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
    Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair
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.

Defense and Security

John Barrientos, a captain in the U.S. Navy and a visiting military fellow at CFR, and Kristen Thompson, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force and a visiting military fellow at CFR, sit down with James M. Lindsay to provide an inside view on how the U.S. military is adapting to the challenges it faces.

Iran

Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at CFR, and Ray Takeyh, the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies at CFR, sit down with James M. Lindsay to discuss Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel and the prospects for a broader Middle East war.

Ukraine

Michael Kimmage, a history professor at the Catholic University of America and a senior associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the origins of Russia’s war in Ukraine and its repercussion for the global order.

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