquiring naval frigates; and foreclose on multilateral warfighting with the United States. At stake is whether a small trading nation succumbs to empire or is capable of the independent foreign policy it's prided itself on for decades.  For the Battle of Chile conversation referenced in this episode, as well as part two and three:  https://www.bangbangpod.com/p/the-battle-of-chile-part-i-1975-w Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

A new report from Defense Priorities has a radical proposal: End US alliances with South Korea, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines; drastically cut US military presence in East Asia; declare a non-intervention policy on Taiwan; and shift US military strategy from defending a "first-island chain" defense perimeter to the "second-island chain." Dr. Van Jackson explains the meaning and implications of this proposal and evaluates it from the perspective of anti-militarist anti-imperialism. Based on previous research, he also proposes the standard for "progressive foreign policy," whether progressives and socialists should support this new proposal, and no proposal for changing military strategy has a chance of stabilizing Asia if it does not prioritize the concept of the "Asian Peace." Also this episode: why the 1995 Michael Moore comedy Canadian Bacon explains the US fixation with colonizing Canada in 2026. In the back half of the episode: a mini-lecture on imperialist accounts of World War One, comparing how W.E.B. Du Bois and V.I. Lenin both theorized empire as the cause of World War One but in starkly different ways.  W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of White Folk” (1920), https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/Du_Bois_White_Folk.pdf.  V.I. Lenin, “Chapter 1: The Principle of Socialism and the War of 1914-15,” in Socialism and War (1915), https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/s-w/ch01.htm.  Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions.

In this episode: Why "purging immigrants" doesn't fix working-class wages—it's a wealth story, not a race story. Attending New Zealand's student-led "School Strike 4 Climate" in Wellington—how the movement's demands have evolved from narrow climate asks (ending fossil fuel exploration, scrapping fast-track approvals) toward linking climate justice with broader political education and youth voter enrollment. The White House's official website is hosting deportation-themed arcade games—fascism makes cruelty a spectacle. Trump's social media post depicting U.S. "territories," which doubled as an admission that Guam, Puerto Rico, CNMI, Washington D.C., Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia function as U.S. colonial holdings—plus a jab claiming the Strait of Hormuz as American territory. The Economist magazine had embarrassing coverage of Australia's Pacific security agreements, which are asymmetric "protectorate" deals that expand Australian sub-imperial influence and destabilize the region more than any Chinese military presence does. Economic pundit Steve Ratner has a chart showing that ICE raid-heavy states have seen the slowest wage growth...and that opens an explainer about fascism, counter-revolution, and who benefits from ethnonationalism (oligarchs!). Labor's share of national income—not immigration—is driving economic insecurity. Non-sequitur: Hulu’s Furious might be the best show on streaming right now.  Also this episode: A crossover conversation with the show Bogan Intelligentsia about US economic war with Canada; our complicated feelings about Mark Carney as Canada’s PM; why Australia is totally misreading American politics and the world’s geopolitics; how different political constituencies interpret multipolarity; the Democratic Party in the US; and more.  Subscribe to the Un-Diplomatic Newsletter: https://www.un-diplomatic.com/ Watch Un-Diplomatic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@un-diplomaticpodcast Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the individuals and not of any institutions