Thank you to the hundreds who helped me understand what the next world order might look like over the course of the last couple of days! I’m really proud of the community that has grown up around The Good Fight, Persuasion, and this Substack. That’s why I was excited to welcome paying subscribers to join me for a live session—so I could answer your questions personally.
We had a great discussion: About the idea of a foreign policy for the middle class. About the state of free speech in Europe. About how to tell when the rule of law has broken down in the United States. About the prospects for a third party. And about so much more.
Our next Q&A, reserved for paying subscribers, will be on Monday, March 31 at 6pm Eastern. Do join us!
–Yascha
This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Susan: I have a question about your interview with Jake Sullivan. I’d never heard of a foreign policy for the middle class described like that before. My question is: Do you think that, during the war that's been going on for three years, they've talked about that in terms of how it benefits the middle class, other than just saying it’s supporting democracy?
Yascha: Jake Sullivan’s idea picks up on a concern that, I think, makes a lot of sense. And that is: How do we actually gain support for America's role in the world from the American people? The answer he gives to that is that we have to show in a much more concrete way how America’s foreign policy helps to maintain America’s affluence. And that might also entail changing some policies in such a way that it in fact does this more than in the past—because as a matter of fact, what America has done in the world didn't always serve the American middle class.
Now, I could never quite tell to what extent this goal was the overriding priority of the administration and to what extent it was one of many considerations, or even a way of talking about things they were going to do anyway. The other question I had was about the extent to which it’s actually credible that this is going to change voting behavior in any kind of way. Are people really going to notice that we've somehow put more money in their pockets through these foreign policy decisions?
My best bet is that this way of thinking about foreign policy probably did help to underwrite some of the Biden administration policies where it dovetailed with the president’s long-standing instincts. For example, Joe Biden has always been quite skeptical about America's longstanding engagement in Afghanistan. I think it was easy to then say: Well, look, why should we be in Afghanistan? That's not really serving Americans in any direct kind of way. Is this really what we should be prioritizing if what we're interested in is making sure that we're building an affluent American middle class? But in other areas, like America’s substantive engagement in Ukraine, it feels to me that foreign policy was ultimately driven by values that don’t neatly fit into this frame—and on the podcast, Jake Sullivan seemed to me to be saying as much.
Tim: Have you been surprised by the enhanced restriction on speech in Europe over the last eight years? Do you see this as a continuing trend?
In the rest of this conversation, Yascha answers questions on free speech in Europe, how to tell if the rule of law breaks down in the United States, and if there’s hope for a moderate, centrist party. This part of the conversation is reserved for paying subscribers…
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Yascha Mounk to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
