When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

The Cato Institute’s Emma Ashford joins Melanie and Zack to discuss her recent article on how to “Build a Better Blob.” They debate whether the foreign policy community is hostile to non-mainstream thinking, or just to non-experts. Emma outlines why the foreign policy community needs to embrace many forms of diversity (and why we all need to wear face masks). Melanie calls out Michael Pack, the new director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, for appearing committed to dismantling his own organization. And Zack questions National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien’s recent op-ed on withdrawing U.S. troops from Germany.

Links

• Emma Ashford, “Build a Better Blob,” Foreign Affairs, May 29, 2020
• Susan Glasser, “Trump Takes on the Blob,” Politico Magazine, March/April 2020
• Emma Ashford, “Stay Home, Save the World,” Instick, April 13, 2020
• Paul Farhi, “After Departure of Voice of America Editors, New Trump-Appointed Overseer Fires Heads of Four Sister Organizations,” Washington Post, June 18, 2020
• Will Saletan,Tweet, June 5, 2020
• Tom Cotton, “Send in the Troops,” New York Times, June 3, 2020
• Alan Hawkes, Tweet, June, 22, 2020
• Hal Brands, Peter Feaver, and William Inboden, “In Defense of the Blob,” Foreign Affairs, April 29, 2020
• Robert Jervis “Liberalism, the Blob, and American Foreign Policy: Evidence and Methodology,” Security Studies, 2020
• Mira Rapp-Hooper, Shields of the Republic (Harvard University Press, 2020)
• Robert O’Brien, “Why the U.S. Is Moving Troops Out of Germany,” Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2020