Asia & the Pacific

From the annexation of the Philippines in 1898, to looming confrontation with Iran today, On Point news analyst Jack Beatty on U.S. leadership, vested military interests, and unintended military entanglements.

Stephen Walt elaborates on what he is expecting for 2024:  the Israel-Gaza conflict widening, the 75th anniversary of NATO, the possible re-election of Donald Trump, and the election results from other populous democracies, to name a few.

It remains one of the most tantalizing questions of John F. Kennedy's legacy: if he had survived his trip to Dallas in November 1963, would he have withdrawn U.S. military advisers from Vietnam? The possibility that Kennedy would have avoided the epic mistake of plunging the U.S. into a land war in Southeast Asia continues to stir debate among historians.  Professor Fredrik Logevall is interviewed.

A Better Peace welcomes Nate Moir to discuss his book, Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare, which analyses Fall's life to understand what drove his thinking and understanding of the situation. He joins host John Nagl to explain how Fall was consistently ahead of the conventional wisdom.

Joseph Nye  discusses the following: Why the United States must work with China on global issues such as climate change, pandemics, and other transnational concerns, despite rivalry between the two countries; the "three-dimensional chess game" between the U.S. and China, with military, economic, and ecological boards; the importance of soft power; and differences from the U.S. relationship with the Soviet Union.

Winning hearts and minds doesn't defeat insurgent groups, author Jacqueline Hazelton argues. So why does the United States still rely on counterinsurgency?

The historian Fredrik Logevall has written a grand fresh take on the life of John F. Kennedy, as if to reignite an old flame. He's given us a chance to remember politics as the sport of great minds and hearts, high language, serious stuff.

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.