The Un-Diplomatic Podcast

Killing Empire, Abandoning Asia, or Rescuing the Asian Peace? A Radical Rethink of the US in Asia’s Balance of Power | Ep. 319 11.09.2026 1t

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.

US Territorial Confession | The Economist Loves Australian Empire | ICE Raids Are Bad for the Economy | Keeping Climate Protest Alive | Ep. 318 04.09.2026 1t 22min

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.

Inside the Tech Worker Movement Against Oligarchy, w/ Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan | Ep. 317 28.08.2026 1t 9min

How has labor organizing of tech workers changed from the early 2010s to today? What has been the tech oligarch playbook for labor repression, and why have tech billionaires mutated into oligarchs? How did Kickstarter become the first company to unionize in the tech sector? How does far-right culture-war politics benefit the oligarchic class? And what makes exercising worker power in the tech sector unique compared to worker power in the economy at large? JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine join Dr. Van Jackson to discuss their incredible new book, Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World’s Most Powerful Industry. Also this episode: The Trump administration designates Palestine Action a global terrorist organization; fascist geopolitics propels the US toward trying to annex Canada; CIA operations in Mexico; and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announces an economic "D-Day" threat on Iran that he can't fully implement.

Why are US troops in South Korea? Dr. Van Jackson talks about his history working Korea policy, and why he doesn't think the old rationale holds up in 2026. The real meaning of the Pentagon's announcement to produce 200,000 drones for "drone dominance." With Alexander Vindman's loss to Angie Nixon in the Florida senate primary, we are seeing the twighlight of the "resistance liberal" from Trump 1.0. Could party structures modeled on DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, emerge in other countries? There's a bond market crisis that could spark a financial meldown--here's why interest rates are rising. Also this episode: Dr. Jackson shares his panel discussion about left populism, democratic socialism, and the upcoming New Zealand at the NZ Fabian Society.

Tupac Against Marco Rubio | The Token Black Professor Problem | The Poverty of Capitalist Education | International Relations After BLM w/ Robbie Shilliam | Ep. 315 14.08.2026 1t 24min

What Tupac Shakur would've made of Marco Rubio (nothing good!). Tyler Austin Harper's essay in The Atlantic about leaving academia out of frustration at being a "Token Black Professor." University students skipping meals and skipping classes is a sign of a broken system. And in the back half of the episode, Dr. Van Jackson speaks with Dr. Robbie Shilliam about international relations since the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020. After George Floyd’s police murder and the Black Lives Matter movement explosion in 2020. They also discuss: What made Hans Morgenthau a theorist of race relations, not just international relations; Why the field of IR has a racial blind spot in the first place; Why IR’s leading journals, editors, and scholars re-engaged racial questions after 2020 but without drawing on what the discipline’s own canonical thinkers had to say about race; Why the Gen Z and Millennial generation of scholars are possibly built differently when it comes to racial issues and historical IR; and How the concept of “frontier” unites Republicanism and imperialism in some of the early thinkers of IR like Frederick Jackson Turner, William Allen, and Merze Tate.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hasan Minhaj Define Empire | The Left-Populist Wave is Here | UAE As Sub-Imperial Power | Interview w/ William Lawrence | Ep. 314 07.08.2026 1t 44min

What is the meaning of empire? Ta-Nehisi Coates commiserates with Hasan Minhaj about living unaware of American imperialism for too long, and Dr. Van Jackson explains why coming to consciousness about empire was key to his personal political awakening. The UAE is facilitating a genocide in Sudan, and it's doing so as a sub-imperial power of the United States. Left-populist candidates won 11 out of 18 electoral campaigns this week, ushering in a wave that will transform American politics one way or another.

What is the meaning of left populism and what does it stand for? Inside the politics of the most popular candidates running in 2026, from William Lawrence to Francesca Hong. What happened at the Pentagon's secret meeting with munitions suppliers, and what does it have to do with the new idea of a "forever" missile gap? What nations does the United States still control as colonies in 2026, and how can they get free? An update on Marco Rubio's attempt to transform the US State Department into a far-right deep state.

The Trump administration is trying to manufacture a new anti-communist red scare, enlisting the national security state into a counter-revolutionary political project. Marco Rubio is obsessed with making Cuba an enemy. How Democrats gave up the only leverage they had to stop the Iran War. Think tanks and the foreign policy establishment are in crisis and dangerously out of touch with reality--Emma Ashford reports on the Aspen Security Forum. How the ruling class reproduces itself by co-opting young people into believing they're not actually workers. And the dismal state of the nuclear disarmament movement in 2026--why preventing nuclear war and nuclear proliferation requires reconnecting nuclear issues to conventional militarism.

China Election Conspiracy | Far-Left Terrorism Deflection | How Great-Power Rivalry Causes Repression Politics | Ep. 311 17.07.2026 42min

Trump's speech to the nation claiming that China stole the election from him is a farce, and an excuse to use the power of the state against his political enemies. Dr. Van Jackson warned about this in the 2025 book The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy. What's bringing back the repression politics of the Cold War. And what Marco Rubio's 60-nation meeting manufacturing the fake threat of "far-left terrorism" is itself a threat of repression politics.

Geopolitical Insider Trading | China’s Pacific Missile Test | Iran-War Ceasefire Lie | Graham Platner | Ep. 310 10.07.2026 30min

Why we're seeing a rise in geopolitical gambling, speculation, and insider trading. Why the Iran War ceasefire was always going to fail. How to make sense of China's submarine-launched ballistic missile test over the Pacific, and why anti-imperialism is the only solution. Peter Theil calls Pope Leo a Chinese communist agent. And the devastation over the Graham Platner scandal.

Socialist Foreign Policy | Zach Woods Attacks James Carville | The Billionaire's Coup Playbook | Independence Day (1996) w/ Morgan Spector | Ep. 309 03.07.2026 1t 40min

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is winning elections around the US. Their growing popularity is a democratic response to growing insecurity in an age of oligarchy. Zach Woods (from HBO's Silicon Valley) goes after Democratic strategist James Carville in the best way. Why DSA's victories are key to changing US foreign policy. Why Trump's corruption, oligarchy, the k-shaped economy, and America's imperial wars are all related--The Billionaire’s Coup Handbook explains. And for those who listen to The Un-Diplomatic Podcast, a free crossover release of an episode with actor Morgan Spector covering Independence Day (1996) on The Bang-Bang Podcast.

Post-Liberal International Relations and the End of Ideology, w/ Daniel Bessner | Ep. 308 26.06.2026 1t

Why is America no longer the global hegemon? What is world order becoming after liberal hegemony? What's happening to international relations as a discipline? What does it mean to say that the era of ideology is over? In what way does Daniel Bessner sort of agree with G. John Ikenberry? Why does the dominance of liberal capitalism means shedding liberalism, and why does that help explain the world's ongoing polycrisis? Dr. Daniel Bessner (from the American Prestige Podcast) joins Dr. Van Jackson to make sense of the world by way of his essay in The Ideas Letter, "Power Without Ideology: Welcome to the Multipolar World."

Pacific Power Rebrand | Iran War Peace Deal | Peter Theil’s Secret Society | The Politics of Antimilitarism | Ep. 307 19.06.2026 49min

Inside the peace deal end the US war against Iran--and the spoilers that can bring it down. What’s behind the Department of War’s name change from Indo-Pacific Command to Pacific Command? Why decolonizing the Pacific Islands Region (including Guam) has to be part of American territorial defense. Taking a zero-based approach to the military budget. And Peter Theil’s secret society has way too many liberal and Democratic Party names on its members list.

Who Should Run Democratic Party Foreign Policy? Not the Genocide Squad! With Harrison Mann | Ep. 306 12.06.2026 1t 2min

Harrison Mann was an army intelligence officer who resigned in protest against the genocide in Gaza in 2024. Since then, he's been a man on a mission--against war, against the political appointees who perpetuate war crimes and genocide, and for a new, more progressive foreign policy cadre for the Democratic Party. Mann joins Dr. Van Jackson in this episode about the future of Democratic Party foreign policy, being a CNN pundit, the latest on the war with Iran and whether the US will invade Kharg Island, using wargames for peace, and why a reckoning with the crimes of the Biden administration is so essential.

The government is now going after regular people who oppose data centers and are calling it "anti-tech extremist violence.” Congress's anti-China data center conspiracy theory is a very real farce. Bernie Sanders is in the New York Times with a new proposal to seize the means of A.I. production, sort of. New Zealand is allowing itself to follow into a militarist trap of its own making--what's at stake in the debate about New Zealand military spending and its anti-nuclear stance. Pete Hegseth's speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue confirms one thing: The US is still pursuing global primacy, only under conditions where it's neither possible nor justified, and that means violence. What makes opposition to A.I. data centers a strategically useful site for both people-power struggle and state repression. And the U.S. has illegally killed more than 200 people in over 60 strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific--that's what the Monroe Doctrine looks like.

Comedians Against Nuclear War, War Crimes, and Wars on Democracy, w/ Orli Matlow and William Hartung | Ep. 304 29.05.2026 1t 7min

Antiwar comedy kills! Orli Matlow (host of War is Stupid: An Antiwar Podcast About War) and William Hartung (co-author of the Trillion-Dollar War Machine) are both comedians who make jokes against militarism and war. In this laugh filled episode of the pod, Orli, Bill, and Dr. Van Jackson explore the challenges of political or "charged" comedy in a country always at war.

Live! Imperial End Times: The Geopolitics of Class War in a Post-American World | Ep. 303 21.05.2026 1t 2min

This episode is a live public lecture to the New Zealand Fabian Society in Wellington. Our governments are clinging to outdated mental maps of the world—maps that obscure the pain and profit associated with their foreign-policy choices. In this public talk, Dr. Van Jackson diagnoses our moment of global “polycrisis” as a crisis of capitalism anchored to a single declining hegemon. The United States has repudiated its former global role; the world is becoming more multipolar; and prolonged economic stagnation is plaguing the global North and South to varying degrees. These forces are propelling modern national states toward “primitive accumulation”—using state power to hoard both wealth and security at the expense of the working classes. Linking America’s permanent war economy to the rentier economies of wealthy nations like New Zealand, Jackson argues that imperialist statecraft is becoming a more common mode of geopolitics—a mode that benefits oligarchs and turns the institutions of “national security” against us all. Refusing this dystopian trajectory means struggling to retain our shared humanity and construct a global order without empire.

China Summit Realism | Graham Platner Defines the Working Class | Gorka's Counter-Terrorism Anxiety | Ep. 302 15.05.2026 45min

What does Trump's summit with China's Xi Jinping mean for rivalry, the permanent war economy, strategic stability, and US imperial decline? The deep sexual anxieties underneath the White House's anti-democratic counter-terrorism strategy. Graham Platner takes the lead in defining the working class and left populism. Why military spending is out of control, and who benefits. Matt Duss, Julia Gledhill, and Van Jackson are back to make sense of it all.

A Non-Aligned Global Order and the Post-American World, w/ Nils Gilman | Ep. 301 08.05.2026 1t

Is a new Non-Aligned Movement emerging to counter the United States (and is it trying to counter the US)? What was the original Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War? What was the New International Economic Order, and why did it disappear? What prospects are there for a global order in a post-hegemon, post-American, multipolar world? And what does the US Democratic Party have to do with all these questions? Dr. Nils Gilman joins Dr. Van Jackson on tackle all those questions by discussing Gilman's new essay in Dissent Magazine called "A New Non-Aligned Movement?"

Why Graham Platner's victory in the Democratic primary for Maine's senate seat is so important for the antifascist antiwar movement. Why Americans no longer believe the hype about the China threat. Inside Marco Rubio's imperial control of the Panama Canal and Panama's expropriation of a Chinese company's assets. Israeli piracy targets the Gaza Sumud Flotilla, creating "Apartheid without borders." And the role of multilateralism in forging a global imperialist order.

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