The Founders’ constitutional order and the instrument of war
In the 2019 episode on foreign policy, Bob Zadek framed the country the Founders gave Americans as a question about the relationship between war as a tool and foreign policy as the principle by which war is carried out. Guest Christopher Preble, described as Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at Cato and author of Peace, War, and Liberty: Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy, answered that the Founders saw the ideal U.S. foreign policy as one encouraging interaction with the rest of the world through trade, while making occasions for war rare. On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019)
Preble located that restraint in institutional design. The Founders, he said, put the war powers in the hands of the Congress rather than the executive, on the belief that decisions closer to the people would make war less likely. They also limited presidential power by maintaining a small navy and no permanent army, so that a military had to be raised when a war was to be fought. For roughly the first hundred years of American history, Preble said, the United States fought relatively few wars; those against Native American peoples along the interior and a few against Mexico were declared by Congress, forces were raised, objectives accomplished, and the forces stood down. On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019)
Preble credited this arrangement with allowing the United States to grow physically while growing its influence mostly through example, and with restricting the power of the state so that individuals could prosper with minimal interference. Zadek pressed him on the accusation that opponents of military force are isolationists. Preble replied that the term is used deliberately as a pejorative, first deployed against critics of U.S. imperialism at the turn of the 20th century and then in vogue after World War II, when the attitude of many Americans who wished to avoid involvement in the war was cast as isolationism. He called that fundamentally wrong, noting that the 1930s also brought restrictions on foreign trade and severe restrictions on immigration. On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019)
Preble’s alternative was export by example rather than by force. If American ideas are as good as Americans say, he argued, they should not have to be imposed by force; privileging the military instrument over other instruments of American power ironically undermines American influence and generates resistance. He traced emulation of the United States to its constitutional government, in which the people were the power and the government served the interests of the people, and to the prosperity and power that limited government and relative human freedom produced. Trade, he added, became an instrument of peace because people who trade build trust and are less likely to take from one another by force. On Foreign Policy, will Trump heed the Restraining Constituency or John Bolton? (2019)
Competing narratives of what America is
The 2010 “Best of” episode approached the United States as a subject of historical narrative rather than a set of institutions. Zadek noted a New York Times story about a controversy in Texas and compared two bestselling books: Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which he said depicts the United States as oppressive, with the privileged abusing the downtrodden, and Larry Schweikart’s A Patriot’s History of the US, which he said describes the New Deal as a calamity that wrecked havoc on the American economy. Zadek observed that there is debate over whether the New Deal exacerbated the Depression or cured it. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
Zadek characterized both books as bestsellers that are not trying to revise history but are putting a different spin on it. He then posed the question of the textbook publisher: whether such a publisher would simply adopt whichever philosophy was more consistent with its own worldview, and who should decide what students are taught. He contrasted these with historians he called more classic, naming Daniel Boorstin and Gordon S. Wood, and said he gets goosebumps reading their descriptions of America — the writing of the Constitution, the battle of ideas, the founding. He asked whether tomorrow’s students will learn that view or be denied it, and framed the stakes as the formation of the political parties and political philosophy people adopt later in life. Best of: Changing the Face of History (2010)
NATO, Russia, and the American role in Europe
The 2022 episode with Justin Logan turned to the United States as an alliance leader. Zadek asked whether admitting Eastern European countries to NATO is a net minus — whether the cost of taking care of a new member exceeds what it contributes, making it a kind of wealth transfer. Logan answered that talking about NATO’s interest elides a fundamental reality: member states look out for their own interests, and the organization of NATO itself had an interest in expanding after the Cold War, because a military alliance built to deal with the Soviet Union needed a story about why it existed once the Soviet Union no longer did. From an American point of view, Logan said, NATO serves as a net transfer payment from US taxpayers to European taxpayers, and even original members such as France get to have a lower military budget because of the American contribution to European security. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Zadek asked whether it is accurate that from Russia’s standpoint NATO is the enemy — created to counter the USSR and now Russia, growing in size and moving closer to Russia’s doorstep. Logan called that absolutely accurate and said he is not the only one who thinks so, citing Bob Gates’s 2014 book, in which Gates wrote that the 2008 effort to get Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was a step too far and an affront any Russian leader would view as dangerous, and Bill Burns’s 2008 cable saying the same thing. Logan described this view as widely circulated in the upper echelons of the American foreign policy establishment for decades. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
On whether Russia is an enemy of the United States, Logan said Russia does not represent a security threat to the United States: Russians are not going to invade or bomb the United States. But because the United States has made itself the central fact in European security affairs for the last 65 years, Russian revisionism and the invasion of Ukraine endanger that project. He noted that partisan identification of Russia as an enemy rose significantly among Democrats and fell significantly among Republicans because of the politics of the 2016 election and the perception that Donald Trump was a sock puppet for Russia. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Zadek asked how Russia threatens Europe and how that threat connects to the United States. Logan said he may have misspoken and that he does not think it connects as a threat to the United States, but that it threatens the political project in which the United States is engaged in Europe. He noted the expansion from 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty to 30, said the United States has been driving the bus on that expansion for decades, and said that if you value committing to protect vulnerable states from Russian predation, obstacles to completing that project are a problem. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Zadek then asked whether NATO has become a democracy club of the kind the European Union was supposed to be, and whether the EU adequately fills that need. Logan drew two distinctions: the United States is in NATO and not the EU, and NATO is a security organization while the EU is not. He described efforts going back to the 1950s, and particularly in the 1990s, to develop what was called a third force in Europe — a collective security organization pooling a security capability among states in both NATO and the EU. The United States historically disliked the idea, he said, because it likes having influence and telling countries what to do, and it was assiduous through the 1990s and 2000s in stifling European security cooperation to keep those countries stuck with the United States in NATO. Justin Logan on Ukraine (2022)
Across episodes
The three episodes do not argue one question in sequence so much as apply a common method to different objects: the 2010 episode asks who decides what America is taught, the 2019 episode asks what constitutional order the Founders gave the country regarding war, and the 2022 episode asks what the American role in Europe has become. The excerpts show no development of a single argument across the three; each stands on its own guest and topic.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of the Texas textbook controversy, the names of any bills or statutes, or the holding of any case. They do not give founding dates, the text of the Constitution or the North Atlantic Treaty, or the current membership figures beyond Logan’s reference to 12 founding members and 30 members. Where Preble’s and Logan’s remarks break off mid-sentence in the excerpts, no further conclusion is available.