On this edition, TJ Coles, prolific author and founder of The Plymouth Institute for Peace Research, joins us to discuss geopolitics and what critics of American foreign policy describes as the U.S.’s pursuit “Full Spectrum Dominance”. We discuss a number of topics related to this including:
– Beginning the conversation we discuss TJ’s latest book Capitalism & Coronavirus: How Institutionalized Greed Turned a Crisis into a Catastrophe; an IMF (International Monetary Fund) report on the pandemic that TJ considers important
– The concept of “Full Spectrum Dominance”
– The weaponization of space; U.S. Space Command, U.S. technology and the military; the U.N. Outer Space Treaty
– The United Nations as a “complicated organization”
– The horrific effects of U.S. foreign policy decisions involving blockades and sanctions
– Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex
– The origins of the U.S. National Security State
– The question of declining U.S. power
– U.S.-Russia relations; Trump’s softer rhetoric on Russia vs. the reality
– Binary thinking in the defense of U.S. foreign policy that are used to attack critiques of U.S. foreign policy
– The U.S., China, the New Cold War
– The renewed nuclear threat/nuclear war
– The early days of the Biden Presidency
– Full Spectrum Dominance under Clinton; the Bush era neocons and the Project for a New American Century
– Differences between the Republican and Democratic Establishments in regards to U.S. foreign policy approaches; the weaponization of U.S. aid through caveats
– Syria, Assad, the U.S., and the A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm report
– The murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia
– Afghanistan; the Graveyard of Empires; Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Soviet-Afghan conflict, and the mujahedeen; the geostrategic significance of Afghanistan to U.S. foreign policy
– Voices for Creative Nonviolence and the work of Kathy Kelly
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Source: Geopolitics, U.S. Foreign Policy, and Full-Spectrum Dominance
