Should the United States Do Less Overseas?

In the first episode of our special Election 2020 series of The President’s Inbox, Karen Donfried and Christopher A. Preble join host James M. Lindsay to discuss whether the United States should scale back its role in the world.

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Host
  • James M. Lindsay
    Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of Fellowship Affairs
Episode Guests
  • Karen Donfried
    President, German Marshall Fund of the United States
  • Christopher A. Preble
    Vice President, Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute

Show Notes

In this special Election 2020 series of The President’s Inbox, James M. Lindsay sits down each week with two experts with different views on how the United States should handle its foreign policy challenges. This week, he discusses the U.S. role in the world with Karen Donfried, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.

 

Read Lindsay’s takeaways from their conversation and find further readings on his blog, The Water’s Edge.

 

The special Election 2020 episodes of The President’s Inbox are made possible in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Grand Strategy

Edward Luce, U.S. national editor and a columnist for the Financial Times, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss what we can learn from the life, career, and writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

South China Sea

Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst at RAND and professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the confrontations between China and the Philippines over their competing claims in the South China Sea and the consequences for the United States.

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Reuben Brigety, President of Busara Advisors and U.S. Ambassador to South Africa from 2022 to 2025, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss relations between Washington and Pretoria in the wake of last week’s meeting between President Donald Trump and President Cyril Ramaphosa.

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