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Cato Institute

Power Problems is a bi-weekly podcast from the Cato Institute. Host John Glaser offers a skeptical take on U.S. foreign policy, and discusses today’s big questions in international security with distinguished guests from across the political spectrum. Podcast Hashtag: #FPPowerProblems.
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Power Problems

Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, discusses her book First Among Equals: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Multipolar World, forthcoming from Yale University Press.
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Embracing Multipolarity

Dartmouth College's Daryl Press and George Washington University's Nicholas Anderson discuss their modeling of an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula, assess the balance of power between the North and South, and explore the implications for the US military alliance with South Korea.

Show Notes

 • Nicolas Anderson, Daryl Press, “
Lost Seoul: Assessing Pyongyang’s Other Deterrent • ,” 
Texas National Security Review • Vol 8 Issue 3, Summer 2025.

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Modeling War on the Korean Peninsula

Rosemary Kelanic, Director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities, discusses the Israel-Iran war, U.S. involvement, whether regime change is the objective, and the risks of escalation. 

Show Notes

Rosemary Kelanic, “A U.S. War With Iran Would Be a Catastrophe ,” New York Times, June 14, 2025.

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A Regime Change War in Iran?

Samuel Seitz, a fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program, explores so-called “madman behavior” in international politics and whether it’s effective in gaining leverage in international confrontations. He explains why problems of signaling, credibility, and reassurance tend to make madman tactics ineffective and he discusses examples from the Cold War to Trump’s first and second administrations. 

Show Notes

Samuel Seitz, Caitlin Talmadge, “The Predictable Hazards of Unpredictability: Why Madman Behavior Doesn’t Work,” The Washington Quarterly 43:3, 2020. 

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Do Madman Tactics Work?

Christopher Chivvis and Lauren Morganbesser of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace discuss the foreign policy attitudes of Gen Z, the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, and the increasing salience of transnational issues, among other topics. 

Show Notes

Christopher Chilis and Lauren Morganbesser, “What Gen Z Thinks about U.S. Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 17, 2025

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Gen Z, Internationalism, & Change in Foreign Policy

Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, talks about the Trump administration’s diplomacy with Iran. He discusses the failures of the first Trump administration’s and the Biden administration’s approaches to Iran, why Trump’s second time around could lead to a new nuclear deal, Iran’s changing regional geopolitical position, and why a more peaceful US-Iran relationship serves US interests in the Middle East.

Show Notes

Trita Parsi, “Why Trump’s Iran Diplomacy May Work,” Time, April 11, 2025.

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Can Trump Make a Deal with Iran?

Alexander Wendt, political scientist at Ohio State University, discusses his forthcoming book The Last Humans: UFOs & National Security, on the political and national security consequences of discovering that Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) are piloted by intelligent extra-terrestrial life. He argues that the ontological shock from this discovery risks triggering a civilizational “auto-immune reaction” of widespread disorder that could undermine the international state system and suggests possible policies and pathways to responsibly prepare for this scenario.

Show Notes

Alexander Wendt, The Last Humans: UFOs and National Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press)

Alexander Wendt, Raymond Duvall, “Sovereignty and the UFO,” Political Theory, 36(4), 607-633.

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UFOs, Aliens, & National Security

The Stimson Center’s Christopher Preble and Geoff Wilson argue that nuclear weapons modernization programs are wasteful boondoggles that undermine deterrence and stability while serving as a give-away to parochial interests. They discuss a “deterrence first” posture on nuclear weapons, perverse incentives in the bureaucracy, profligate waste and inefficiency, the risks of nuclear escalation, the consequences of eroding nuclear deterrence, and threat inflation on China, among other issues. 

Show Notes

 • Geoff Wilson, Christopher Preble, Lucas Ruiz, “
Gambling on Armageddon: How US Nuclear Policies are Undercutting Deterrence and Lowering the Threshold for Nuclear War • ,” Stimson Center Report, February 19, 2025.

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Why America Needs to Change Its Nuclear Weapons Posture

T.V. Paul, professor of international relations at McGill University, talks about his recent book Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi. Paul discusses India’s international status, the push for permanent membership on the UN Security Council, India’s military capabilities and “reactive grand strategy,” India’s complex relations with Russia and China, how some of India’s domestic problems hamper its international ambitions, and strategic management of the U.S.-Indian relationship, among other topics. 

Show Notes

 • T.V. Paul, 
Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi • , (Oxford University Press, 2024). 

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India’s Quest for Major Power Status

Barry Posen, professor of political science at MIT, argues that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 qualifies as a preventive war and was motivated in part to thwart U.S.-led efforts to expand NATO in Europe. He responds to detractors from this view and also discusses the partial political responsibility of U.S. leaders, the difference between explaining the war and justifying it, the lack of strategic empathy in U.S. foreign policy, how best to negotiate the end of the war, and whether the U.S. is making a similar mistake in incentivizing preventive war logic in Beijing with respect to Taiwan.

Show Notes

 • Barry R. Posen, “
Putin's Preventive War: The 2022 Invasion of Ukraine • ,” 
International Security • 2025; 49 (3): 7–49.

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Strategic Empathy & the Roots of the Ukraine War

The desire for high status drives great powers’ foreign policies. Cambridge University professor Steven Ward discusses how status concerns motivate rising powers like China as well as declining powers like the United States, and how that can produce belligerent policies and exacerbate international tensions.

Show Notes

Steven Ward bio • Steven Ward,
 Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers • , (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
 • Steven Ward, “
Status from Fighting? Reassessing the Relationship Between Conflict Involvement and Diplomatic Risk • ,” 
International Interactions • 46, no. 2 (February 2020).
 • Paul Musgraves and Steven Ward, “
Testing Tripwire Theory Using Survey Experiments • ,” 
APSA Preprints • , 2021.

 

 

 

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Competing for Status?

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