Ep. 12: Hal Brands on the Cold War

Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, joins the show to discuss the Cold War's lessons for great-power rivalry today.

Times

• 01:24 - Introduction
• 02:47 - Halford Mackinder and how Eurasian geopolitics framed the Cold War
• 05:37 - Mackinder's theory of the heartland
• 07:47 - China's Belt and Road Initiative as an application of Mackinder's theory
• 09:07 - Comparing the United States' approaches to the USSR and China
• 13:04 - Nuclear power during the Cold War
• 17:24 - How Cold War-era nuclear logic applies today
• 21:02 - No first use policy
• 26:56 - The Nixon administration's critique of containment strategy
• 29:58 - The collapse of the Soviet Union
• 32:15 - Theories of victory that led to the Vietnam War
• 35:08 - End of the Cold War
• 39:17 - Infrastructure needed to fight the Soviets in the United States, and what the U.S. needs to take on China today
• 44:02 - China's moves to decouple economically from the United States
• 46:47 - The United States' harrowing responsibility to take on adversarial powers