The Founders’ Nightmare: Jackson Lears on How the American Republic Became an Empire

00:00:33 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Yesterday, we had on the show Charles Kupchan, one of America's foreign policy experts from Washington, DC. He's a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a liberal fellow, but nonetheless part of that establishment. We had a good chat. He has a new book out. It's called Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come. He's reimagining American foreign policy post-Trump. But there are other ways of thinking about America perhaps that get beyond the Cold War paradigms, these disputes between the realists and the idealists about how America should, quote, unquote, govern the world. My guest today thinks about America, I think, quite differently. He's a historian, Jackson Lears, the author of many books. Susan Sontag described him as somebody who imagined America as well as Alexis de Tocqueville — quite high praise. And Jackson Lears, who used to teach at Rutgers, is still very active as a writer and thinker. He has a very intriguing essay in the November issue, this month's issue of Harper's. It's called “The Founders’ Nightmare,” and he is thinking about how America should reimagine its foreign policy. And Jackson is joining us from the wilds of western New Jersey. Jackson, is your essay and you — your life has been very much, defined by your anti-war activism on the left of American politics. Is this, essay in Harper's a way of rethinking not just American foreign policy, but America's role in the twenty-first century world?

00:02:35 Jackson Lears: Absolutely. That's what I was setting out to do. The occasion for it was the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and, the opportunity for reflecting on what was accomplished and what was, remembered from that time, what was left unaccomplished, but also what was, what has been forgotten in the thought of the, the founders who, gathered to, conduct a revolution against the British crown. And, what I have what I've discovered a long time ago, but I've never really written about at any length, is that anti-imperialism was at the center of the founders' thought. And I'm not one of these people that thinks, well, we have to go back to the original documents and see what the founders said, and then we can decide what to do. It's not that simple, obviously. But they lived in a very different time than we do, and I'm not going to pretend that everything is — can just be lifted and [unclear] onto the present. But I do think, they had some very serious thoughts about, the role of their nation in world affairs, the nation they were trying to create. And the one thing they wanted to avoid was allowing the republic that they were envisioning to become an empire because they believe that republic and empire were fundamentally incompatible. They'd seen the British empire, up close. They'd studied its, its corruptions, and its difficulties. And Benjamin Franklin decided that what was true of the ancient empires, of the Roman Empire, for example, was also true of the British Empire and the other European empires, of the 1600s and 1700s. And that is that, their leaders, led the country in, to a constant pattern of, foreign wars, squabbling over distant territories. And the cost of those wars had to be borne by the populace at the expense, of more necessary, expenditures. So the combination of o — overseas adventures and paying for them on the one hand and domestic impoverishment on the other, was there and built into the whole structure of empire. And it seems to me that's very similar to what we have today. We have scarcity in the midst of plenty, which is exactly what Benjamin Franklin said he saw, happening in, Great Britain in, the 1760s when he was spending time there and observing it. So this is one thing that's, embedded in the, the founding —

00:05:35 Andrew Keen: Let — let's go. Jefferson, of course, you know this better than I do, is a — an enormously controversial character. Still — still vital, still as relevant, if not con — more controversial than ever. He — we did a show a few months ago about Jefferson's involvement in the Louisiana Purchase. Does this disprove his argument about empire? I mean, how would you fit that chapter into, the history of the United States? Was he disregarding his own advice on empire?

00:06:11 Jackson Lears: No. I think we have to distinguish between overseas empire and settler colonialism on the continent of North America, which had a very dark, and disturbing history and involved the near annihilation of the, aboriginal inhabitants. But it did not, require, a huge imperial bureaucracy or an executive branch that was, swollen, and conducted most of its, important business in secret. It did not require, the, the sorts of, accoutrements to overseas empire, that began to appear in the twentieth century and especially the second half of the twentieth century, especially the dis — the disappearance of an educated and informed citizenry, due to the practice — the habitual practice and the necessity of secrecy surrounding so many policy decisions.

00:07:14 Andrew Keen: It's what you call maybe globaloney. You reviewed actually a book that we focused on in the show by the FT writer Ed Luce on the life of Zbigniew Brzezinski. Has all this resulted in this foreign policy establishment? I mean, they're from left to right. We also had Eliot Cohen on the show recently. He has a new book out called The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics. Cohen was part of the Bush administration that got involved in wars in, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Has left and right both fallen under this same spell? Have they brought us into what you call the founders’ nightmare, Jackson?

00:07:59 Jackson Lears: I think they have on the whole. I mean, I think that's been very much the case, certainly ever since 1947, when, the National Security Act, was passed, which created, the CIA, and the Department of Defense [ed.: the 1947 act created the National Military Establishment, renamed the Department of Defense in 1949]. But that was about the same time when Harry Truman was, announcing what later became known as the Truman Doctrine, which was to basically fight, communism anywhere and everywhere in the in this, in the universe that it raised its head. So this kind of, vitriolic, anti-communism justified a kind of a national — a definition of national interest that was global and virtually limitless. “And you know how we're gonna have to get this through?” the senator from Michigan, Arthur Vandenberg, asked Truman. “We're gonna have to scare hell out of the American people.” And Vandenberg was, a Republican, a liberal Republican, been referred to [as] an extinct species, in Michigan, but still, it was a bipartisan commitment, to an open ended interventionist foreign policy that was unleashed in the late 1940s and that basically governed our foreign policy, and has governed our foreign policy ever since, to, often quite disastrous effect, I would say, and, certainly to the neglect of other, needs and, matters of importance that have to be addressed, in terms of governance and the welfare of, people in our own society.

00:09:44 Andrew Keen: I'm not sure what the difference is between a tragedy and a nightmare. Maybe a tragedy is something that happens in the real world, whereas a nightmare is only in our sleep. We've done lots of shows on American tragedies of one kind or another. New York Times writer Janet Reitman has a new book out called The Inheritance: An American Tragedy in Five Acts, in which she sees, again, post-9/11 America as a tragedy in terms of these terrible foreign wars, which have destabilized the world and undermine much of what we value about America. But I wonder if the real tragedy, Jackson, happened in the interwar period. We did a show recently on the period between 1918 and 1945, and it's astonishing how much America changed. In 1918, it had the standing army the size of Denmark or Portugal [ed.: by November 1918 the US had roughly four million men under arms; the Portugal comparison usually describes the US Army of the late 1930s]. And, of course, by 1945, we had the, as you've already noted, the Truman Doctrine [ed.: announced in 1947]. America had a nuclear weapon, and it was by far the dominant military power in the world. A lot of this was accidental. I'm not suggesting that we blame it all on the Europeans. But had there not been a European war or two European wars, could you imagine America — I mean, you're a historian rather than a, an IR theorist. You've written many books on history. Could we imagine a counternarrative where America remained a primarily agricultural country, small town country, not involved in global affairs?

00:11:19 Jackson Lears: Well, it's difficult to do that because most historians, tend to write about the rise of, the — of industrial capitalism and corporate capitalism as if they were deterministic processes unfolding without human engagement or effort or choice, even if they might deny that point of view. That's the way their narratives end up reading as if there were no alternative to the way, industrial capitalism, and later highly organized corporate capitalism, came to dominate, the political economy or as if there were no alternative to the US, and its rise to world power as it's so often characterized. But I — it's possible to imagine that. It's also possible to imagine. And, Franklin Roosevelt is, I — you know, he's not above criticism by any means, but he is one of the presidents, one of the handful I most admire, along with Jefferson, by the way. But, I think that, Roosevelt, was, I think forced by necessity to go to war against Hitler ultimately. I think if you take — trace the [unclear] relationship with the, Japanese, empire in the Far East back to the days when, Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of state John Hay was announcing and insisting on an Open Door for US markets in the Far East [ed.: Hay issued the Open Door notes in 1899–1900 under McKinley, and stayed on as secretary of state under Theodore Roosevelt], that was an essential part of our foreign policy. Well, there were — the stage was already set back in the early twentieth century for rivalry between the US, and Japan and Britain for that matter over, possessions and markets in the in, in the Far East. And, naturally, the Japanese thought that was in their sphere of influence, so they were gonna push back. So the, the war in the Pacific had murky origins, but, of course, was detonated by Pearl Harbor. And, the war in Europe, the war on Hitler was probably one of the very few justifiable wars that, completely justifiable wars that the US has ever fought. So I don't wanna turn the clock back too far even though I think, unfortunately, it's also true. It's a — and it's a kind of historian's cliche, I suppose, that World War II, not the New Deal, got us out of the 1930s Depression. So it was military Keynesianism, basically, avant la lettre, you know, before the actual term came into use. But that's what happened. And even so, as we were coming out of that situation, Roosevelt, I think, had come up with, what was a very humane, worldview and a, a way of organizing state power and attempting to, bring some kind of collective security to the world, that included, the security interests of the Soviet Union, because he had a chummy relationship with Stalin and a fruitful one. And Roosevelt, for whatever reason, was able to, to do diplomacy with, with Stalinist Russia as well as with, his other allies, Great Britain and, eventually the French and, and eventually the West Germans and so on. But there was a, there was a connection there that might have allowed us to avoid, the Cold War and the confrontation with Russia. Truman did not have a diplomatic bone in his body. No. He just wanted to fight. And, so, unfortunately, you know, Roosevelt had been a smoker for a long time and had a terrible, heart condition and died of a stroke at age 63. So, we never got to see what would have happened. But I think his, his approach to foreign policy, while it was not sentimental or pacifistic even, it was very much aware of US national interest, but I think it defined them reasonably in the context of other countries' interests. And so that's —

00:16:09 Andrew Keen: Yeah. You write in the Harper's piece, and I'm quoting you: “Since the late forties, the forces dictating the patterns of our global engagement have been precisely what Washington warned against.” In other words, the nightmare became — the tragedy became real world. I'm guessing, certainly, IR realists like Eliot Cohen, maybe even, Charles Kupchan. I don't wanna pick on them. Kupchan's written a book on isolationism. They would argue that this would have been forced on America one way or the other by the fact that it had become almost accidentally a superpower. Do you not buy these theories of international relations? Is it conceivable that had, as you know, FDR not smoked and lasted another term or two, that things could have worked out quite differently?

00:17:10 Jackson Lears: I actually think they could have. I'm enough of a historian to think that, caprice, an accident, accident — including accidents of fate, and individuals. I'm not proposing a great man theory of history, but I am saying that I think individuals do matter, especially at the high policy levels. And, I think that, you know, to take another example of an individual, if Zbigniew Brzezinski had not been in Carter's national security bureaucracy, then, the US might not have ended detente in the late 1970s and early 1980s and might not have returned to covert operations abroad, two things that, led to a worsening of the Cold War for a while.

00:18:02 Andrew Keen: Brzezinski and, I think most of our viewers and listeners will know this was a Polish-American diplomat. He was a Democrat, but certainly a conservative Democrat.

00:18:14 Jackson Lears: Right. And he was a fanatical Russophobe. And he was still around in the 1990s, when the Clinton administration began to push for the eastward expansion of NATO. And I'm arguing in this essay as I have elsewhere that, as so many diplomats warned at the time from George Kennan on down, this is a red line for Russia pushing NATO up to their western border and arming those NATO powers with nuclear weapons. This is not something that the US would tolerate if it were done in Mexico by the Chinese, let's say, or by the Russians for that matter, by a reconstituted Warsaw Pact. But, turning the argument around that way doesn't seem to matter to most people, because NATO has acquired this sanctity, in it — in its decline, that I think is, totally unwarranted. And, I think, we would be much better off without that, that organization. It's an organization that was turned from a defensive alliance into an offensive alliance in the 1990s by the Clinton administration when they went for preemptive humanitarian bombing of Serbia. And, that really split up the, the left counter — anti-war counterculture, and it's never been the same. It's never recovered since then.

00:19:45 Andrew Keen: That's interesting. And you bring this out at the end of the essay that you cite people like John Mearsheimer, a very controversial realist as someone in your camp. It's interesting that your arguments are in sync with realists like Mearsheimer, especially when it comes to NATO. Is that coincidental? I'm assuming you don't much care for his quote, unquote IR realism.

00:20:12 Jackson Lears: Well, at a theoretical level, there's some things he says that just seem to be theory driven rather than, driven by empirical evidence, what I would call empirical evidence, such as his argument that, well, we have to confront China in the South China Sea because, because that's what great powers do. And he really just kind of leaves it at that whenever I've heard him say that, and it's not convincing to me. I'm more of a consistent believer in spheres of influence than he is, so maybe I'm a better realist. I don't know. But there are times in which his thinking seems to be more theory based than I would be comfortable with. But, but I do think he has, an admirable restraint in his conception of foreign affairs. And this is something that was inherent, by the way, in the, American founders, point of view that, that reasonable enlightenment restraint. And what we really want to do is cultivate common friendship and trade and everything that goes with it with everyone. We don't have any, but as, as Washington said, we have to avoid passionate attachments and habitual hatreds. And so it's that emotion driven foreign policy that, both Mearsheimer and I, recoil from the kind of messianic, vision of America's role in the world. The responsibility to protect, for example, the abuse of that, which, of course, is a perfectly reasonable and admirable ideal, but the way it gets twisted to justify military and, intervention, one protects threatened people with all kinds of methods. We don't have to default setting to a military intervention, to perform humanitarian acts in the other parts of the globe. So it's really, the 1990s that constitutes a kind of critical moment here in the emerging —

00:22:11 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And you write in the — about the 1990s in your essay, in your Harper's essay: “The decade that had started out with hopes for peace after the Cold War ended with the strengthening of bipartisan militarism.” I don't wanna turn this into, Jackson, another conversation about the current American president, but that sounds something that even — I mean, Trump wouldn't have put it quite as clearly, but there is a Trumpian quality to what you're arguing, isn't there?

00:22:49 Jackson Lears: Well, I guess you could say that if you're talking about what Trump said in his various camp — in his two campaigns of 2016 and, two of — well, in 2024, as well as two victorious campaigns when he promised an end to, forever wars. And, he promised to return, to, ordinary people's more immediate concerns or at least that's what they thought they heard from him. And now they're bitterly disappointed. I mean, even Mearsheimer was, was positively giddy in the first week or so in the — of the Trump administration, because he had people like Marco Rubio talking about a multipolar world. And he had a — he himself seemed to be open to not only talking, to Putin, but to, all kinds of other, people that he needed to talk to who might otherwise be dismissed as our adversaries. So, he seemed to be bringing very temporarily a new openness to foreign policy, but all that changed, very quickly.

00:24:08 Andrew Keen: Excuse me. So, yeah.

00:24:11 Jackson Lears: And I think a lot of his supporters have become bitterly disappointed.

00:24:14 Andrew Keen: To put it mildly, yeah. So what happened in the 1990s, Jackson? Why in your words did the opportunities after the Cold War end with a deepening of at least the nightmare of the founders?

00:24:36 Jackson Lears: Well, I don't wanna be an economic determinist here, but part of the reason is that, you know, permanent war is good for business, for some people's business anyway. For the, consultants, in the little, redoubts along, Route 66 and the road to Dulles Airport, the, counterterrorism consultants and the, the think tankers, but also, of course, to the, the makers of military hardware, who stand to, to profit a great deal, and to lose a great deal were there actually to have been a peace dividend. So the peace dividend, as it was called, had uphill sledding. But at the same time, Bill Clinton came up with a new excuse for imperial adventures abroad, and that was humanitarian, war making. That is preemptive humanitarian bombing like was done against the Serbians or the whole setup that was in the works that was going to, lead to, democracy promotion, in the Middle East as we came up to, to 9/11. But even before 9/11, the, humanitarian arguments for intervention abroad, were taking hold and were dividing people and people who had once had a common anti-war position from one another. And I think that the, that, the people who carried forward even in the — I think this contributed to the, to the refusing [unclear] of the bipartisan consensus. This is also a period of movement, eastward of NATO, which, began in — during this period with Brzezinski's blessing, and, again, with the warnings of, George Kennan and —

00:26:47 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Here's more — what you would call globaloney. One of the, the themes that you introduced in the Harper's essay is Israel and Zionism. Why throw that in a bit? It's obviously an enormously controversial subject, America's relations with Israel, the situation in Gaza. Why introduce that? How does that help us understand the founders’ nightmare?

00:27:15 Jackson Lears: Well, I think part of the nightmare was that quote from — was embedded in that quote from Washington that I mentioned, path avoiding — to avoid passionate attachment and habitual hatred. And it just occurred to me, as I was thinking about American foreign policy since the late 1940s, that it really has been governed by both of those sentiments, passionate attachment toward Israel and habitual hatred of, Russia. So — and I was also writing out of the present, and I was writing out a sense of anger and sadness, anger, at the Israelis for what they've been doing in Gaza for the last year, anger at the world. Well, more than a year now, almost the last several years. And — but anger at the world or the, much of it, certainly, the, the European, part of it and the North American part of it mostly, the refusal or the inability of that world to confront Israel, over this, what I consider to be an enormous war crime. I do consider it to be a genocide, and, I think that it is part of the difficulty that we face as a result of our passionate attachment that we cannot bring ourselves to speak the truth, about this matter out if — and this is true of our congressmen and our representatives and our public officials and media people. Not so much true of, dare I say, ordinary Americans if polls can be trusted, who have moved sharply against Israel. But I was writing this and thinking about it in the middle of, this very strange situation where the US has been dragged into this hopeless war against Iran, which is likely to create a global economic catastrophe, and is, in fact, already beginning to do so. But, it may even lead us to the to, the brink of nuclear war, particularly if Trump and the Israelis are either or both of them get, get frustrated enough with their, their inability to destroy the Iranian [unclear]. There was no reason. There was no good reason for this war. It was not in any American interest, and yet we've been dragged into it largely because of our attachment to Israel, I should say. Not entirely.

00:29:54 Andrew Keen: Right. You know, you know better than I do, Jackson, how controversial some of your ideas are. Did I hear — and please correct me if I'm wrong. Are you suggesting that the Russians are to the Americans what the Palestinians are to the Israelis?

00:30:12 Jackson Lears: Well, I'm not sure I'd wanna be that. No. I'm not suggesting that. It would be — they — they're a major world power. They are a rival potentially, but not necessarily an adversary. We may not like the way that they're governed. We may not — I don't pretend to, elevate Putin above criticism any more than I would Franklin Roosevelt. But I do think he's a serious man and a rational actor on the world stage, and he has done what he's done, much of it. I'm not gonna defend everything he's done, but he certainly brought Russia back from the brink of economic and cultural collapse, which had occurred under the, you know, the shock and awe tactics of bring — you know, bringing the free market and the plunderers to, to go to work on, what was left of the Russian assets in the 1990s under the direction of the rarely sober, Boris Yeltsin. So I think I can understand, why Putin, like other Russian leaders before him, feels threatened by that occupied western space on their western border, being occupied by officially hostile, countries who are heavily armed, and Ukraine is a perfect example of that. That's why the movement of NATO — you know, the neutrality of Ukraine and the, not just the neutrality, non-membership in NATO, are would be important, to Russia and would be a good bargaining chip in addition to, the freedom of religion and, and speech that should be accorded to the, the Russian speakers in the Donbas. So I don't think this is quite a case of Vladimir Putin waking up one morning and saying, by gosh, I think I'll invade Ukraine today. I think there's a long run up to that that involves a lot of US rejections of Putin's, offer to, to negotiate, to do diplomacy, to create a new security architecture for Europe [unclear].

00:32:43 Andrew Keen: I mean, I take your point and as, again, Mearsheimer's written on this, many people have written on the implicit or, indirect consequence of NATO expansion on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But given the situation today in late 2026, in November 2026, what should America do in terms of Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What's your take on that? I know you're not a foreign policy expert, but should they — I mean, I get the sense from what you're saying that maybe if America turned a blind eye with — to what was happening, it wouldn't necessarily be such a bad thing.

00:33:26 Jackson Lears: Well, look. I — I'm very concerned with the, welfare of the Ukrainians, and I think they're fighting and dying in a proxy war that's not really in their interest and that most of them did not support it at the start. I think there's an outsized influence of the Azov Brigade and other right wing nationalists that is running much of the country now and that Zelensky is doing a lot of what he's doing because he's, scared of, reprisals from his right. But, I think that, you know, the US is still so covertly involved in Ukraine in spite of Trump's apparent, lack of interest in it. And Trump is not as emotionally invested in it as Biden was, not by any means. And yet at the same time, the CIA is still there, and the CIA is still training — providing training and technical advice, technical expertise, and, who knows what all as long as, and at the same time, weapons of various kinds, but psyop kinds as well as more, familiar material weapons. So I don't think it's gonna be that easy to just turn our backs as people would say on Ukrainians. I think letting the war go on is a way of turning back — turning our backs, and letting more Ukrainians die and more of the country be destroyed and burned out. So I think there, there's an opportunity to, for the US to engage in diplomacy if they would recognize the, try to basically recover some of the, subtleties of the diplomat's craft, which are to put yourself in the other, adversary — in the adversary's position, not because you agree with it or plan to concede everything to the to it, but because you want to understand where they're coming from and so that you can try to find common ground. And I feel like this would be an opportunity. Jeffrey Sachs has set out a program, for, a peace — for a permanent ceasefire, not just a temporary one that would give the Ukrainians a chance to be rearmed by the Europeans or whatever it is they wanna do to keep the war going, but a permanent ceasefire that would also include neutrality and non-membership in NATO. It might include, a good bit of the territory that Russia has claimed by conquest or by fighting for it, over the last few years. But in any case, I believe that — I don't advocate just letting things go in that respect. I think the US has been so involved for so long, but I don't know how much you — you know, this president or any president is capable, of going against the CIA. And, and this is why I referred to Kennedy the way I did earlier in our conversation [ed.: Kennedy had not come up earlier in the recorded conversation] because I think, you know, he had a man in his administration, George W. Ball, who was a great man, a great diplomat, and like Kennedy, was very concerned about the overreach of the CIA. And Ball had developed a very complex but quite workable plan, for containing, the CIA, for abridging its autonomy, for not allowing it to just become a private army, and, and let it loose on its own. And, CIA people were pushing back against that and were very nervous about Kennedy.

00:37:26 Andrew Keen: We just did a show actually on, Kennedy, the assassination. I'm curious when we talked about the CIA. Do you — I mean, RFK Jr. seems to think that there was a conspiracy and that the CIA may have been involved in the Dallas assassination. Very briefly, I know you don't get into this in your Harper's essay, but do you think the CIA, Jackson, might have been involved in the, assassination of JFK?

00:37:54 Jackson Lears: Well, look. There are good CIA agents and bad CIA agents. There are good cops and bad cops. I don't mean to make a sweeping assertion about, a huge complex institution. Nevertheless, from everything that I've learned about, covert ops, and, especially since the, the introduction of the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, people that Seth Harp writes about in his book on The Fort Bragg Cartel. I think that, under certain circumstances, the CIA is capable of almost anything.

00:38:33 Andrew Keen: So it wouldn't — in other words, it wouldn't surprise you.

00:38:35 Jackson Lears: So I think it would not surprise me. I'm — I am not going to go [unclear].

00:38:39 Andrew Keen: And to be fair to you, don't — this is not a JFK assassination conversation. Finally, it's a wonderfully provocative essay. You get into some details on Russia and Ukraine. You end on a positive note. The founders’ nightmare you believe can be — I don't know what you do with a nightmare. You put it to sleep literally or you wake up. What can be done? You talk about the Global South. You talk about the reinvention, not just of American foreign policy, but maybe of America itself. Where's the possibility here for America to go back to its foundation or at least the ideals of its founders when it comes to empire, Jackson?

00:39:25 Jackson Lears: Well, I think the possibility, is that, there would be a lot of popular support, for a government that actually, excuse me. A government that addressed social needs, and made itself available to people's social needs, rather than spending trillions of dollars, confronting, actual, but largely imaginary adversaries. And I think that, that would be — this is a very rich country and very able to defend itself and will continue to be, both of that — those things even, if there's a major market correction or even crash, which I suspect is entirely likely given this, war that we've gotten ourselves in. Not we, but our government has. And I think allowing, the populace to push back, and I know you can never have a straight out democratic foreign policy, but, to have a more democratic country, requires a more informed citizenry and taking a — being allowed to take a more, significant and substantive role, in making judgments on foreign policy and particularly matters of life and death, like sending troops or, munitions or bombs overseas, that, you know, people will die by the thousands, as a result of these decisions. And, this is something that the, the populace itself should be involved in making decisions about. This would, I think, would rekindle a sense of legitimacy and pride in their country, for a lot of Americans, which I think a lot of Americans long for now. I know I do, and, this is why I went back to some of these texts, these early texts, because I don't think we can live the way they did, and I don't want them to do that. But I think these were extraordinary men with, perceptive and as well as percipient and, farseeing, prescient ideas. And, everything they said about empires has been spot on as far as I can tell, down to and including the, the corruption and mismanagement. I mean, we have, there — there's a woman at the, Harvard Kennedy School whom I quoted in my piece, who refers to the post-9/11 wars as, credit card wars. There's a good reason for that, because, you know, this was something new is that we just printed money to pay for these wars, and we now owe $2 trillion, or will owe $2 trillion by 2030, I believe, is the estimate from —

00:42:46 Andrew Keen: The woman you quote is Linda Bilmes, who says that these wars will have cost America $2 trillion by 2030, more than the, in terms of interest, on them, more than the wars themselves.

00:43:01 Jackson Lears: Service. Yeah. So all of this is going to take away — all of this is gonna allow congressmen to say, Medicare for All, we can't afford it. You know, repairs and the infrastructure — can't afford them. We have a society that's crumbling, in so many fundamental ways and certainly in terms of basic trust. And any restoration of trust and confidence in the government, would surely be a welcome and necessary, accompaniment to a change of, you know, a strategic withdrawal. Lafayette, the great hero of our revolution, was a master of the retreat. He knew how to, regroup, to regroup to get his, his people back together to protect them again and then to fight again another day. And strategic retreat is what we have to do on many fronts, and that doesn't mean isolationism. And I'm sorry that word ever came into being because it's become, you know, a convenient epithet to toss at anyone who suggests, a kind of — any kind of strategic, withdrawal from overextended commitments. But I believe that's what Lafayette would have done, and, I believe Washington and company would have.

00:44:26 Andrew Keen: And, of course, Lafayette had a park named after him, which is still in Washington, DC. Just to remind everyone, Jackson's essay suggests that these post-9/11 wars cost $8 trillion, which is $70,000 per taxpayer, which is an astonishing amount. You can read the entire essay. It's an important one. It's quite long. It's — how many words is it, Jackson? It's gotta be, what, five, six thousand words?

00:44:55 Jackson Lears: Yeah. 5,800.

00:44:56 Andrew Keen: 5,800 words, but very coherent, very controversial, and important. Shows a very different take on, American foreign policy from establishment figures like Kupchan and Eliot Cohen we've had on the show, so it's a nice balance. Thank you so much, Jackson, for coming on the show. Fascinating conversation. And, I'd love to get you back on because this is not a story, certainly, that has ended yet. Thank you so much.

00:45:27 Jackson Lears: Great. Thank you. I appreciate it, and, and it was my pleasure.