196. How America Talks Itself Into Endless Wars
7/5/20261 hr 13 min
What does the gap between American foreign policy rhetoric and reality reveal about the failures of its military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iran? In an age of algorithm-driven political polarisation, can authentic political speech still break through, or has social media made Trump-style fragmentation impossible to overcome? Is Donald Trump an anomaly in American politics, or part of a recurring historical cycle - and what does this suggest about America's future?
Alastair and Rory are joined by Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama's former speechwriter and Deputy National Security advisor, to answer all of these questions and more.
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Barack Obama's 2009 speech on a 'New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan', as mentioned by Rory.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAlastair Campbell· Host0:00
Thanks for listening to The Wrest Is Politics. Sign up to The Wrest Is Politics Plus to enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room, and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.
Ben Rhodes· Guest0:12
America acts like a self-interested superpower that wants the Strait of Hormuz open or wants access to oil, and then we put a narrative around it that is much more grandiose. People around the world have figured out, don't believe the narrative, 'cause at the end of the day, they're gonna act in a pretty narrow self-interest. We've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya, now in Iran, and it's led us to make mistake after mistake after mistake. No Democrat has taken billions of dollars for his family's crypto business for the Emiratis. No Democrat has taken a billion-dollar plane from the Qataris. It's a scale of corruption that we've just never seen in American politics. We are being algorithmically polarized. Donald Trump has been the perfect person for that because he knows if he gets up at a rally and speaks for an hour, he doesn't have to give a coherent speech, the algorithm will do all the work for him.
Alastair Campbell· Host0:59
This episode is presented by IG. Now, as a listener of this podcast, you're no doubt acutely aware of the world's unstable political landscape and how it can affect your money.
Rory Stewart· Host1:10
Exactly. It can be incredibly frustrating to feel like yet another maddening decision made in Westminster or Brussels, or dare I say, Washington, can directly affect your finances. But IG can be a real help, something at least which might help you avoid losing sleep when we lose yet another British prime minister.