Guest Lecture: Progressive Foreign Policy at the Catholic University of America

Yesterday I spoke with a bunch of students at the Catholic University of America about:

• What progressive foreign policy really is;

• The “restraint” movement in Washington and how it converges (and conflicts) with progressivism;

• My own working-class origins and how I came to be a dissident foreign policy intellectual; and

• What the left thinks about Trump’s foreign policy.

It was billed as a guest lecture but it was really just a nice chat with some thoughtful students who have wide-ranging political views.

For context, the course I dropped in on is about the politics of overseas military basing, taught by Professor Andrew Yeo (a longtime friend and mentor who is not responsible for anything I say). He assigned some of my writing, and part of what we talk about are arguments from my previous book, Grand Strategies of the Left: The Foreign Policy of Progressive Worldmaking.

I’ll probably write more about this soon, but I am very pessimistic about the prospects for a more progressive foreign policy happening in the United States anytime soon, even as I’m convinced that nothing could be more essential for reversing the trend toward violent, racist, Orwellian tyranny.