US Foreign Policy's Anti-Democratic American Century | David Allen | TMR

Emma hosts David Allen, historian of U.S. foreign relations, to discuss his recent book Every Citizen a Statesman: The Dream of a Democratic Foreign Policy in the American Century.

David Allen then joins as he dives right into the rise of undemocratic control over the US National Security State, and how it became so normalized after decades of debate. Allen first steps back to parse through the state of US Foreign Policy at the beginning of the 20th Century, with the First World War finally putting the US in an important position on the world stage, in an era with an incredibly small State Department with a much more direct relationship to Democracy, as represented by the forming of the Foreign Policy Association, an organization made up by myriad progressive activists and suffragettes, in 1918, as well as attempts to educate the American public on issues of foreign policy and collective participation. However, as the US moved out of the Second World War with a massively expanded government and State Department, as well as growing tensions (both Nuclear and otherwise) with the emergence of the Cold War, the government began to detach the public from the processes of state-making and foreign policy, establishing agencies like the National Security Council and the Department of Defense. Wrapping up, Allen walks Emma through the cementing of the exclusive nature of US Foreign Policy, the role of think tanks and elite participation, and whether any optimism is held for the future of democratic participation in USFP.

Buy Every Citizen a Statesman: The Dream of a Democratic Foreign Policy in the American Century here: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674248984

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