​Peace Corps and the Weight of “Being America”
Ben Wolf: Ambassador Hill—Looking back at your early career, what experiences most shaped how you think about diplomacy—not just what you believed, but how you learned to operate inside complex institutions and negotiations?

Christopher R. Hill: Let me start with something that was not terribly complex: the Peace Corps. Not complex in the sense that we weren’t dealing with a lot of different institutions—but complex in what it teaches you.
Many Americans don’t understand this: no one is indifferent about the United States. Everyone has expectations of the U.S. Of course there are detractors, but nobody is indifferent.
So any young American living abroad—as I was in the Peace Corps—realizes that when you say something, people listen. That gives us responsibility, and it’s something we all need to think harder about.
I was always struck by the fact that if there weren’t a United States in the world, someone would have to create one—because we’ve been (a term I hate) the “residual superpower,” but nonetheless, in many instances we’ve been the country that has kept the peace. And now it seems we have Americans who don’t understand that, and who think we’ve somehow been victimized by this role—without understanding that this role has not only secured peace, but has also secured our leadership. That’s a win-win.
But we have many Americans who think it’s been an onerous task—something we have to get out from under.

BW: The Peace Corps was right out of college and you entered the Foreign Service pretty soon after?

CH: Correct. I took the Foreign Service exam while I was in the Peace Corps. I rode my Suzuki 125 dirt bike down to Douala—which had a two-person consulate at the time—and I took the exam there.

BW: Before the Peace Corps, did you already know you wanted to enter the Foreign Service?

CH: My dad was in the Foreign Service, so I was aware of it. That wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to follow, but I knew enough about it to have my eyes open—about the lifestyle and the challenges.
But when I was in the Peace Corps, I decided that’s what I wanted to do.

What Stays Constant Across Regions: Institutions and Fragility
BW: When you look back across posts as different as East Asia, Iraq, and the Balkans, what’s the one thing that stayed constant about how diplomacy actually works—regardless of the region?

CH: Every country has problems. Every country is unique—but not all its problems are unique. So you start to recognize patterns.
And one pattern is that institutions are very fragile things. Countries that are not doing well are countries that don’t have faith in their institutions. And when people don’t have faith in institutions, they retreat to older loyalties designed to protect them—including tribalism.
So if you don’t have civil society in a place like Iraq, and people don’t trust the state, they retreat into tribal affiliations. They find security in origin—tribal origin. But those affiliations aren’t going to lead the country in a better way.
The lack of faith in institutions is a huge problem in every country, because institutions are something you have to work on every day. You have to believe in them as serving the common good.
And frankly, it’s astounding to me that when I used to talk about countries like Iraq having crises of institutions, it’s now the world’s oldest democracy—the United States—that seems to be having these crises and reverting to forms of tribalism: loyalties to religion, national origin, even the color of your skin. There’s much to be worried about.

How Foreign Service Careers Actually Move
BW: You’ve served in many different regions. When you shifted from post to post—was that something you initiated? And more broadly: how much say does someone have in which region they want to be an ambassador in?

CH: Your audience should understand: if you’re a career Foreign Service officer, it’s like the military—you don’t start out as a general. You don’t start out as an ambassador. You start out as a junior officer and work your way up.
Your earlier assignments may shape later preferences. My first assignment was in what was then called Yugoslavia. And it became especially interesting when it began to collapse and wars developed: wars of secession and succession as countries broke up.
That became a major interest of mine, but I didn’t want to do just one thing. I think it’s important not to tie yourself to one set of issues, but to be willing to go to things that are less intellectually comfortable—but no less challenging.
So I took on different assignments. For example: Korea early on, and then later I came back as ambassador. Poland as a relatively junior officer, then later I came back as ambassador. Think of it as two trips around the track.

BW: Practically speaking, how does that work? Are you going to the Secretary of State and saying, “This is what I want”? Or is it more informal?

CH: Ideally, you’re not going to anyone—people are coming to you. Ideally, you have skill sets the institution wants, and you get a call: “We have this assignment. We think you’d be good at it.”
And when I say “they,” I’m not talking about the Secretary of State—except maybe for very senior ambassadorships.
Now, you can register your interest. When I finished in Poland, I did get in touch with the Secretary of State at the time—Colin Powell—and told him I’d be very interested in going to Korea. He might not have thought of me for Korea, because he knew me from the Balkans and Poland and might not have realized my earlier Korea experience.
So yes—you do have to let people know. You can’t expect a system with thousands of officers to keep you top of mind.
But people who spend all their time marketing themselves are usually not doing enough of what they need to do. So I wouldn’t make self-promotion your full-time job. And if the system isn’t seeing it the way you see it, maybe you need to adjust your expectations.

Career Service vs Political Service—and the Role of Luck
BW: In an earlier interview, I spoke with Elliott Abrams. One thing he emphasized was the role of luck in government—timing, networks, administrations. You’ve served under presidents of both parties. How did that work, and what do you make of his point?

CH: I want to be clear: I didn’t “serve in parties.” I served in administrations led by different parties. I’m a career person. I took the exam. I took the oral exam. I schlepped my way up from the bottom. That’s what career people do.
If you enter as a party-affiliated person, you’re dependent on your party winning elections. Republicans bring in political appointees; Democrats do too. Not to displace career people, but to supplement them.
And you see it in recruiting pipelines. If you’re at a Republican-affiliated think tank, you’re more likely to be tapped by a Republican administration. If you’re at Brookings or the Center for American Progress, you’re more likely to be tapped by a Democratic administration. That’s a different track from joining the Foreign Service.
Foreign Service officers, like military officers, have generally tried to keep their political views to themselves.
Now, you hear accusations that the Foreign Service is “just Democrats.” That’s not true. If you did a census, maybe you’d find more Democrats than MAGA aficionados—but to say Foreign Service officers are ipso facto Democrats is not fair.
And yes—there’s luck in public life. In the sense of knowing people who take an interest in you and are willing to make calls—there’s no question that happens.

Persuasion vs Performance—and the Shadow of Force
BW: You’ve operated in some of the highest-stakes negotiations of the past few decades. How much of diplomacy is persuasion—and how much is performance meant to signal resolve or restraint to audiences who aren’t in the room?

CH: With social media and modern public diplomacy, you see more performative behavior than you used to.
Now, I’ll contradict myself: Henry Kissinger was famously media-savvy and sometimes used the press to gain leverage. So it’s not new—but it’s intensified.
At bottom, diplomacy is trying to convince the other side to do something they don’t want to do. Argument helps—trying to show them what’s in their interest—but it’s rare that someone suddenly says, “You’re right, I never thought of it that way, I’m changing course.”
So you look at incentives. “If you do this, we’ll do that.” Or you “sweeten the pot”—for example, arranging a leader-to-leader meeting. Leaders can market that back home.
And then there’s the extreme: the possibility of force. Americans in recent years have talked too casually about using force.
Clausewitz said war is a continuation of politics by other means—and also that war is a serious means to a serious end. Once you’re dropping bombs, it’s hard to un-drop them. It’s hard to stop without achieving your aims.
So you exhaust peaceful means, and you try to make the other side understand: we can travel this road together. But if we can’t find a solution, you may be on your own.

Management, the DCM Track, and Leadership
BW: Ambassadorship is often romanticized as negotiation and representation. In practice, how much of the job is organizational leadership—managing people, bureaucracy, interagency friction?

CH: Ideally, you’ve had serious management experience. Most career ambassadors have come through the Deputy Chief of Mission role.
A DCM is managing the internal aspects of an embassy. The DCM looks inward; the ambassador looks out. And in the Foreign Service, most management training is on-the-job: budgets, personnel issues, discipline, all of it.
But the ambassador role is a step above management. It’s leadership.
You have to get people to follow where you’re going—not literally up a mountain path, but in terms of mission. People have to believe in what you’re doing and believe that subscribing to your approach is the best way to get there.
Leadership is getting people to go where they might not have gone if you weren’t there—and instilling confidence that you’ll get them there. When people doubt you’ll get them there, they don’t want to be on that team.
One of the problems with appointing ambassadors whose only qualification is that they’re a friend of somebody’s is that people underneath them can’t say, “I’m following this person because they know what they’re doing.” Because maybe they don’t.
Putting people with real experience in the right positions—that’s a full-time job, and it has to be done well. Otherwise you get fragmentation and dysfunction.

Leaks, History, and the “Thin Fact Base”
BW: I recently interviewed David Sanger of The New York Times, and one of the things we talked about was how major diplomatic plans, like the since-revised 28-point Ukraine Peace Plan, can leak—he told me he wasn’t surprised at all that it did.
How has the erosion of confidentiality—from leaks to social media—changed diplomacy?

CH: Well, if I’m David Sanger--who’s a good friend of mine, I might add--I don’t mind leaks at all.
But if I’m doing my job, I sure mind them.
Leaks often signal a lack of confidence in the system. Sometimes it’s people pushing their own agenda rather than the agenda set by leadership—whether the Secretary of State or an Assistant Secretary. It’s a symptom of a system that’s not functioning well.
Often it’s a breakdown in communication. People don’t feel brought into a process. They don’t understand the purpose. They don’t have confidence in what they’re being asked to execute.
And on issues like Ukraine—among the most consequential questions the world faces—complexity matters. When leadership doesn’t embrace complexity or understand historical antecedents, you get mistakes and mistrust.
In other countries, when people say “that’s history,” they mean the background you must master to make progress. In America, “that’s history” often means “that’s irrelevant.” I’m not on that side. You’re not going to understand what’s going on now unless you know what went on before.
A big problem right now is Americans aren’t doing their homework. You’ve got to read until your eyes fall out. Then you have to listen—really listen—more than you talk.
And another problem—probably amplified by the internet—is that people’s opinions are way out of proportion to what they know. Too often, even senior leadership skates on a thin fact base. When you don’t have the facts, you make mistakes. When you make mistakes, people don’t trust you. And when they don’t trust you, they leak—to slow things down, or shut things down.

Advice to Students: Fit, Mission, and Deep Reading
BW: To close, I want to turn this directly to students. How should an ambitious student think about the tradeoff between deep expertise in one region versus being broadly useful? And if you were 19 again trying to build a career in foreign affairs today, what steps would you take?

CH: People need to look in the mirror and decide what they’re good at. If you’re good at solving complex jigsaw puzzles, you might think about the Foreign Service, because this work is complicated.
If you understand that American leadership has been broadly positive—look at the 20th century: two world wars, and none since Americans asserted leadership; the creation of the UN, IMF, World Bank; NATO and other regional structures—that’s an extraordinary record.
If you don’t see it that way—if you only see America as being mistreated by other countries—fine, but maybe you should do something else. If you don’t see why American leadership is important and why it should continue, this probably isn’t the role for you.
And finally: if you’re interested in something, read a book about it. Get deep reading under your belt before you get too attached to strong opinions.

BW: You mention reading. At The Pathway Blog, I usually like to end by asking: if someone wanted to follow your career path, what piece of literature would you recommend?

CH: I’m a big believer in history. People who do best understand patterns of history. So I would crack a number of books.
I don’t have a single “how-to” book for this. It’s a life’s work—not one book.

BW: Ambassador Hill, thank you for your time—this was terrific.
​
CH: Thank you—and good luck. And thanks for doing this. It’s important for your contemporaries to hear these views. We’ve got to do a better job of listening to each other.

Entering the Diplomatic Service
Ben Wolf: I’ve long been fascinated by French politics and diplomacy, but without growing up in France the path into diplomatic service can feel opaque. To start us off, could you walk us through your background and what led you to become a consul general? What did that journey actually look like in practice?

Rodolphe Sambou: I’ll try to summarize, although it’s been a long and interesting path. I’m around fifty, and from the beginning I loved travel. I studied languages, science, politics, philosophy, and history, and I spent a great deal of time studying abroad—in Spain, Ireland, Egypt, Israel, and the United States, where I did an internship in New York.
While preparing for the competitive exams required to enter the French foreign service, I worked as a teacher. I taught philosophy at a French immersion school in Egypt. After passing the exam, I joined the foreign service and have now been part of it for about twenty years.
My first assignment was as a desk officer for New Zealand in the Asia–Oceania Department. I then worked on United Nations issues, particularly human rights, and spent several months in New York. After that, I was posted to Haiti for three years, working on political affairs, human rights, and post-earthquake reconstruction. I later served in Thailand as a political officer, during a period of political crisis.
I then became Deputy Head of Mission in New Zealand for four years, returned to Paris as an adviser in the Asia–Pacific Division, and for the past two years I’ve served as Consul General here.

Formative Postings
BW: Looking back, was there an early posting that shaped how you practice diplomacy today, even if it didn’t seem especially formative at the time?

RS: Every posting leaves its mark, but my early work on multilateral issues and human rights was especially formative. Human rights intersect with almost every international issue—women’s rights, the death penalty, labor rights, economic and social rights. That work broadened my perspective and brought me into contact with people from very different backgrounds.
My posting in Haiti was also deeply influential. It was my first assignment in a truly challenging context, following the earthquake. It was practical, concrete, and showed me how diplomacy can directly help people in moments of crisis.

What a Consul General Actually Does
BW: Many Americans imagine diplomacy primarily through ambassadors or foreign ministers. How does the role of a consul general differ from those more familiar positions?

RS: That’s an excellent question. Ambassadors are usually based in capitals and deal primarily with federal authorities. A consul general is typically posted in a region.
We have two broad responsibilities. One is political, economic, and cultural: encouraging investment in France, promoting study in France, explaining French positions to local authorities, and reporting back to Paris on developments in our region.
The other—and perhaps the most visible—is responsibility for the French community. We are responsible for their safety and security. A consulate is almost like a city hall abroad: organizing elections, providing administrative services, assisting citizens in distress, responding to emergencies such as hurricanes, and ensuring consular protection when needed.

The Rise of Subnational Diplomacy
BW: Cities and regions now play a much larger role in international affairs. How has this rise of subnational diplomacy changed your day-to-day work?

RS: We see this very clearly here. Regardless of national-level tensions, regions want international partnerships—economic, educational, cultural. We work with local governments, universities, businesses, NGOs, and artists.
Education is a major pillar of our work. In Louisiana alone, there are more than forty French immersion schools, thousands of students, and teachers sent from France. This kind of cooperation continues regardless of broader geopolitical turbulence. Diplomacy today involves many actors beyond states alone.

Diplomacy in the Age of Instant Information
BW: Is there a diplomatic challenge today that would have been difficult to imagine when you first entered the service?

RS: The speed of information. Events unfold instantly. If something happens overnight—an attack, a natural disaster—we learn about it immediately, often before dawn, and must respond at once. The volume of information and the pace of international engagement are far greater than before, and that is a constant challenge.

Misconceptions About France
BW: Working with American audiences, what misconceptions do you most often encounter about France’s role in the world?

RS: France and the United States have been allies since the very beginning. We know what we owe to each other, and we continue to celebrate that history—from independence to D-Day.
One misconception concerns France’s economic role. France is the most attractive country in Europe for foreign investment, yet this is sometimes overlooked. There are also differences in how we frame issues like freedom of expression or the relationship between state and religion. Our role as diplomats is to explain these differences respectfully, recognizing that our democracies were shaped by distinct histories.

What Diplomats Do Between the Headlines
BW: Diplomacy often appears only at headline moments. How would you explain what diplomacy actually does on an ordinary day?

RS: There’s a stereotype that diplomats spend their time at receptions, but the reality is quite different. We assist citizens in distress, ensure security, and respond to emergencies. We also spend a great deal of time meeting people—cultural leaders, elected officials, business figures, NGOs—to understand local dynamics and create connections.
My day-to-day work involves facilitating dialogue, building partnerships between France and Louisiana, supporting economic and cultural projects, and helping institutions work together. It’s very practical, very human work.

Autonomy and Instructions
BW: How much autonomy do you have versus following instructions from Paris?

RS: We always operate within a framework of guidance from Paris. We receive briefings and instructions regularly—sometimes daily—on issues such as Ukraine, the Middle East, climate, or human rights. Within that framework, we have room to adapt our approach to local realities. A consulate works closely with regional stakeholders, while embassies focus more on federal authorities, but the underlying principles are the same.

Advice for Aspiring Diplomats
BW: For students interested in diplomatic service, what common mistakes do you see—and what advice would you offer?

RS: Curiosity and flexibility are essential. Many students focus narrowly on one region or issue, but diplomacy requires constant learning and adaptability. You are rarely a technical expert; your role is to understand what is at stake, explain it clearly—often in just a few minutes—and help decision-makers act.
Being able to grasp complex issues quickly, communicate clearly, and remain open-minded is far more important than narrow specialization.

Cautious Optimism
BW: In a moment of global uncertainty, what gives you cautious optimism about the future of international cooperation?

RS: There are many reasons to feel pessimistic, but we often say in France that we must combine the pessimism of reason with the optimism of will. Giving up is a form of laziness.
Even when progress is slow—especially in areas like human rights—it is essential to continue fighting for incremental change. Diplomacy is built on persistence. That effort, however difficult, is what ultimately sustains international cooperation.

BW: Mr. Consul General, thank you so much for your time. It’s been a real privilege speaking with you.

Judgment, Experience, and Caution
Ben Wolf: When you look back at your early career, what’s a judgment you were confident in then but would approach much more cautiously now—not because you were wrong, but because experience complicated it?

Richard Fontaine: I think, big picture, many of us who lived through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, Libya, Syria, and other interventions have become more cautious about American engagement—especially military engagement aimed at changing the politics of another country.
Earlier in my career, I had greater faith in the efficacy of American power and probably underappreciated the complexity of domestic politics in other societies. That experience has made me dispositionally more cautious than I was twenty years ago.

Careers, Chance, and Serendipity
BW: Early on, did you overestimate or underestimate anything important when trying to break into this field?

RF: I underestimated the role of serendipity. In foreign policy and national security—as in many fields—you simply don’t know what jobs will exist, what issues will matter, or even what will capture your interest in the future.
If you had told me twenty years ago that I’d spend time thinking about artificial intelligence and geopolitics, my first question would have been: what is artificial intelligence? The lesson is to remain open to chance and not believe you need to follow a rigid path that inevitably leads to a specific job.

Mentors and Tulane
BW: Were there influential experiences at in college that shaped your interests?

RF: Absolutely. My academic and thesis adviser, Dr. David Clinton, was disproportionately influential in teaching me the substance of international relations and American foreign policy. I graduated in 1997, and I still keep in touch with him—I literally received his Christmas card today.
I also spent my junior year abroad at Oxford, which was life-changing academically and personally. Through that program, I met my wife—another Tulane student who was studying at the London School of Economics. We’ll soon celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, along with our four kids. Tulane shaped both my professional and personal life in profound ways.

From Analysis to Decision-Making
BW: What distinguishes those who move into real decision-making roles from those who remain permanent analysts?

RF: The ability to get things done within whatever system you’re operating. It’s usually clear who is effective and who isn’t, and those who are effective tend to get promoted into decision-making roles.
Hard work still matters. The ability to write—clearly and persuasively—matters enormously, even in an era of AI. Those basic skills meaningfully increase your chances of advancement.

Where Power Actually Resides
BW: You’ve worked inside and outside government. Where does real leverage over U.S. foreign policy reside?

RF: Foreign policy is made by the government. Outside actors—think tanks, analysts, journalists—can influence debates, but the deciders are in government.
That said, who the actual decision-makers are varies by administration. Power can reside at the White House, State Department, Pentagon, or elsewhere depending on process and personalities. For young people, the most important thing is to get into the field—whether in government, on Capitol Hill, or at a think tank. Over time, most careers move across several of these arenas.

Avoiding the Fear of Being Pigeonholed
BW: Many students worry that committing too early will lock them into a path. How should they think about flexibility versus focus?

RF: I used to worry about being pigeonholed, but that worry changed as my jobs changed. If you love a specific issue deeply, you probably don’t mind specializing. For everyone else—especially generalists—do work that feels meaningful and intrinsically fulfilling.
You can’t plan a career with precision. Particularly in foreign policy, people move between journalism, government, think tanks, and the private sector all the time. Cut yourself a break—it’s going to be okay.

Peace Deals, Credit, and Reality
BW: How do you assess President Trump’s claims about brokering peace deals?

RF: It’s a mixed bag. There are cases where Trump deserves real credit—for example, I don’t think there would have been a Gaza ceasefire and hostage returns without his involvement. There are other cases where he’s taken credit for outcomes he didn’t produce, or for conflicts that weren’t actually resolved.
When you enter a war and then take credit for ending it, that’s a curious formulation. Presidents don’t need to advertise their achievements—if they’re real, others will do that for them.

Alliances as Assets
BW: Alliances are increasingly criticized. Are they still America’s greatest strength?

RF: Absolutely. The United States has treaty allies across Europe and the Indo-Pacific and close partners worldwide. We’ve relied on allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Compare that to China or Russia, whose alliances are limited. That doesn’t mean allies can’t do more—they should—but seeing alliances as a liability rather than an asset is a mistake.

China and the Uses of Power
BW: What does China understand about power that the U.S. sometimes underestimates?

RF: China understands that power has many forms—economic influence, trade, investment, military power, foreign aid, broadcasting, cyber operations. It uses a broad toolkit.
The United States has weakened many of its soft-power instruments. When you strip those away, you’re left with military power on one side and rhetoric on the other. China’s more comprehensive approach should be instructive.

The Personal Costs of National Security Work
BW: What is the least discussed cost of working in national security?

RF: Domestic politics matter enormously. The policies and job opportunities available to you change with administrations, often in ways outside your control. Working in foreign policy during different administrations can feel like entirely different professions.
Your partisan identity can shape opportunities, particularly for political appointments. That volatility is something young people should be honest with themselves about.

Reading for Perspective
BW: Is there a book you’d recommend to students entering the field?

RF: A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin. Even if you think you’re not interested in the Middle East, the Middle East will be interested in you. History—more than theory—often provides the most useful context for understanding today’s foreign policy challenges.

BW: Mr. Fontaine, thank you so much for your time. It’s been an honor.
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RF: Thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Finding an Intellectual Voice
Ben Wolf: So to begin: your career sits at the intersection of writing, editing, and foreign-policy thinking. Early on, how did you learn to develop an intellectual voice rather than simply echo existing arguments?

Jacob Heilbrunn: I was interested in foreign policy and American politics at a pretty early age. I have a somewhat combative intellectual temperament. Early on, I was more conservative-leaning in foreign policy—I was essentially an anti-communist, since the Soviet Union existed at that time. The prevailing ethos was more on the liberal side: that it was necessary to accommodate the Soviet Union, curb the nuclear arms race, and avoid open confrontation with the Kremlin. I was headed more in the neoconservative direction.

Kissinger, History, and Power
BW: I know you’ve written a lot about Henry Kissinger. What interests you about him? For me personally, the book that got me first interested in foreign affairs was Walter Isaacson’s biography of Kissinger. I found his story so incredible—so whenever I see anyone else write about him, I’m curious what draws them in as well.

JH: Kissinger was on our board at The National Interest. I found him quite compelling personally in talking with him. He had a grounding and knowledge of history that is lacking in many of his successors. There were intellectual fireworks with Kissinger, and he had this amazing career—going from being an immigrant to the United States, then serving in the U.S. military, becoming a Harvard professor, joining the Council on Foreign Relations, advising Nelson Rockefeller, and then this meteoric rise with Richard Nixon.

BW: Truly an interesting and inspiring figure. You mentioned your early trend toward neoconservatism—and in writing about neoconservatism, you’ve traced how a set of ideas migrated from the margins into the center of power. When you look at today’s foreign-policy debates, which ideas do you think are currently being underestimated but may shape policy a decade from now?

JH: That’s a tough question. I think what has happened is that the set of ideas around Trump are the obverse of the neoconservatives—that the foes of the neocons have now risen to power under Trump with a diametrically opposed set of ideas. The ideas we’re probably underestimating—or not paying enough attention to—are most likely on the left, or in the Democratic Party, if people develop a new set of ideas. I haven’t seen them yet, but it would be interesting, for example, if there were a comeback of Wilsonian idealism, because these things do seem to go in waves in the United States. You have Wilsonianism during World War I, a backlash in the 1920s, and then FDR comes to power, who really is a successor to Woodrow Wilson. America is probably a uniquely protean society—we’re more susceptible to swings than many other democratic countries.

Moral Language and Strategic Judgment
BW: American foreign policy is often framed in moral terms—democracy versus autocracy, good versus evil. That’s driven arguments for interventionism versus isolationism. From a historian’s perspective, when does moral clarity strengthen strategy, and when does it distort judgment?

JH: It definitely strengthened strategy during World War II, where we were battling the locus of evil in the form of Nazism. However, it can also lead you astray, as it did in Vietnam, where we tried to apply the lesson of Munich 1938 to Vietnam. It can turn into hubris. The same thing happened in the Second Iraq War: it was presented as a moral crusade, and practitioners of realist foreign policy tend to shy away from that kind of moralism, because they would argue that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Our objectives in Iraq were not inherently bad, but the idea of performing regime change in Iraq ended up producing an even worse outcome. It was not in America’s interest—the costs far exceeded the benefits for the United States.
So we need to be careful about moralistic language. You saw President Trump indulge in it in Venezuela again—presenting us as the children of light and our foe as darkness incarnate. That can lead your judgment astray when it should be based on a realistic assessment of the geopolitical forces at work. If you demonize your adversary, it means you can never come to an accommodation—and then the result would be war. We obviously don’t want to go to war with Putin’s Russia, for example. Even the Venezuela venture is highly dubious; it appears to be a concocted war, or a looming concocted war.

BW: On that same theme—learning from historic lessons—there’s a common claim that the U.S. never learns from past interventions. From your reading of history, do you think the problem is a failure to learn, or a failure to apply lessons when political incentives point in the opposite direction?

JH: It’s a mixture. I’m convinced that we replicate disasters—every 30 or 40 years, it seems like there will be another Vietnam. And we have a history of imperial interventions at the turn of the 20th century as well. Now, if Trump were actually to go in—it's hard for me to believe he would go in on the ground in Venezuela, but that could turn into another catastrophe. We do have a penchant for ill-advised adventures abroad.
However, it’s also a function of the fact that the United States is extremely wealthy and powerful, and can, in a sense, afford these mishaps—even if they are quite costly. Another country that wasn’t as wealthy, or didn’t possess this military power, would not indulge in these foreign adventures.

Media Incentives and the Overton Window
BW: You’ve worked both as a writer and as an editor. How do today’s media ecosystems shape strategic thinking—for better or worse—in terms of polarization, algorithms, and the broader trends of media?

JH: It’s changed radically. The good part is that the gatekeepers are gone, which means it’s much easier to publish a variety of views—there are far more outlets. The bad news is that the gatekeepers are gone too. It means there’s a lot of rubbish and drivel, and what we’re seeing, for example, is a rise in antisemitism because the filters are gone.
The extent to which it shapes foreign policy—I’m not sure, because the Trump administration right now is almost an autonomous project. I don’t think the officials or President Trump really care what anyone else thinks.

BW: It’s been interesting for me, as someone younger, to watch the rise of the far-right extremist Nick Fuentes and so-called "Groyperism." I heard about him three or four years ago and it was a very small movement—but now I see articles about him constantly. Do you think the trend toward showcasing more radical ideas has changed the news field—monetarily or otherwise? Has it benefited people in media?

JH: It depends what kind of media you’re talking about—but yes, for some. What has happened is that the mainstream media has become more attuned to the right wing. It used to either dismiss it or not cover it at all. Now I think editors have realized the significance of actors—whether it’s Steve Bannon or someone like Nick Fuentes.
It’s interesting: you call Fuentes a far-right extremist. He’s only “far right” as long as he’s seen as illegitimate. His aspiration is to become the right—and that antisemitism becomes a legitimate credential, that it becomes popular, or at least not unrespectable. That gets again to the nature of gatekeepers: is he going to be successful in expanding the Overton window or not? Is what we’re calling “far right” going to be the mainstream right? That’s why you have this battle.
You have Vivek Ramaswamy today writing an op-ed in The New York Times denouncing the Fuentes wing. Okay, great. So there is a struggle going on. The question is, as Lenin said: who wins?

BW: Where do you see the future of the Republican Party?

JH: Not good. I think, as with his other ventures, President Trump is likely to lead us into some kind of catastrophe—whether that is financial, a plague, or a military debacle, or all of the above remains to be seen. But his first presidency didn’t end well. He had COVID, and then he had the January 6th incident. I don’t think this one—his presidency—will end well either; to some degree it appears to be unraveling already.

After the Cold War: Hubris, Retrenchment, and Ukraine
BW: You’ve written about how the end of the Cold War reshaped American expectations of power. Do you think U.S. foreign policy is still reacting to a world that no longer exists? If so, what illusion has been the hardest to let go of?

JH: The biggest flaw after the end of the Cold War was the rise of American triumphalism—the belief that the United States had single-handedly defeated the Soviet Union. The truth, in retrospect, is that we contributed to that struggle, but Europe played a role; dissidents inside the Eastern Bloc and inside the Soviet Union itself were pivotal; and the command economy of the Soviet Union faltered. The system collapsed from within. We added enough pressure from outside to help accelerate the dissolution, but it was not America alone that accomplished this.
That feeling of hubris and triumphalism then led directly to the second Iraq War. I think America has shed much of that triumphalism, but we’ve almost gone too far in the other direction. One of the interesting things about the Reagan era was that he focused on supporting local movements, but not intervening directly—which is sort of how I see the Ukraine war today. I do believe we should support Ukraine in its battle against Russia. I think this is actually the last battle of the Cold War, if you will—but we don’t need to inject our troops directly. So maybe we’ve overlearned the lesson of what took place after the Cold War.

Advice for Young Writers: Expertise, Habits, and Curiosity
BW: For young writers interested in foreign policy, what matters more: deep specialization in a certain subject, or broader historical reading? And how should that balance evolve over time?

JH: Both are valuable. But having specific expertise is extremely useful, because it gives you something other than hot air—to put it bluntly.
On journalism school: I have mixed feelings. In the past it could serve as a way to get into a newsroom. I’m not sure it’s as valuable today as it was then. I actually prefer someone who has an actual education or interest in something—even if it’s exotic. You want to see that the person has a mind working, which gets back to area expertise: if you know something about Kazakhstan that no one else does, or Central Asia, or China, or Africa—whatever it is—that’s a very useful skill.

BW: When you began your career in journalism, what were some early habits or disciplines that led to your success?

JH: Wide reading. Travel, if possible. I focused on Germany and studied German—not just the politics, but also the culture and literature. Intellectual engagement and focusing on improving your writing skills. And if possible, doing some reporting—which gets back to area studies: if you write about something no one else is writing about, you have unique insight into it.
It’s hard, as a young writer, to just write a piece about Russian foreign policy, because there are a lot of people doing that already—and have been for decades. But if you’re an expert on the Russian military, or some aspect of it, or how the Russian economy is functioning—some specific area—and what the broader implications are, those give you unique slices. As far as preparing for a career, there’s no substitute for reading and writing.
I should add one thing: curiosity. Curiosity is what leads you to discover. You have to have this internal drive to learn things. It’s not just that Vladimir Putin, for example, today called the European leaders “swine” and “little pigs”—why is he doing that? What’s going on in the mental makeup? What is this feeling of Russian revanchism? Whence the hostility to the West? What does that exemplify? Those are broad questions, but intellectual curiosity is the key to success in almost any endeavor—Wall Street, Hollywood, whatever it is.

What Heilbrunn Reads Every Day
BW: In addition to historical knowledge, you seem incredibly well read on today's events. You mentioned the Vivek Ramaswamy piece that came out this morning and what words Putin said today. What are your habits in terms of what you read every day? What does an average day look like for you?

JH: As far as reading, I go through The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post. Sometimes the Financial Times has interesting material—I did an interview with them a couple weeks ago. I look once a day at the German press, because I read German. I’m intellectually curious, so I’m looking for information. Obviously I can’t follow the internet all day, but if I’m working on a piece, I also scour the internet for information.
There are articles, books, and journalistic information. I’ll look at British publications too—the London Review of Books, The Guardian. There’s a variety: everything in the U.S. from National Review to the New York Review of Books. I would suggest not becoming too ideologically wedded to one journal as your source of information. I like to have a variety of views. And at The National Interest, we publish opposing pieces. That’s the tradition I grew up in, because I worked at The New Republic for a long time. There’s nothing wrong with publishing a piece one day and, at The National Interest, publishing pieces that denounce something I wrote—because I believe in intellectual fairness. We’ve mutated into a society where people are sitting in their bunkers with guns blazing. To me, it’s preposterous. It’s boring.

Writers Who Shaped Him
BW: Are there any particular figures you love to read now—or who inspired you growing up?

JH: I was a big fan of George Orwell as a kid. His writing is very direct—an original mind, impatient with right and left orthodoxy. As a journalist, he’s a good model. I was also impressed by Winston Churchill. If you read his memoirs--My Early Life, I think is the title—it’s overblown, but dramatic. It’s fun. He’s an incredible writer, and a wild character. The more exotic characters are easier to write for; they’re more colorful, as the journalistic expression goes—they make for good copy.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom
BW: How should young thinkers approach foreign policy without simply inheriting outdated assumptions—liberal, realist, or otherwise?

JH: You’ve got to make your own judgments, and don’t be afraid to say that the conventional wisdom is wrong. This reminds me: Frederick the Great’s motto was “audacity, audacity, always audacity.” A willingness to challenge what other people are thinking can take you a long way.

A Reading Recommendation
BW: Last question--as is customary with the blog: for people interested in the work you’re in, or pursuing a similar career path, what pieces of literature—a book, an essay, a poem—would you recommend, and why?

JH: The book that really influenced me as a teenager was The God That Failed, which has seven or eight essays by famous intellectuals, including Arthur Koestler—first-person essays. You can learn a lot from the journey and self-discovery of other people, especially when it’s raw, like those essays were. That book influenced me quite a bit early on. You could get the same thing with Orwell, because it’s vivid and—in a contemporary expression they wouldn’t have used back then—in your face.

BW: Mr. Heilbrunn, I really appreciate your time. I truly feel like I’ve learned so much in this short period of time we've been talking, and I know our readers will feel the same. I hope we can speak again soon.
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JH: Thank you, Ben. Good luck with everything.

Reconsidering Political Identity
Ben Wolf: You’ve written candidly about how your political views have shifted over time—sometimes in ways that may have cost you allies. Looking back, was there a moment when you realized this wasn’t just refining a position, but fundamentally rethinking your core assumptions?

Max Boot: That really happened for me on election day in 2016 and the days immediately afterward. I had been on the right for most of my adult life. I worked at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and wrote for Commentary. I thought of myself as a conservative and a Republican, and I never imagined the Republican Party could be hijacked by someone like Donald Trump.
Trump was not conservative in any meaningful sense—he was a populist, nationalist rabble-rouser who began his campaign by insulting one of my great heroes, John McCain, saying he didn’t like people who were captured. That came from someone who had dodged Vietnam service, denigrating one of America’s greatest war heroes. To me, that alone was disqualifying.
I assumed the Republican Party would never fall in behind him, and yet it did. That triggered a personal and political crisis. I had to reassess a lot of what I believed and ask how the Republican Party and the conservative movement had fallen prey to someone like this. If this was what the GOP stood for, I didn’t want any part of it.
Many of my views haven’t changed dramatically, but I no longer identify with the Republican Party. I’m an independent now, and like many others, I feel politically homeless in Donald Trump’s America.

John McCain and a Different Model of Leadership
BW: You mentioned your disdain for Trump because of his criticism of John McCain--as I understand it, you served as McCain’s foreign policy adviser during his 2008 campaign. How did you come to work with him and what was that experience like for you?

Max Boot: Well, I’m actually also now in the process of writing a biography of John McCain. So McCain was large in my life. But I was introduced to McCain because of a book that I wrote more than 20 years ago called The Savage Wars of Peace, about America’s small wars. And one of those small wars was Pancho Villa’s invasion of New Mexico in 1916—and unbeknownst to me, one of the U.S. Army officers who was fighting off Pancho Villa’s forces was an ancestor of John McCain’s—and so he was an inveterate reader. He read that book, he liked it, and so he wanted to meet me. And I did meet him.
So I got to know him some and became a tremendous admirer—somebody who, I think, really personified America and the Republican Party at its best; somebody who was a man of honor and courage, and fought for his ideals. And, of course, that’s not to say that he was infallible. He made mistakes all the time. I mean, he made a big one in 2008 by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. But he had a capacity to learn from his mistakes, and he always had a devotion to serving a cause greater than himself. He always wanted to serve the country, and he wanted to serve the cause of liberty.
And those are all things that I greatly admired about John McCain. And unfortunately, none of those words describe Donald Trump—where his life seems to be basically in service to himself, his ego, and his bank account. And I’m mortified and mystified that so many Americans think that that’s who they want as their leader, but clearly that’s the case. And so that’s kind of, in a nutshell, how I became a man without a party.
And by the way, I would add: I don’t expect any sympathy for being without a party. I think it’s actually a pretty good position to be in, because one of the things I found over the course of my life is that when you are identifying as part of a political movement—whether it’s on the left, or the right; whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, or a democratic socialist, or a libertarian, whatever the heck it may be—there’s a tendency toward groupthink, and there’s a tendency to prioritize your standing within your social circle and your peer group over rigorous analysis of policy and willingness to take stances based on the issues, not what’s expected of you.
Whenever you’re part of any political movement, there is always this pressure to conform. And there is always punishment for people who break ranks. And so, over the years, it wasn’t like I said things that I didn’t believe in—I always said what I believed in—but there are issues I didn’t go into. I mean, I didn’t write about the fact that the Republican Party’s opposition to gun control, for example, I think is a myopic and suicidal policy, which is responsible for a lot of needless death and suffering—because good Republicans don’t criticize the stances of the party, and that’s part of this feeling of group loyalty.
So I kind of like now being a free agent and able to make my own way in the political world. The sad part of that has been that I have lost a bunch of friends—folks that I was close to on the right. Some of those friends I kept, because some have become Never Trump conservatives or have made kind of the same journey as I have. But others have gone over to the MAGA side of things, and it’s very hard for me to interact with them, and vice versa. That’s just a huge divide in our political life. So losing some friends has made me sad. I’ve gained some other friends, but it’s been a major transition for me personally—and I think for the country.

Groupthink, polarization, and party alignment
BW: You mentioned the tendency for there to be groupthink within political parties. I think that’s a pretty indisputable claim. But I think another trend we’re also seeing is group polarization—where people, because of the conformity pressures you mentioned within a political party, tend to move to more extreme positions because of the lack of opposition. We’ve seen that with the rise of right-wing extremist Nick Fuentes and criticized statements from figures like Tucker Carlson.
From your perspective---you mentioned that currently you don’t belong to a party--do you see yourself having a party alignment in the future? Or do you see this extremist trend, becoming more and more problematic on both sides of the aisle, continue to grow.

MB: I don’t. I mean, I’m certainly comfortable with the views of some centrist Democrats—just as I’m comfortable with the views of some centrist Republicans—but there are extremes in both parties. For example, I’m comfortable with the views of Josh Shapiro. I am not so comfortable with the views of Zohran Mamdani. And in the Republican Party, I’m comfortable with the views of—well, vanishingly few people these days. I guess maybe Mitch McConnell, or something like that. Certainly not comfortable with the views of Donald Trump or his acolytes in Congress.
But again: I’m not a political operative. If I were a political operative, I probably would have to choose a side, because we live in this two-party system where you’re either a D or an R; otherwise you have no impact, no influence, and no employment. But luckily, I’m not a political operative. I’m just an egghead and an ink-stained wretch. I just write for a living and offer my opinion, so I don’t feel compelled to sign up with either party, and I’m happy to call them both out when I think they’re wrong.
But I don’t want to engage in false moral equivalence here, because the reality is: while both the Democrats and the Republicans have extremist wings, the extremist wing is in control of the Republican Party, whereas it’s not in control of the Democratic Party. And the Democrats have nominated folks like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden—who I’m pretty comfortable with on the issues. If three years from now they nominate AOC or Bernie Sanders—that would be a serious problem for me—but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think Democrats have managed to stay much more in the center than Republicans have done.

Zohran Mamdani, New York City, and Political Branding
BW: You mentioned Zohran Mamdani. It’s interesting--Bret Stephens, in a New York Times column he made prior to the New York mayoral election, said that if Mamdani were to be elected and things were to go wrong, it would end up being better for Republicans, because Trump would be able to say, “This is the Democratic Party now—Zohran Mamdani.” What do you make of that?

MB: I know Bret well. We worked together many years ago at The Wall Street Journal. That’s a concern I have for sure. In theory, Mamdani seems like a very convenient piñata for President Trump. Whether that’s actually going to work out that way or not—very hard to say, because the one time when Mamdani was out at the Oval Office, Trump seemed to love him. They hit it off—which I don’t think a lot of people expected.
We’ll just have to see what happens with New York, which is where I live—where I’m speaking to you from right now. There were a lot of billionaires warning that they were going to flee town as soon as Mamdani was elected, and as far as I can tell, that’s not happening. New York is as popular a destination as ever, so we’ll see.
One of Mamdani’s saving graces is that it’s not clear to me how much power the mayor of New York actually has. In many ways, his power is circumscribed by the state—the state legislature, the governor, the MTA, other boards and commissions. And so a lot of his more far-out ideas are probably not terribly practical.
So we’ll see. When the British Empire suffered a major defeat at Saratoga during the American Revolution, a friend is said to have rushed in to Adam Smith—the great economist—and told him that the empire is ruined. Smith is said to have replied that there is a great deal of ruin in an empire. And I would say there’s also a great deal of ruin in New York City. We’ve had some pretty poor mayors like de Blasio or Eric Adams, and the city still seems to be thriving. So I’m guessing and hoping we will survive the Mamdani administration.
And while it’s true that Republicans will try to associate the entire Democratic Party with Mamdani, that’s not going to be convincing—assuming that Democrats nominate a much more centrist presidential candidate for 2028, because that person is going to become automatically the leader of the party.

New York, Jewish Politics, and The Widening Divide
BW: If I can ask a more personal question: you’re in New York, and I return often since much of my family is there. I recently heard Rabbi Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue speak sharply about Zohran Mamdani and the broader Israel/anti-Zionism debate—an example of how openly political even religious spaces have become. In your view, what else is driving the level of polarization in New York right now, and how durable do you think it is?
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MB: I think it’s a phenomenon larger than New York City, because there is no question there has been an increase in partisan polarization over the last several decades—and you can measure it in multiple ways, including data showing that Democrats in Congress are getting more liberal, and Republicans are getting more conservative.
There used to be a large number of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, and there’s almost neither—both of those groups have become largely extinct. If I had to identify with one group on the political spectrum, it would probably be kind of liberal, Rockefeller-type Republicans—maybe Teddy Roosevelt-type Republicans—but they really don’t exist anymore. That’s not a faction of the party you can belong to.
So there has been a tendency for both parties to become much more uniform and much farther apart on the issues. And you also see that to some extent in demographic polarization—where places like California and New York become much more blue, and Texas and Florida become much more red, and much more uniformly so.
And, of course, that trend is going to be accelerated because the Trump Republicans started this troubling trend of trying to do reapportionment in the middle of a decade to deprive Democrats of seats in Texas and other states. And now Democrats have been forced to respond in blue states like California. So I think that’s just going to drive the polarization.
It has a very negative impact in Congress because, for most members of the House, they’re all in safe seats. They’re not in competitive seats, so they feel no pressure to move to the center. In fact, all the pressure is the other way, because the only way House incumbents are likely to lose an election these days is if they lose the primary.
That’s been one of the chief disciplinary mechanisms that Trump has used to keep the Republican Party in line, because he’s always threatening to back primary challengers to Republicans who resist him in any way, shape, or form. And he’s managed to drive pretty much all of the anti-Trump Republicans out of Congress—Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, and all these others. There’s Mitt Romney. It’s just not a tenable place in Congress for somebody who opposes Trump anymore.
So, yeah—I think these are all troubling trends. I think of myself as a raging centrist, and being a centrist feels increasingly isolated on today’s political spectrum in America.

Writing for a Polarized Public
BW: I want to turn the conversation  to your own writing style and career path. Knowing that you write for a broad public at a time when foreign policy debates are deeply polarized, how should historians and writers communicate complex or uncomfortable arguments without flattening them into slogans—or polarizing the other side from even looking at their arguments?

MB: That’s kind of the essence of journalism—always has been, always will be: trying to simplify and explain a very complex issue without dumbing it down or succumbing to caricatures. That’s the essence of what journalists try to do—to grapple with complexity, but not lose your way within that complexity.
And that’s the talent that journalists bring to the table, because we’re usually not the world’s greatest experts in X, Y, or Z. But we’re people who can translate what the world’s greatest experts say, and explain it in a way that your average interested lay reader can understand.

Building Credibility Early
BW: For students who want to write seriously about history and foreign policy, but perhaps don’t yet have institutional backing—or are finding it hard to get involved in the space—how should they think about building credibility early on?

MB: Gosh, that’s a good question. I’ve never been asked that before. I think it’s just a question of doing the work.
It begins with reading a lot—not looking at websites, but reading actual books with covers and all the stuff in between the covers. Increasing your knowledge base. And obviously part of that is going to college; these days, it’s probably going to graduate or professional school. But fundamentally, it’s having curiosity about the world, wanting to learn, and actually doing the hard work of learning—not trying to take shortcuts with AI or CliffsNotes, but actually digging deep into issues that you’re interested in.
And then not being afraid to start at the ground level. I mean, I know coming out of college, nobody was going to pay me to be a foreign policy pundit—that would be a little presumptuous. I was starting off as an assistant national editor at The Christian Science Monitor, then as an op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal, gradually working my way up to op-ed editor of The Wall Street Journal at the same time—pursuing my writing on the side and writing, for example, this book, The Savage Wars of Peace, that led to my being hired by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2002.
So that’s a random career path, which just happens to be what I did, and there are a million other career paths out there. But basically, I think it just comes from learning stuff, working hard, working your way up, impressing people with your knowledge and judgment, gaining more responsibility, and taking advantage of that responsibility in a responsible way.

Advice to His Younger Self
BW: Looking back at your career, if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing—one piece of advice, one mistake not to make—what would that be?

MB: Be less doctrinaire. Be less ideological. Because I tended to be pretty staunchly conservative—not in my youth, but later—and I feel like it led me down some dead ends.
I regret some positions I took, for example supporting the invasion of Iraq. In 2003, I kind of kicked myself and asked, “How could I have been so dumb?” But I wasn’t the only person who made that mistake, for sure.
I should have been more ready to question what folks on my own side were saying—to be more independent. And I probably should have focused more on fact-gathering rather than opinion-sharing.
This is something that’s even more prevalent today, where everybody has a blog or a Substack, or a podcast or whatever. There’s a huge marketplace for sharing opinions—that’s what drives so much internet traffic, social media traffic. But I think a lot of ideas are much less valuable and important than simply gathering the underlying information that allows you to reach cogent and coherent conclusions.
In some ways, I wish I had focused more on fact-gathering rather than opinionizing. I mean, where I have done a lot of fact-gathering over the years is writing my books, which tend to be pretty thick and have footnotes. And I’ve found that to be a really useful exercise, because when I’m writing journalism, I’m kind of using up everything in my brain—using every mental resource that I have—whereas when I’m doing research, when I’m writing a book, I’m actually building up my storehouse of facts and ideas. And I think that’s a very valuable thing to do.

The Historical Lesson He Worries We’re Forgetting
BW: As we wrap up with our final couple questions: when you look ahead, is there a historical lesson you’re most worried that we’re ignoring or misremembering right now?

MB: The obvious one is the dangers of isolationism and protectionism—which helped to plunge America and the world into the Great Depression and World War II. There was pretty much a post-1945 consensus that we wanted to promote free trade, alliances, American international leadership, standing up for democracy and resisting tyranny. That was a pretty bipartisan consensus in American politics.
And I feel like it’s broken down now with Donald Trump, who champions an America First foreign policy—using the very name that was employed by Charles Lindbergh and the isolationists of the 1930s. I never thought I would live long enough to see the resurgence of isolationism and protectionism, but here we are. That seems like a pretty obvious historical lesson that we ignore at our peril.

What to read—and why it matters
BW: And then finally, as is customary with this blog: for people interested in the field that you’re working in—or wanting to follow a similar career path—what pieces of literature (a book, an essay, even a poem) would you recommend to them, and why?

MB: Oh, gee—that’s a…

BW: You can say your own books!

MB: Yeah, of course—all my collective works are everything you need to know---I don’t know. It’s really hard to say. I would just say: read a lot of serious books. It’s hard for me to cite one book that I would recommend above all others.
I knew when I was a kid, in the 1980s, I was influenced by books like The Wise Men, which was co-written by your professor, Walter Isaacson. I was also influenced by Robert A. Caro’s biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I’m just kind of glancing at my bookshelf now. I was influenced by historians like William Manchester and Barbara Tuchman.
And I think a lot of academic historians—even at the time—would tend to look down their noses at folks like Tuchman or Manchester or Caro or Isaacson or others by saying they were “popularizers,” that they were not proper academic historians. But I think what they really did was write history in an accessible, exciting way that made people much more knowledgeable—and made it a pleasure to learn about the past.
I fear that a lot of people don’t know a lot of history these days, as surveys of civic literacy will point out. And so I think we’re prey to a lot of political and societal delusions because people don’t know enough of what happened in the past. And I think those kinds of works of popular history—which is kind of what I do as well—are a way to rectify that ignorance, and to get people much more knowledgeable about the past, which I think is a basic building block not just of your professional life, but of citizenship.

BW: I absolutely agree. I remember reading Isaacson’s Kissinger biography at the beginning of my sophomore year, and that’s really what sparked my interest in foreign affairs. Mr. Boot, it’s been an honor and a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time with me.
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MB: Great. Pleasure to talk with you.

Beginnings: Finding Journalism — and Economics
Ben Wolf: Thank you for joining me Mr. Appelbaum. If you would, please tell me a little bit about how you got your start in journalism, how you knew you wanted to report on economics, and how you found your own stylistic voice.

Binyamin Appelbaum: I got my start in journalism in a pretty classic way. I edited my high school paper, and when I got to college, I signed up to work for the student paper. I didn’t intend to make a career out of it—it just seemed fun—but I ended up falling in love with it. It became more and more the center of my college experience.
I eventually ended up as the editor of the student paper at the University of Pennsylvania. By my senior year, a little later than I probably should have, I started thinking about how to turn this into a career. I sent out letters to the 100 largest papers in the country asking if anyone would take me on as an intern—using the free stamps from the college newspaper office. One of those papers, the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, Florida, offered me an internship.
I wrote a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer about my experience of job hunting, noting that I didn’t really know where Jacksonville was at that point in my life. But it was an opportunity, so I jumped at it and became an intern at the Florida Times-Union.

The Vanishing Career Ladder in Journalism
BW: Do you think that method—sending out 100 letters—is still applicable today? Or do you see other paths people are taking into journalism now?

BA: No, I don’t think it would work today. I was lucky that it worked then. At that time, there were a lot of big papers across the country that were hungry for young, cheap journalists.
I sometimes think of my career as a rat scrambling up the halls of a sinking ship, jumping from paper to paper as they collapsed behind me. Most of the places I’ve worked are shadows of themselves. Local newspapers are in dire straits—this isn’t news to anyone. Only a very few have found anything like a sustainable bottom, and even those are much smaller than they were in their heyday.
When I was a kid growing up outside Boston, the Sunday Globe was a substantial object when it landed on your doorstep—hundreds of pages of content. The Globe is one of the luckier regional papers, but even it isn’t anything like what it once was.
It’s very difficult today to build a career by working at smaller papers and moving your way up. In the old days, newspaper journalism was like baseball: you started in Single-A, moved to Double-A, then Triple-A, and maybe you made it to the majors. Plenty of people had fulfilling careers at Double-A or Triple-A papers. Today, both that ladder and the likelihood of lifetime employment at a regional paper are broken. People seeking careers in journalism need to find other paths.

When Economics Became Fully Political
BW: I think that extends beyond newspapers, too--to all forms of media. I’m from Kansas City, and our local NPR affiliate is KCUR. I recall last year going to a lunch with Steve Inskeep, who of course is one of the predominant NPR voices, and he told me about how national broadcasters are being sent to smaller affiliates to help raise funding, because those stations are struggling so much on their own. It definitely is a problematic trend.
I wanted to ask you about economic policy debates today. From my perspective, they seem far more political than they were a generation ago. I saw this recently at the DealBook Summit, where Scott Bessent was openly criticizing Democratic-run states over inflation. I was surprised to see this from a figure institutionally separate from the federal government. Is that assessment right, that economics are more political today? And if so, has it made reporting harder—or forced greater honesty about the consequences of policy choices?

BA: I’d say a couple of things. Politics and the economy have always been extremely intertwined. Economics is a way of thinking about how a polity should work, so that part isn’t new.
But two things are much more pronounced today. First, everything is national to a degree it wasn’t historically. You asked earlier how I started covering economics, and the answer is relevant here. I was working at a newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina, covering local government. The managing editor called me in and said, “We’re looking for a banking reporter.” I said, “That sounds really boring.” He said, “You are the new banking reporter.” That’s how I got into economic journalism—by accident.
At the time, Charlotte was a center of the regional banking industry. Decades ago, the southeastern, northeastern, midwestern, and west coast financial industries were more discrete from one another, and often regulated at the state or regional level. As that system has been replaced by truly national banks and a national financial system, economic issues have become national issues. Debates are adjudicated at the national level, and they inevitably become partisan battlegrounds.
The second factor is polarization. Historically, there was overlap between Democrats and Republicans. Over time, we’ve seen a "sorting"—the parties are more cleanly divided and in more constant conflict over everything, including economic issues. For both reasons, every economic policy question is now national and partisan, which makes good decision-making much harder.

BW: That reminds me of a conversation I had with Bret Stephens about political sorting—not just in Congress, but in people’s personal lives, too. People are far more likely now to marry someone of the same political party than they were decades ago. That trend has reduced conversations across party lines--

BA: --and let me add to that, it’s not just politics—it’s economics too. A cliché captures it: half a century ago, doctors married nurses; today, doctors marry doctors. Political and economic identities are increasingly aligned—for individuals, for families, and for communities. We’re more segregated economically, and those identities reinforce political conflict.

Reporting Power from the Inside
BW: You’ve worked at both local newspapers and national institutions like The New York Times. What has been the biggest difference in the newsroom or in how you reported between the two?

BA: The dividing line for me was between the Boston Globe and the Washington Post. I arrived at the Post in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis. On my first day, before I even had computer training, an editor told me there had been a secret meeting at the White House and asked me to report on it.
I panicked. At a regional paper, you don’t expect to find out what happened in a secret meeting. I was sitting at my desk trying to figure out what to do when the phone rang. Someone who had been at the meeting called to tell me about it.
That’s the difference. At regional papers, you’re desperately trying to get information and often failing. At national papers, the challenge flips. Many people want to give you information—often competing versions of events. Your job becomes figuring out what’s true, what agendas people have, and what they’re leaving out. You become part of the system, which brings real risks. But the most important part of that is the "New York Times" part of your title. If you start thinking sources are calling you rather than calling The New York Times, you can get into trouble.

BW: Could you share a moment where that's happened to you--where you had competing individuals try to shape coverage directly?

BA: It happens all the time. During the Obama administration after the financial crisis, there was a hugely consequential debate about how to help homeowners who couldn’t afford their mortgages. Millions were trapped in homes worth less than their loans.
Different factions within the administration had competing ideas, and each wanted favorable coverage in The New York Times. They were making their cases to me because they knew there would be stories and wanted their approach reflected accurately—and persuasively.
During crises, the dynamic intensifies. Jamie Dimon, for example, would sometimes just call reporters directly. And every night, after our stories went online but before they were finalized for print, my phone would ring—often with someone from the White House trying to “work the refs,” asking why something was phrased a certain way or why another point wasn’t included. The more important the issue, the more senior the person calling.

Translating Complexity for the Public
BW: That’s really fascinating. As we wrap up, I want to ask about the craft itself. Economic journalism requires simplifying complex systems without flattening their stakes. What’s the hardest balance to strike when writing for a general audience who doesn't have the same level of knowledge as you do?

BA: That’s the core of the work. I sometimes say journalism is like being Moses: you go up the mountain to talk to God, then you come down and explain it to the people. Both parts matter.
You need to understand the subject deeply by talking to experts, then explain it to educated readers who aren’t specialists. At The Times, we have a clear sense of who our reader is—an educated person who isn’t an expert in that field. The work is translation: finding accurate illustrations, anecdotes, and language that make economics accessible and interesting.

Advice for Aspiring Economic Journalists
BW: Finally, if you were starting today and trying to build credibility as an economic journalist, what would you focus on in the first year?

BA: I’d focus on becoming deeply expert in something specific. Early in my career, I covered banks—and even more specifically, the mortgage industry. That expertise let me write with authority and build trust. Luck matters too, but being really good at one thing gives people a reason to rely on you, and then to trust you with broader subjects.

BW: Mr. Appelbaum, it’s been a real honor. Thank you so much for joining me.

BA: My pleasure.

​Ambassador Mark Green has spent his career at the intersection of domestic politics and global development—serving as a member of Congress from Wisconsin’s 8th District, U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, administrator of USAID, and president & CEO of the Wilson Center. Before any of that, he and his wife taught in a small village in western Kenya, an experience that helped shape his worldview and his belief in empowering individuals rather than building dependence. In this conversation for The Pathway Blog, Green reflects on how a year without electricity led him to public service, what most Americans get wrong about foreign aid, how China’s rise is reshaping development, and what advice he has for students considering careers in diplomacy, politics, and international affairs.

​This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

​Getting Started in Public Service
BW: You’ve had a long and varied career—from the Wisconsin legislature and Congress to serving as U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, administrator of USAID, and then president of the Wilson Center.
Looking back, what early experiences or roles most shaped your entry into public service and the worldview that you bring to it?
MG: It’s an unusual path that I’ve taken. For me, it really started before the state legislature, when my wife and I were teachers in a small village in western Kenya. That profoundly shaped my worldview and, I think, my drive for public service.
Where we lived and taught, our home had no electricity. There was only one telephone in the entire village—a wind-up telephone mounted in a wooden box. You couldn’t do calls to the U.S. or anything like that.
What struck me was what I saw day in and day out: families in Kenya trying desperately to get a pale shadow of the education that, quite frankly, we throw away pretty quickly. That was inspirational.
Secondly, I had the luxury of time. Because there was no television and no electricity, in the evenings I read. I read every book I could find—every book at the local library. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I read the Bible cover to cover, because that’s what they had.
At the end of the year-long program, I decided I wanted to get involved in public service and politics. I never thought I would run for office, but I knew I wanted to get involved, which is what led me, after Kenya, to go back home to Green Bay, start practicing law, and very quickly meet Tommy Thompson, the longest-serving governor in Wisconsin’s history. He became a mentor and an inspiration.
That’s what really got me going.
What pulled me into foreign policy work was something different. Right after 9/11—at that point I was in Congress—the Speaker of the House came up to me. He’d somehow learned about my time as a teacher in Kenya, and he said, “Mark, I’ve got plenty of guys around here who can catch and kill bad guys. I need some people to stop there from being more bad guys.”
He put me on the International Relations Committee, as we called it in those days. President Bush was in office, and we started to work on the PEPFAR HIV/AIDS initiative, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and funding for basic education in the developing world. That’s what really got me off and running.
So it was an unusual path. And then beyond that, at the end of my congressional career, I was asked—through, then-Congressman (before he was Speaker) Paul Ryan, a very good friend of mine, and Karl Rove from the White House—“Does Green want to go to Tanzania?” They asked me to serve as ambassador.
That gave me a privilege that few people get, because I got to be an ambassador overseeing some of the very programs I’d created as a member of Congress—to go from the drawing board to implementation. Extraordinary privilege.
So that’s really what got me going. Each step of the way, it’s been good fortune. I wish I could say it was brilliance. It was good fortune more than anything else.

Representing Wisconsin While Looking Outward
BW: I’m really interested in the part you mentioned about your mentor, but I’m going to ask you about that a bit later.
First, I’m curious: during your time representing Wisconsin’s 8th District, you helped advance major global aid and development legislation. Did serving a domestic constituency influence how you thought about America’s role abroad or the purpose of foreign aid, which of course became extremely relevant to you in your later roles?
MG: The 8th Congressional District—Green Bay being the largest city in that district—is also where Joe McCarthy was from. So it’s not exactly, especially in those days, an area known for being outward-looking in terms of international affairs.
I don’t know that, if we hadn’t had the crisis presented by 9/11, it would have been as easy, politically, to craft some of these programs. After 9/11, I traveled to Afghanistan, I went to Iraq twice, and I also traveled a couple of times to Africa. I’m not sure I could have done that politically if not for what everyone saw as the great challenge of violent extremism leading to terrorism. That created political momentum for those programs. It would have been far harder otherwise.
No one runs for office on foreign assistance or foreign policy.
I also had an extraordinarily good constituent staff back in Green Bay—Appleton being the other big city in that district. Their work—on veterans’ issues, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security—that’s really the day-to-day of what a member of Congress does.
That good work, plus the national crisis of 9/11, gave me the comfort level and political mandate to take on some of the broader issues that maybe aren’t day-to-day concerns for many people, but that I viewed as very important to America’s future.

What Running for Congress Really Feels Like
BW: For me personally, I’m incredibly interested in political careers—ambassador being one of them. I’m specifically fascinated by foreign affairs, for many reasons, but it's in part because the idea of heading a campaign seems immensely strenuous and stressful, frankly: having that much scrutiny on your character, who you are, and whatever family background you have. My first reaction is that I'd much rather be involved politically without running a campaign.
What was that process like for you?
MG: Well, it was different than it is these days. We had conventional media, not social media. And to be honest, part of it was developing a relationship with the press—with journalists—such that, if something came up, they would give me the opportunity to present my side of the story.
These days it’s real-time, instant social media, and you lose control, quite frankly, of the ability to frame issues. We’re in a much more populist time than we were back then.
My first race for Congress—I ran in 1998, when I was elected—I was the only Republican in the nation to unseat a Democratic incumbent in Congress that year. It was a terrific amount of work; it was around-the-clock, day-to-day work.
It is daunting. But it’s also, quite frankly, inspiring. In a district like that, where a lot of it was small towns, small communities, rural areas, you move around and you see the character of America. You meet everyday working people, see what they do to make ends meet, and hear their view of America. That part was fun.
In my four campaigns, I did something like a hundred parades—everything from Polka Fest in Pulaski to Chocolate Fest down in Burlington, to Flag Day, to the Fourth of July.
Sure, it’s work, but it’s also fun meeting people and giving them a chance to kick the tires a little bit and ask you questions. So it is daunting, but it’s also very rewarding. That part was actually enjoyable.

Can Early Internships Box you in Politically?
BW: It truly is a unique experience, and something I'll need to give more thought to. I don’t know where my career will end up, but campaigning is something I’ll have to weigh seriously.
You mentioned being a Republican and taking a seat from a Democrat. In today’s world, you can track someone’s career so vividly online—through LinkedIn, social media, or what have you. I’ve talked to some of my politically-interested peers, and one of their main concerns in early career pursuits is: if they hypothetically intern for a Democrat this summer, but they are yet to fully decided their own political ideology or party alignment, does that risk boxing them in for the rest of their political career? What are your thoughts on that?
MG: I suppose possibly—but it really depends on the role they play.
I think being a Hill staffer is an extraordinarily rewarding experience, and I recommend it to anyone interested in public policy, whether international or domestic. You get to interact with people, and you also see in front of you a range of issues, ideas, and programs. That’s when you begin to formulate what’s important to you.
Doing constituent work, for example—which is often what an internship on Capitol Hill is about: answering mail, responding to constituent inquiries—develops a skill set more than it pins you to an ideological position.
So there is certainly a risk of being “boxed in,” but if I were hiring, I wouldn’t view it that way.
It’s a different thing if you’re committee staff. For every member of Congress, you have their personal office, which interacts with constituents back home. But they’ll also have staff dedicated to their committee assignments. On the committees, things tend to be more ideological, because you’re part of the team considering legislation or oversight matters.
So it really depends on the role. But again, my view is: it’s a rewarding experience.
I worked my way through law school as a part-time legislative aide in the state Capitol, and it was great—and inspiring. I remember my boss, my state senator (who has since passed away), was in the leadership.
In a group setting, he said, “Mark’s going to tell me how to vote on X.” And afterward I thought to myself: I’m 25 years old, and I’m going to be influencing how this person votes. It was inspiring. It was cool—pretty heady stuff.
So again, getting involved in the process, getting into the public arena—whether as an elected official or part of the team—is great. It’s really good work.

Finding Your Place—and Your Ego Check—on Capitol Hill
BW: I was listening to something recently from Scott Galloway, the podcaster and NYU professor. He was talking about how people are often concerned with imposter syndrome—feeling like they don’t belong in the room they’re in—when in reality, that can be a good sign. If you feel like everyone around you is highly talented and maybe ahead of you in experience, that means you’re learning.
MG: Right. So to win my first campaign for Congress was an amazing undertaking. The first poll that came out on the gentleman I eventually unseated—he was actually a friend of mine, a Democratic congressman and former TV personality who has since passed away—was pretty daunting.
When the campaign started, the guy who would eventually become my chief of staff came to me and said, “I have good news and I have bad news.” I said, “Okay, give it to me.” He said, “The bad news is you’re 40 points behind in the polls.”
And I said, “What the heck is the good news?”
And he said, “It’s only up from here.”
It was quite an undertaking.
When we won, I remember going out to D.C. for the first time with my chief of staff. We sat, just the two of us, in a room and said, “Oh my God. This is pretty cool. Whoa. This is cool.”
But you discover very quickly that members of Congress fall into two classes. There are those for whom getting to office is their lifetime achievement. It’s very important to them—their status. They want to be called “Mr. Chairman” or whatever it might be.
And then there are people who are there because they want to do what a congressman can do—good things. The late Henry Hyde, a name you may not know, was a congressman from Illinois who chaired the Judiciary Committee and, during his tenure, crafted many key foreign policy measures that passed. He was “Henry.” He wasn’t “Mr. Chairman.”
You very quickly figure out who needs the title for their ego versus those who are looking for a chance to make a difference. You gravitate toward and form friendships with the right people, and it’s a great experience.
It is heady stuff. You have lots of people around you telling you how good you are, because they’re looking for something—not because you’re really that great.
I was fortunate. There was a men’s accountability group. We used to get together every Wednesday morning in a different member’s office over coffee, close the doors, and talk about what was going on back home. They deflated egos pretty fast, and that was very important for me.
Because again: you’ve got a title, and people spend a lot of time telling you how great you are—but often because they want something.

What Americans Get Wrong About Foreign Aid
BW: As a veteran in the political sphere, I’d love to ask you a couple of policy-related questions.
First, what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding Americans have about foreign aid and international development? And second, how do you think USAID and diplomacy should evolve, especially in light of the political scrutiny and strategic pressures of the past few years?
MG: Those are hard questions to answer because everything’s in flux right now.
Traditionally, people’s misunderstandings of foreign assistance fall into two buckets. First, people don’t realize how small it is. The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition did some polling where they asked Americans how big a portion of the federal budget they thought foreign aid was. The most frequent answer was 25%. In reality, it’s less than 1%.
Then they asked, “How much do you think foreign aid should be?” People said 10%. And again, the actual number was under 1%. So there’s that.
The second big misunderstanding is how we do foreign assistance. The criticism is that we “give money to corrupt leaders.” In reality, we actually don’t give money directly to governments, with a few exceptions. We traditionally work through NGOs—non-governmental organizations—so money doesn’t typically go straight to governments and leaders.
Those are the traditional misunderstandings.
But everything is in flux right now. We’re in the process of rewriting how we do assistance. I think the administration has really jolted the development community, which is not necessarily bad. It’s going to force us to reconstruct things.
I’m a big believer in what I call the “journey to self-reliance.” We don’t want countries or people to be dependent upon foreign assistance. We want them to see it as a necessary evil—a step toward a better future that they themselves take charge of. I think the administration’s moves are forcing us to rethink how we get there.
Again, that’s not a bad thing. We really are in flux right now.

Development, Diplomacy, and the Challenge from China
BW: Given today’s global challenges—economic instability, climate stress, shifting power dynamics—what role do you think U.S. development should play in the coming decade? And if you were designing America’s foreign policy priorities from scratch, what would you elevate to the top?
MG: Boy—also a broad question, difficult to answer concisely.
Development and diplomacy—so-called soft power or smart power—are a crucial part of projecting American leadership around the world. Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis famously wrote in a note to members of the Appropriations Committee in Congress: “If you cut foreign aid, I’m going to have to buy more bullets.”
That’s the way I think of smart foreign assistance. It works on addressing the conditions that often lead to despair. Poverty doesn’t cause terrorism, but poverty and destitution left unchecked can lead to despair, and despair is a condition that bad guys know how to exploit.
So addressing the drivers of despair is a way of keeping America safe and keeping the world more stable. It also helps create economic partners.
What I think is crucial is that we use our investments in other countries as the beginning of the relationship, not the end. We want to take those investments and find ways to help our partner countries mobilize their own resources and build their own capacity—to lead their own future. We want countries to be true partners in a brighter, more just, more stable future.
The biggest change—and this goes to your second question—is the rise of China. When I started in this work, I’m an Africanist by background, there was very little presence of China. Now China’s everywhere.
China’s foreign assistance is heavily financing-driven and loan-based. China is now the largest official creditor in the world. A recent study projected $2.1 trillion-plus in Chinese loans around the world, creating enormous debt.
We don’t operate like that. We operate much more through investments and traditional foreign assistance. But I think China’s presence and its ambitions will force us to rethink our approach to almost every relationship in the world.

Learning from Tommy Thompson and Jack Kemp
BW: As we close here, Ambassador, I want to turn back to some of your early experiences and advice for students. You were mentioning your mentor from Wisconsin earlier, Tommy Thompson. Was there any key advice or anything he said that really stuck with you and influenced you to pursue the career you went on to have?
MG: Former Governor Tommy Thompson—who went on to be Secretary of Health and Human Services—was a really inspirational figure.
Tommy was the guy who launched the welfare reform movement and expanded school choice. Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was the first major school district to have school choice, and Wisconsin was once at the heart of the welfare state.
Tommy’s relentless reforms, and his belief in individuals, individual empowerment, and reforming government so it doesn’t hold people back but instead becomes a launching pad for individual growth and opportunity—that inspired me.
When I got to USAID and reformed our foreign assistance framework, I saw Tommy and I said, “You know, I’m trying to do at the federal, international level what you did at the state level.” That was very inspirational to me.
Another gentleman I got to know was the late Jack Kemp, former congressman, former Secretary of HUD, a Republican conservative leader in the empowerment space. He too was inspirational. The notion of breaking down bureaucracy and empowering individuals to give everyone a chance at what we call the American dream—but really is a universal dream—mattered a lot to me.
So it wasn’t much of a step to go from domestic to international work, because the same principles applied—just in a different arena.

What Stands Out in Young Applicants
BW: When you were leading USAID and later the Wilson Center, what qualities in young applicants or people who wanted to work in that sphere really stood out to you? Were there common mistakes that caused otherwise strong candidates to fall short?
MG: I was looking for two things.
Number one, intellectual curiosity. You don’t have to have all the answers—you just need to be looking for them. That mattered a lot to me, because it’s like when you go to law school: people misunderstand and think you’re taught the law to memorize it. In reality, you’re taught a framework for analyzing issues, because the law changes. So I was always looking for intellectual curiosity.
Secondly, communication skills—writing skills. That is probably the greatest weakness I see in most candidates: the inability to put together a concise presentation of ideas, of a message. So I always tell people: work on your writing skills.
We’re living in a time where we all spend time on social media—brevity, shortcuts, acronyms. There’s no replacement, though, for the ability to think clearly and to present clearly and concisely.

Advice to 20-Year-Old Self
BW: Last couple of questions here. If you could sit down with your 20-year-old self—before Washington, before Congress—and offer one warning and one encouragement about a career in public service, what would you say? Would you advise him to change anything about how you got started?
MG: No. It has been a heck of a ride. I’ve enjoyed every moment—every twist and turn.
I haven’t always won, on any issue or cause, but I’ve taken lessons from every activity.
I think the biggest bit of advice I’d offer people these days is: don’t get hung up on stuff that really doesn’t matter.
I just finished up a fellowship at Georgetown, working with lots of foreign service students, and they were always worried about picking the “right” major. “What should I major in? What minor should I choose?”
My answer is: whatever you choose, be really, really good at it. Our engagement with the world is going up, not down.
When I entered this space, there were relatively few career opportunities that took you into foreign policy. Now there are relatively few career opportunities that don’t touch foreign policy. America’s invested around the world; the private sector and business need to open markets and develop partnerships.
So there is almost no major that won’t prepare you for foreign policy—but just be really, really good at it.

BW: I think your absolutely right, thank you for that. Finally, as is customary with this blog, I’d like to close by asking if there are any pieces of literature—essays, books, even poems—that you would recommend to people interested in pursuing a career path similar to yours.
MG: Two books.
My favorite nonfiction book is The River of Doubt, which is the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s somewhat ill-fated trip after the presidency, when he ventured into the Amazonian jungle. National Geographic put together a team for him to explore the source of a river. It damn near killed him and probably shortened his life.
It was inspiring to me because it’s about one person’s personal reach—but also about folly. It didn’t go as smoothly as expected. I’ve always taken lessons from that.
Secondly, an obscure book called Revolution in Zanzibar. Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, where I served as ambassador. It’s the story of a young foreign service officer—true story—on his first overseas assignment in Zanzibar at the very beginning of the Cold War, during what became known as the Revolution in Zanzibar.
He was the one who bucked conventional wisdom. The New York Times ran a front-page story talking about a “domino falling in Africa,” thinking of it purely in Cold War terms. And he was the guy sending cables back saying, “That’s not it. It’s ethnic. It’s essentially Africans overthrowing Middle Eastern slaveholders.”
It taught me humility in foreign policy. There are things we think we know, and we have to be prepared to take a new, critical approach.
So either of those books—and both together—teach you humility. We think we know all the answers, and in fact we actually know relatively few.

BW: Ambassador Green, I can’t thank you enough for your time. I feel like I’ve really learned so much in just this short period of time we’ve been talking.
MG: Well, you’re very kind. Go for it, right? I’m excited for you. You’re in a great place, and this is a moment to chase your dreams.

​Formative Experiences and the Path to Public Service
Ben Wolf: Congressman Subramanyam, it’s great to speak with you. The Pathway Blog is a student-led platform that aims to give students like myself a better understanding into career paths in politics, foreign affairs, public policy, and other similar fields. Let’s get right into it.
My first question for you is: looking back on your personal journey and public-service trajectory, which experiences or formative moments do you consider most important—the ones that ultimately shaped your decision to seek elected office?
Suhas Subramanyam: I always look back to when I was at Tulane and Hurricane Katrina hit the city. I really felt like it was an opportunity to help rebuild and serve the community. I found immense purpose and joy in doing that, and it’s what launched my interest in getting involved in public service.
I don’t think my plan at the time was ever to run for office. It was mostly to try to make things better in the community. That was certainly a formative experience.
I also had the opportunity to work for a member of Congress and see firsthand the impact you can have on the country and the world. That was pretty formative for me as well. Working on Capitol Hill after college—even though it was for less than two years—gave me a really great perspective on how impactful public service can be. That stuck with me as a state legislator and now in Congress.

Policy Priorities Shaped by Early Experiences
BW: And how do some of those early experiences influence the kinds of policies and priorities that you bring to Congress today?
SS: Clearly one of the reasons I got more political was because I care deeply about the environment. I care a lot about making sure everyone can pursue and reach the American dream—having a strong education system, a strong support system, and giving people the tools to unlock their potential. Those priorities haven’t really changed over the years.
I’ve definitely picked up others based on my experiences. For instance, I’ve worked a lot in tech—especially in emerging tech and entrepreneurship. I’ve seen both the challenges and the potential of starting a business. Those experiences have guided my priorities.
I usually try to find things that aren’t really happening on Capitol Hill, or that are underserved there, and build on those. Right now, technology expertise is one of those areas. That’s helped guide what I’m prioritizing.

Law School, Wrongful Convictions, and Lessons on Justice
BW: Before entering elected office, you also pursued a law degree, including contributing to overturning Jacques Rivera’s wrongful conviction. What lessons from that period continue to influence how you think about justice, accountability, and your own role as a legislator?
SS: Wow, what a blast from the past. Back when I worked on that case, Jacques Rivera had been wrongfully accused of murder, and I had the opportunity to work with the legal team that helped get him out.
What I took away from that experience is that the justice system has a lot of problems in America. Pretending that it doesn’t is not just naïve—it’s dangerous, because you end up putting innocent people in jail. The system works best for people who have a lot of money, and beyond that, it isn’t always fair.
Getting a law degree helped shape my career and inform me as a state legislator, and now in Congress. When I run into questions about whether a statute is legal or constitutional, it’s nice to be able to do my own statutory interpretation and have my own informed perspective, instead of having to rely on others.

To Go or Not to Go: The Law School Question
BW: Staying on that note of law school: as someone considering a future in both law and politics, I often think about the trade-offs of attending law school—especially today, when it’s more competitive, more expensive, and less linear than it once was. What went into your decision to pursue a law degree? And do you feel it was essential for your development as a policymaker?
SS: I always tell people: go to law school if you want to be a lawyer—or if you happen to have three years and a lot of money to spend. Most people don’t have the latter, so I usually just ask people straight up whether they want to be a lawyer.
If they’re not sure, I tell them to hold off on law school until they are. Law school is a prerequisite for becoming a lawyer in almost every state, and it gives you the foundation to do that. But it’s not really required if you want to be in public policy, or if you want a degree in something other than law.
It doesn’t hurt to have that foundation—it’s just a very expensive and time-consuming way of learning a lot. A better way to learn a lot without becoming a lawyer is to read books on the area of law you’re interested in and some foundational texts. That can be done without a law degree.

Political Communication in a Hyper-Public Age
BW: We’ll circle back to the reading recommendations in a bit. But I first want to ask you, in an era where political interactions are highly public and the media ecosystem leaves little room for private dialogue, how does that affect the way you communicate with your colleagues in Congress? Do you feel pressured to filter yourself? And how frequent are candid, off-camera conversations among members?
SS: I try to be candid. I never thought I would be here [in Congress], but now that I am, I’ve always disliked politicians giving canned responses that don’t sound genuine.
Even if I make mistakes at times or change my mind, I’d rather be candid and make a mistake than be phony and perfectly curated. That’s just my personality and what I value.
That said, there are definitely times when you have to be careful. Words matter, and you don’t want people to take your words out of context—but that’s always been the case. I generally assume that someone is listening at all times anyway.
I also try not to be paranoid about it. I try to be authentic.

Bipartisanship, Coalitions, and Governing in a Divided Congress
BW: As a newly elected member entering a closely divided Congress, how do you approach building genuine working relationships across ideological lines? Are there particular committees, caucuses, or issue coalitions where you see the greatest potential for bipartisan progress?
SS: I think, like in all walks of life, building coalitions is about relationships and people. If there’s someone who genuinely wants to work with me—even if they’re a Republican—I’m never going to say no.
To me, this job isn’t about my ego or anything other than doing the best we can for our country. I always welcome collaboration. If the other side genuinely wants to collaborate, I’m happy to do so. I usually try to build coalitions by building relationships with people first, even on a personal level, and then trying to find common ground.
I also try not to take things personally, even when it’s very hard. If someone passes a policy that’s really bad for my community, it can be difficult to then turn around and work with them on another issue. But I think that’s part of the job—to not have permanent friends or permanent enemies, and to find your allies issue by issue.

State vs. Federal Government: What Changes?
BW: I really appreciate your time, Congressman. We’re getting to our last few questions here. Having served at both the state and federal levels, what do you see as the most meaningful differences between the two? What should aspiring public servants understand about how policymaking and constituent expectations change across those environments?
SS: The basic difference between the state and federal levels, from what I’ve seen so far, is the amount of public attention that’s on Congress compared to the state level.
At the state level, we didn’t deal with budgets this large or this level of scrutiny. One of the reasons I ran at the state level was because I felt it didn’t get enough attention and that I could really make an impact there—which I feel I did.
In Congress, every vote and everything you do is scrutinized—and it can also be twisted. On any given vote, you never know if someone is going to find one line in a bill, take it out of context, and use it. Sometimes the bills we work on have flaws, but they’re the best we can do or they represent a compromise.
For someone who aspires to do everything as well as possible, it can be frustrating to compromise. But it’s part of the job, as long as you’re not compromising your values. In Congress you’re dealing with people from all over the country, not just your state, and that requires more deliberation and more compromise at times. That’s different.

Facing the Big Tests Ahead
​BW: Looking ahead, what do you anticipate will be the biggest test for you in Congress? And how are you preparing, both politically and personally, to navigate it?
SS: I think I’ve already seen some of it, which is the attack on the federal workforce and the impact it would have on Virginia and our Commonwealth. I talked a lot about this during the campaign last year—that gutting the federal workforce would be a self-imposed recession. I said we’d see efforts to gut the federal workforce and potentially a shutdown.
Now we’ve seen both. That’s been helpful in showing people that federal workers are really essential to running this country. When you fire them en masse, it has real consequences for the country.
We’re already seeing a lot of federal workers and contractors having to be rehired after being let go, and I think we’re going to see more of that.
One thing I hope to do in the future is a full government modernization program. My experience in government has shown me that the problem isn’t the federal workers—it’s all of the regulatory hoops they have to jump through and all of the burdens on their shoulders. That makes their jobs much harder.
When Congress passes well-intended but not always effective laws, it can lead to delays in providing services to the American people. There have also been cuts at agencies that were more ideological than practical—cutting overhead in ways that actually hurt service delivery.
When you make cuts to places like Social Security offices, you end up with really long delays. To me, we’re cutting in the wrong places. We should be cutting unnecessary regulation rather than cutting the people who keep things running smoothly and actually prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Government Modernization: A Long-Overdue Project
BW: A government modernization project, could you tell me more about that? What do you see as the timetable for it?
SS: It should have started yesterday. It should have started many years ago.
But I’ve already pushed several bills forward—some of which have passed—on government modernization. I’ve got five I’m voting on today, and there will be more in the next couple of months that I’m introducing.
It’s bipartisan, and it’s the kind of work that will not only save us money as a country but save us a lot of time as far as providing services. And it doesn’t require firing people. I think we can do government modernization a lot better than we have—certainly much better than what’s been done so far.

Advice for Young People Entering Public Service
BW: That sounds really promising. We’re wishing you the best of luck in that passing.
Just the last two questions here, Congressman. First: for college students and young people interested in public service, advocacy, or politics, what guidance would you offer on navigating early-career decisions, developing expertise, and finding a sense of purpose in public-facing work?
SS: If you want to get involved in public policy or community engagement, just get involved! Find organizations or elected officials who are doing work that interests you and ask if they have internships or opportunities where you can help.
Sometimes it starts with things that are not glamorous—knocking doors, writing postcards—but even that work is valuable. It lets you see how people receive public policy.
I always tell people: find what’s interesting to you and engage in it right now. And be willing to work for free at first if that’s what it takes to get your foot in the door. That’s what I did.

Reading Recs
BW: And finally, you mentioned earlier that even if you don’t get a law degree, you can still learn a lot by reading law books. On that note of reading: for those who hope to follow a path similar to yours, what books, essays, or pieces of writing have most influenced you? What do you recommend to students preparing for work in public service?
SS: That’s a really good question. I really like this book called Getting to Maybe. I wish I’d read it before law school.
It gives you a great baseline foundation for what being a lawyer—and being good at law school—is all about. Essentially, it talks about how you should learn to use the facts from both sides in any argument. As a lawyer, you might sometimes represent a side that has a really tough case, and your gut might say they’re going to lose.
But then you dive into the facts from their perspective and realize the facts can actually be on your side if you dig deep enough and align them with the right precedent. I think a lot about Getting to Maybe when I think about my time as a lawyer and in law school.

BW: Congressman, this has been incredibly insightful. I can’t thank you enough for taking this time with me—I really appreciate it.
SS: Yeah, no problem at all—and Roll Wave! I hope they win on Friday.
BW: Yep, fingers crossed!

Early Career and Breaking In
BW: Mr. Greene, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me, I really appreciate it. For those who may not be familiar with your career path, how would you describe it to them?
LG: Happy to. I’m always glad to talk about this because I didn’t come from a world where anyone did journalism. My dad worked for GE, my mom worked for the Social Security Administration, and growing up in Atlanta meant I wasn't anywhere near a media hub. Some people come out of New York or Washington knowing dozens of people in journalism or politics or publishing. If you don’t come from that world, it can feel completely opaque.
At Tulane, a group of friends and I ended up creating a humor magazine called Brouhaha. We were refugees from the Hullabaloo and wanted something irreverent and satirical. The whole thing was basically made up—fake news, absurd sketches. We interviewed random New Orleanians and anyone interesting who came to campus. If a musician or actor came to speak, we’d request an interview, and more often than not they’d say yes. That magazine was where we learned how to write, edit, and make each other laugh—and funny enough, a remarkable number of us ended up in journalism.
After Tulane, I went to Oxford as a Marshall Scholar and did a master’s in European politics. My undergraduate work had been history and international relations, and at Oxford I focused on comparative political systems and the EU. The best advice I received—and now give—is: know what you know. Ask yourself: What do I genuinely know more about than the people around me? What interests me deeply enough that I could talk about it comfortably for thirty minutes? Develop that. When you're right out of school, your résumé is basically blank. Having a subject you’re known for helps people remember you.
For me, that was Europe. It wasn’t a common American focus at the time, so it gave me something to offer.
Still, even with languages, degrees, and a Marshall, it wasn’t easy. I spent nearly a year in New York sending cold CVs into the void. I came very close to taking a marketing internship. Then, through a chain of friends-of-friends—literally: me, friend, her friend, her boss, his colleague—I found someone at the Economist Intelligence Unit who happened to need help for a project.
He needed someone to write research pieces on the emerging e-commerce regulations in places like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Brazil. I knew nothing about that, but I knew how to learn. That one opportunity turned into two days a week, then into being in the room in 2000 when Economist.com built its first proper website team. Because it was the dot-com boom, there were resources, enthusiasm, and—crucially—more willingness to take chances on people with less experience.
That’s how I got in—and from there I just never left.​


From Dot-Com Editor to “the Language Guy”
LG: After a few years on the website, I became our breaking-news writer on American politics online. I covered the 2004 and 2008 elections. Then I moved onto the magazine proper on the business side. After that, I was sent to Berlin as our business and finance correspondent. Eventually, I ended up at our London headquarters for six years in editing roles, and now I’m in Spain as a senior digital editor.
Along the way, I developed a second identity—unexpectedly—as “the language guy.” That wasn’t planned. I had always loved languages, and I seemed to have a knack for learning them. Over time I started pitching pieces on linguistics to our Science section. Then I started reading linguistics books and realizing there was an entire field about how language actually works in the mind. I fell in love with it.
Eventually I became one of the few journalists writing regularly about language in a way linguists respected. There’s a lot of bad language journalism out there. Earning trust by writing non-stupid things—over many years—is what allowed me to build that niche. Today, if you asked linguists which journalist knows their field best, I think many of them would say me. That reputation wasn’t part of the original plan. It just accumulated.


What Makes a Pitch Work
BW: That was a terrific intro Mr. Greene, thank you. And it leads me right into my next question: many of our readers likely want to dive into journalism themselves—we’ve hosted many journalists on the blog. So, from your side of the desk, what turns a pitch from “maybe” to “yes”? And what’s a red flag that says “maybe this isn’t ready yet”?
LG: That’s a good question. So a lot of students think journalism is like writing a good college paper: do the homework, master the background, and the professor gives you a good grade. That’s actually the minimum requirement for journalism—understanding the background.
But journalism is fundamentally different from academia. What makes journalism journalism is that you’re trying to find a story that hasn’t been told yet. You’re trying to uncover something people don’t already know. And also, AI cannot do this—it can only remix what's already been written.
At The Economist, we say: you’re pitching a rubric, not a topic
​The standfirst is the bold sentence under the headline that captures the story’s argument.
If someone pitches a topic the editor will ask, “Okay, but what are you saying? What’s your argument? What’s going to happen?” That’s the red flag: pitching a topic instead of a story.
If you can write one sentence that clearly states your argument, you probably have a story. If you can’t, you don’t yet know what you’re saying.


On Learning Abroad
BW: On that note of studying at Oxford, I’m curious—what did that time studying abroad teach you about writing that your time in undergrad in the United States didn’t? Terms to avoid, context to add, assumptions that don’t travel, etc.?
LG: That’s a good question. I’m not sure I ever consciously thought about “assumptions that don’t travel,” but living abroad absolutely forces you to confront what a close friend of mine calls “the dark matter of culture.” When we think about culture, we tend to picture the obvious things—flags, food, clothes. But the “dark matter” is the tiny, unspoken assumptions you don’t realize you’re carrying around until you’re somewhere else and they suddenly don’t apply.
Some of that is fascinating, but you have to pay attention to it, because people often aren’t even aware of those assumptions themselves.
In Britain, for instance, I had to learn very quickly that being entertaining—both in conversation and in writing—is paramount. American journalism, as the British like to say, can be a bit “po-faced.” It’s not a compliment. It means earnest, slightly self-satisfied about its own seriousness and professionalism. British journalists love a good yarn. They’re allergic to taking yourself too seriously—or being seen to take yourself too seriously, to imagine you’re more ethical or hardworking or important than anyone else.
You still need to work hard, of course. But British culture values pretending you’re not working hard.
Even after twenty-five years at The Economist, I’m still sometimes tripped up by being an American in a British institution. Maybe an editor gave me criticism very directly and I misread the tone, or they offered feedback in such a subtle way that my American brain didn’t register it. That sort of thing still happens. It’s like learning a language as an adult—you’ll get good, but you’ll always have an accent.
That’s the analogy that fits culture, too. I have a pretty good handle on British culture now, but I’ll never be mistaken for a native. I’m inescapably American.


Developing a Beat without Becoming a Caricature
BW: You talked earlier about building a brand or niche. For students, that can feel daunting—like you’re locking yourself into one identity forever. Bret Stephens once told me in an interview that instead of majoring in journalism, students should study a substantive field, like Middle Eastern studies, and build expertise there. How do you recommend developing a beat without turning into a caricature of yourself?
LG: Bret’s completely right. I say the same thing. But fundamentally journalism is a trade—you learn it by doing it. You’re not going to be great at the beginning. You need a few years just to get to “competent,” a few more to get to “journeyman.”
It’s not something you learn by studying journalism. You learn law in a classroom, or chemistry. Journalism relies on those people—the subject-matter experts. A good newsroom should have people who studied all sorts of things, not just political science or history like I did.
And the good news is you don’t get stuck in whatever you start with. Tom Friedman began as a Middle East specialist—he studied it, went to Beirut, covered it. But now he writes these big, sweeping essays on geopolitics and economics. He didn’t get trapped as “the Middle East guy.”
Same goes for science reporters, legal reporters—people start with a specialty, but it doesn’t confine you. It helps you get the first job, and then you keep learning.
Over my career I’ve covered culture, business, politics, finance, language—all over the map. Every new beat is like giving yourself a miniature master’s degree. I feel like I’ve earned six of them by now.
So my advice is: have a strength, but cultivate a portfolio. Build depth in one area, but stay curious about many others. No one will pay you to cover one thing for forty years—and you wouldn’t want to anyway.


Three Reads to Make Young Writers Clearer and Braver
BW: I know our time is running out here so I want to ask you if you had to choose three regular reads—books, essays, newsletters—to help young writers become clearer and braver, what would you assign?
LG: I should mention that I wrote the book Writing with Style: The Economist Guide—which is all about stripping clutter from your prose, ditching highfalutin vocabulary, simplifying tortured syntax, and returning to plain, everyday English. There’s even a bit of linguistic history in there—Anglo-Saxon vs. French or Latin roots. So I’ll plug that since I literally wrote the book.
But let me give you three others.
First, George Orwell’s 1947 essay “Politics and the English Language.” It’s foundational. Those six rules of his formed the basis of our style guide. I read it in the middle of my master’s thesis at Oxford—my writing was stiff, academic, self-consciously impressive—and Orwell embarrassed me out of that. Afterward, all I wanted to do was write clear, vivid, active prose. His nonfiction—like “Shooting an Elephant”—is beautiful.
Second, Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style. Pinker is a linguist, a cognitive scientist, a psychologist—and a wonderfully clear writer. He explains why some sentences are easier to read than others, how language works in the mind. It’s full of linguistics and cognitive science, but it’s fun. I fell in love with language partly through his Language Instinct, but The Sense of Style is a phenomenal guide.
Third—and this is out of left field—Martin Amis. He’s not a journalist at all. But every sentence he writes feels fresh. He refuses clichés, refuses autopilot prose. He once wrote a book called The War Against Cliché, which I haven’t read because he lives it on every page. His sentences are surprising, sharp, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. No GPT, frankly, could ever be Martin Amis. When I finish reading him, I want to write more energetically and individually.


Audience Engagement, Reddit, and the AMA
BW: Last question—while preparing for this interview, I found an old Reddit AMA you did. You invited anyone to ask you anything. What motivated you to do that, and did it change how you think about audience engagement? Would you do it again?
LG: I’d love to claim it was my idea, but it came from our social team. They’d been putting us out there in different formats—Facebook Live Q&As, Twitter engagement, things like that. They asked if I’d do an AMA, and I said sure.
I wasn’t expecting the hurly-burly of the questions, but honestly, a lot of them were excellent. Reddit had a reputation—at least in my mind—of being slightly disreputable, but many of the questions were thoughtful. I get asked a lot of the same things over the years, but in every Q&A, someone asks something I’ve never been asked before. I love that. It forces me to think fresh rather than repeat myself.
One person even asked whether I’d ever “done the kush,” which was certainly a first—but I answered him!
I’m glad I did it, and yes, I’d do it again. Journalists can easily end up speaking only to the same comfortable audience. But if I’m doing my job right, I want to reach people who haven’t encountered our work before. The Economist looks serious—and it is—but once you pick it up, it’s surprisingly lively. The captions and headlines often have humor in them. We work hard to make it entertaining.
Reaching new audiences is part of the mission. And it’s fun.


BW: Mr. Greene, this was really terrific. Thank you again for speaking with the Blog, I know our readers will really take a lot from this interview.
LG: Thanks, Ben. Best of luck—and I look forward to seeing it. 

Introduction
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you for speaking with me.
The last time we spoke, we discussed the moral dimensions of U.S. foreign policy and the balance between realism and democratic ideals. Since then, the world has continued to change, especially with respect to great-power competition and democratic backsliding. I’d love to revisit some of those themes in light of current challenges.
Thank you again for joining me on The Pathway Blog.
EA: Happy to do it.

On the Two-State Solution
BW: Over the past few years—and even before that—you’ve emphasized your belief in the improbability of a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, from your writings at the Council on Foreign Relations to various podcasts and interviews.
For readers who may not be familiar with your position, why do you believe a two-state solution is unlikely, and what alternative do you propose?
EA: I believe the nature of Palestinian nationalism is the fundamental problem. It has never fundamentally been about creating a Palestinian state; it has been about destroying the Jewish state.
We can go back a hundred years. Take the Peel Commission report in London in 1937. That inquiry grew out of controversy over what should happen to the Palestine Mandate, which had been given to the British after the First World War. The Peel Commission recommended partition into two states—one Arab, one Jewish. The Jews said yes, and the Arabs said no.
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which again proposed partition: a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish state, by the way, was quite small. Again, the Jews said yes, the Arabs said no, and immediately declared war and invaded.
You can trace this through Camp David, where President Bill Clinton tried to get Yasser Arafat to accept an offer from Ehud Barak. Later, Ehud Olmert tried to get Mahmoud Abbas to agree to an incredibly generous offer. The Palestinians did not accept these proposals.
And I think the reason is that the kind of Palestinian state that would result from such negotiations would not satisfy Palestinian nationalism. The only thing that seems likely to do so is the destruction of the state of Israel and a Palestine that encompasses all of what used to be the Palestine Mandate. That is not going to happen.
There is still no real evidence of majority support among Palestinians for a two-state solution that accepts a permanent Jewish state. You can look at public-opinion polls over the decades, including today; majorities consistently reject it. That’s the first fundamental reason I don’t think a two-state solution has happened or will happen.
Second, Israelis have just been through a terrible crisis after October 7, 2023. We see them now working to create buffer zones around Gaza and in the north, near Lebanon, to prevent Hezbollah and forces in Syria from threatening Israeli civilians.
How likely is it that Israelis—including Israelis on the left—are going to accept a Palestinian state that, for geographical reasons, could be an even more dangerous threat? A Palestinian state in the West Bank would be in the hills overlooking Ben-Gurion Airport and the entire coastal plain, where Israel’s major cities are, as well as Jerusalem.
So I think such a state would be too dangerous, and there’s no reason to believe that a new, weak, independent Palestinian state could prevent a Hamas takeover. That would not only threaten Israel; it would threaten Jordan as well.
So what are the alternatives? For the moment, I don’t think there is an alternative to the current situation—and by “for the moment,” I don’t mean just this month. I mean for years: five, ten, even twenty-five years.
In the end, I do think partition is the right idea: a Jewish entity and a Muslim Arab entity. The question is, what is the nature of that Arab, Palestinian entity? Is it a full sovereign state?
If you look at it realistically, it would be a state without a real economy—no serious exports, no port, no airport, and no security force capable of preventing terrorists from taking over. It seems logical to me that even when that entity is created, it would have to be in a federation or confederation with one of two countries: Israel or Jordan.
To me, the logic suggests a confederation with a Muslim Arab, largely Palestinian state—Jordan—rather than with the Jewish state. That’s my long-run vision: perhaps ten or twenty years from now. We don’t know how the world will change, but I think that’s the logical progression.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism
BW: I was revisiting your 2016 op-ed titled “Anti-Zionism Is the Anti-Semitism of Our Time.” Today, it has become increasingly common among pro-Palestinian advocates to argue that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are distinct—that opposing Zionism doesn’t equate to prejudice against Jews, and that claims to the contrary distract from Israel’s alleged wrongdoing.
What would you say to those who make that argument?
EA: I’d say they should open their eyes, because what we’re seeing today really refutes that argument. What we’re seeing is a mixture of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
We are not seeing people simply criticize this or that Israeli tactic or policy. We’re seeing, in various places, Jews attacked in the streets—whether in Brooklyn, or London, or Sydney, Australia. When people attack a synagogue, or an individual who appears to be an Orthodox Jew walking down the street, that’s not anti-Zionism. That’s pure anti-Semitism.
I’d also go back to a standard that Natan Sharansky proposed: if the standards you use to judge Israel are imposed on no other country in the world, that’s a sign of anti-Semitism.
If you march in the street because there are deaths in Gaza, okay. Have you ever marched because China is murdering Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang? Have you ever marched about genocide in Sudan? If you’ve never applied the same standards elsewhere—if you don’t care about any of that, but you want to accuse one country and only one country in the world, Israel, of “genocide”—then you’re an anti-Semite.
You don’t need a complicated philosophical argument. We can see it with our own eyes.

The Right, Israel, and Tucker Carlson
BW: Mr. Abrams, as you well know, the political right has become increasingly divided over Israel. We have figures like Ben Shapiro and other neoconservatives who are staunchly supportive of Israel, while others—such as Tucker Carlson and the so-called “Groypers”—are firmly opposed to U.S. support for Israel, with some even suggesting that Israel controls Donald Trump and America.
How do you interpret this divide, and where do you see the future of the Republican Party on this issue?
EA: That’s a big and important question.
First, we should say that criticizing Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitism. Many Israelis criticize their own government at any given time, and many American Jews do as well. So criticism of Israel is not automatically anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism.
However, if you look at someone like Tucker Carlson, what he’s doing is not just anti-Zionism; it’s anti-Semitism.
I say that because of the pattern we see. One week he attacks Israel, and the week before or after he brings on a "phony" historian who claims Hitler was not responsible for the Second World War and never meant to kill Jews—that Churchill is the real villain. Now we’re seeing a pattern, and it’s really not fundamentally about Israel; it’s about Jews.
That was months ago. More recently, he had on an avowed anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes. Again, that’s a pattern.
Anti-Semitism existed long before there was a state of Israel, obviously, and it exists today both on the far left and the far right.
One key question is this: when we see a diminution of support for Israel in the United States—among Christians, among Jews, among Republicans and Democrats—is that all anti-Semitism? My answer is no. A lot of it is a reaction to war in general and a misunderstanding of the nature of this particular war. That’s not necessarily anti-Semitism.
But there is real anti-Semitism, on both extremes. And you and I are speaking in mid-November, at a moment when there’s been a very visible debate about this on the Republican side. I think that debate is a good thing, because we’ve seen people indicate what they think and which side they’re on.
We’ve seen people like Senator Ted Cruz issue strong denunciations of anti-Semitism on the right, and others have done the same. I think this battle will be lost by the anti-Semites.
I asked one senator—I won’t name him—who comes from a border state: when you’re denounced by Tucker Carlson, do you get phone calls and mail from home, from your state, from people who’ve been persuaded by him and are denouncing you on those grounds? The answer was no.
So I don’t think this kind of vicious anti-Semitism that Carlson is now purveying on his show is selling very well.
I do worry about the declining levels of support for Israel we’ve seen over the last few years, especially among people under about 30 or 35. But that’s a different problem from classic anti-Semitism. I worry about the anti-Semitism we are seeing, but I believe it will ultimately be defeated in both parties.

Balancing Competition and Coexistence with China
BW: Last time, you said that the defining challenge for my generation would be confronting a militarily powerful but economically interdependent China.
How should the United States balance competition and coexistence with China without repeating Cold War mistakes or abandoning democratic allies in the process?
EA: There’s no magic formula.
In the Cold War, the formula was “containment”: we would try to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its influence and alliances around the world, in the belief that its internal contradictions would eventually cause it to collapse. It took a long time—from 1917 to 1991—but that’s what happened.
President Reagan was absolutely persuaded this would happen. He probably thought it would take much longer than it did. He left office in January 1989; the Soviet Union collapsed less than three years later. If you’d asked him, “Will this happen in two years?” he would have said no—maybe twenty years. But he believed it was coming.
In the case of China, many fundamentals are the same: maintaining American military strength; maintaining American alliances in Europe, in the Middle East, and particularly in Asia; and maintaining our support for liberty and human rights.
We did support human rights during the Cold War, but there were many occasions when we didn’t. There’s a famous line attributed to Franklin Roosevelt about Anastasio Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua: “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” We did too much of that—too much turning a blind eye to repression.
A good example is Iran. I think the people of Iran are very much on our side against the ayatollahs, and we should be saying far more about freedom for the Iranian people.
So with China, I’d say fundamentally the same: not every country that’s worried about China and wants to be friendly with us is a democracy—Vietnam is a good example—but most are: Taiwan, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and others.
In the long run, I think we will have the Chinese people on our side too. Since roughly 1850, Chinese thinkers have been trying to figure out how to modernize. They got rid of the colonial powers. They have obviously figured out the economic part to a significant extent, but they have not figured out the political part. China today remains a vicious dictatorship of the Communist Party, and the contradictions are starting to show.
The population has begun to decline, partly because of the one-child policy they had for decades. They can’t get people to have enough children to reach the replacement rate of 2.1, and they don’t take immigrants. India has already surpassed China in population, and the gap will grow.
We see other strains in their economy. Their model was essentially to produce much, much more than they could consume—keep the Chinese people essentially poor—and let foreigners consume and pay. That model is starting to break down. You can attribute part of that to President Trump, but you see it in Europe as well. The idea that China would be the workshop of the world and nobody else would produce anything—that’s not acceptable to Europeans either, who don’t want their own manufacturing hollowed out.
So I think we’ve seen “peak China” economically. I don’t think we’ve seen “peak China” militarily, because they keep building.
Our job is to maintain our principles—our support for freedom—maintain our military strength, and maintain our alliances.

AI as a “New Cold War”
BW: On this note of Cold War strategy: The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday describing the AI rivalry between the U.S. and China as a new Cold War for technological supremacy.
You’ve spent your career navigating contests defined by power, belief, and legitimacy. Do you think this AI rivalry will transform how nations exercise power—not just how they compete for it? And if so, are our existing institutions of diplomacy and deterrence equipped for that kind of conflict?
EA: I may be old-fashioned here, but I don’t think AI changes the fundamentals.
Once upon a time, nations competed with armies and navies—that was true for thousands of years. Then air power came along, but it didn’t change the basic nature of war. Then came nuclear weapons. You could argue they’ve prevented a great Third World War, but they certainly have not prevented massive conflicts. We lost roughly 50,000 men in Korea and another 50,000 in Vietnam, and we’ve been involved in a number of other wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. The Russians, who have nuclear weapons, are currently fighting a ground war in Ukraine.
The weaponry changes. Once it was air power; now it’s drones. AI will change the way wars are fought—for example, by permitting much better targeting—but I don’t think it changes the fundamentals.
In this century, in the great strategic struggle between the U.S. and China, AI is critical as an economic factor, and it will probably be critical on the military side as well. But that doesn’t mean the basic nature of interstate conflict has changed.
Weapons always change. We won World War II largely because of the American industrial base that had been developed in the century leading up to it. Later, when nuclear weapons came along, the industrial base became somewhat less central, because countries with little industrial capacity could still acquire nuclear weapons.
To me, AI is the most recent—and in some ways perhaps the most powerful—new tool. But it’s not a weapon in itself; it changes the effectiveness of weapons that already exist. It will certainly affect how we acquire and use intelligence about our adversaries. But at the most fundamental level, it doesn’t change the underlying dynamics of interstate relations, especially hostile ones.

Skills for Public Service in an Age of Cynicism
BW: I want to turn to advice for students. You closed our last interview by encouraging young people to “get involved.”
What specific skills or habits distinguish those who rise to positions of real influence in government today—especially in an era dominated by social media and growing public cynicism?
EA: Let me mention something at the beginning that people sometimes overlook: luck. It’s a factor in everyone’s life.
You may be ready for a senior government position at precisely the time when the party you’re affiliated with is out of power for four, eight, twelve, even sixteen years. Then you won’t get the position you otherwise might have, and there’s no way to control that—elections determine it.
That said, there are things you can control. One is energy. Some people simply have more energy and are more hardworking. That’s true for students, and it’s true for government employees and officials.
Some people get up earlier and go to sleep later. Some spend more time studying, reading, working, writing. Government jobs are demanding in that sense. When I worked in the White House—eight years under George W. Bush—I got up at 4:30 each day, was in the office by 6:00, and stayed about twelve hours, Monday through Friday. If you can’t or don’t want to do that, many positions just aren’t going to be open to you.
Second, the ability to write and speak clearly and concisely. I have the impression that a smaller percentage of college students today meet that standard than fifty or a hundred years ago.
What do I mean? If you cannot speak for a paragraph—about the war in Gaza, about China, or even about the baseball World Series—without using the word “like” in every sentence, you’re not speaking clearly. And people listening will think: if you can’t speak logically, cogently, effectively, carefully, maybe you don’t think that way either.
I meet lots of people who seem quite smart, in their mid-twenties, who can’t do this. Their sentences are filled with “so I’m like” and “then she’s like” and “I wasn’t really so interested, like, in…” I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get ahead if you can’t stop doing that.
There’s a parallel in reading and writing. People who teach at universities tell me there’s much less reading, and that students react negatively when they’re assigned a lot of it. If you don’t read a lot, it’s unlikely you’ll write well. And writing well is critical in most important government jobs.
Take someone working on the National Security Council staff. The president is going to speak with the president of Egypt in ninety minutes. You have thirty minutes to write a memo that says: here are the major issues, here’s what he might raise, and here’s what you might want to raise. That assumes you have the knowledge, but you also need to do something with it.
You have to be able to put that knowledge into a clear, concise memo—on a screen and then on paper—for the president. You must be able to write it quickly and coherently.
There’s a related concept called the “elevator briefing.” If you work for a senator or a cabinet member, they may say, “Come with me. I’ve got a CNN interview in five minutes. Brief me in the elevator.” You have to be able to do that—think clearly and speak clearly, on the spot.
So I’d say: energy; and then reading, writing, and speaking.
One of the best ways to learn those skills is to write. When students at places like Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service or Harvard’s Kennedy School ask me how to start a career, one of the things I tell them is: start writing.
We live in an environment where it’s relatively easy to get published. There are so many Substacks and websites—some run by students—that if you write something good, it can find an audience. It’s an excellent way to train yourself to think clearly and write clearly.
And later, when you want a job, the person hiring you is likely to ask, “Who is she? Who is he? What have they done?” If the answer is, “Here are a bunch of articles and analyses this person has written,” you have a much better chance of getting that job.

Careers, Parties, and the Role of Luck
BW: That’s all incredible advice. I was especially struck by what you said about luck, because it’s something people don't emphasize enough when talking about careers in politics.
For those who spend years investing in a particular party or policy world and then find that their party simply isn’t the one in power, what do they do? What paths do you see people in that position pursue?
EA: You have to make a decision at a reasonably young age—during or just after college—about whether you want foreign affairs to be your full-time career.
When I taught at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the advice I gave was this: if you want to do foreign affairs full-time and don’t want your career to depend on luck and party control, then join the civil service in some part of the government—be a civilian at the Defense Department, join the CIA, join the Foreign Service, something like that. Then you know you’ll be working on foreign policy your whole career.
The downside is that you’re joining a big bureaucracy, and you may not like that.
If you don’t want to do that, then you need to figure out how you’re going to make a living between political appointments. If you’re aligned with one party, you go in when they go in—but they’ll be out about half the time. What do you do then?
I often urge people coming out of college: if you can get a job as an intern or research assistant in Congress, especially on foreign-policy issues, do that for a couple of years. But then get a career going in something like law or finance—traditionally those have been the main routes.
Today, that might mean going to business school or law school, and then working at a place like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or at a law firm. That way, you can serve in government when your party is in power, and when you come out, you have a profession to return to.

Working at the State Department vs. the NSC
BW: As we wrap up, I’d like to ask more about your time at the State Department, since that’s where I'm hoping to start my own career at the moment.
What were your biggest takeaways from your time there, and how did that experience compare to other positions you’ve held in government?
EA: I loved working at the State Department. I was there for about ten years.
The downside is that it’s a big bureaucracy. You have lots of meetings that take up too much time, and you have to clear things with what can seem like an endless number of offices. There are real frustrations that come from working in a building with several thousand people.
But I found many talented and dedicated people there—in the Foreign Service, in the civil service, and among political appointees. Over time, as people rotate through different posts, you see them overseas, you see them in Washington; it’s a rich professional community.
I also worked on Capitol Hill, which is very different, and at the National Security Council. The key difference between State and the NSC is that in most administrations—perhaps less so in the Trump years—you’re simply much closer to the president at the NSC.
You’re not just writing memos or making points at meetings. You’re right there where the decisions are made. You’re one or two steps away from the president. When I was doing this, between me and the president was the national security adviser. If the president was talking about the Middle East, if he had a guest from the Middle East, if he was traveling to the Middle East, I was there.
That’s immensely exciting, and you have a real chance to influence the president and the policies he carries out in a very direct way. At the State Department, your influence is more indirect, though still important. And the pace at the White House is simply tougher: the hours are longer, and the strain is greater.
When there’s a national or foreign-policy crisis, the shock is felt immediately in the White House. It’s felt at the State Department too, but often in a less immediate way.

Recommended Reading
BW: Finally, when we last spoke, you recommended Peter Rodman’s Presidential Command. As is customary with this blog, I’d like to end by asking if there are any new books, essays, or thinkers you’d suggest to young readers who want to understand the moral and strategic dimensions of American leadership.
EA: It’s always worth reading Present at the Creation, Dean Acheson’s memoir of his time as Secretary of State in the Truman administration. It’s beautifully written, and it’s a fascinating account of the diplomacy at the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War—the creation of the world order we’ve essentially lived in since then.
Why don’t I stick with that one for the moment.
BW: Wonderful. Mr. Abrams, thank you again for taking the time to speak with me. Your advice is truly invaluable, especially for someone like me who’s hoping to work at the State Department—hopefully even as soon as this coming summer, when I’m applying for State Department internships. I look forward to reaching back out and letting you know how it goes.
EA: Good. It was very good to speak with you again.
BW: Great to speak with you as well. Have a great day.
EA: You too.

Writing for a General Audience
BW: You do such a great job making complicated topics—like interest rates or balance sheets—feel approachable. When you're writing, who are you imagining as your reader? And how do you keep the coverage grounded without oversimplifying?
JS: I typically imagine my sisters, who are both nurses in Pittsburgh, as my readers. I think it’s useful to picture someone who’s curious and basically well informed, but not necessarily familiar with the specific topic you’re writing about.
I actually don’t love the advice to “write at a middle school level” or for a 12-year-old—I don’t think that’s helpful for complicated subjects. What is useful is keeping yourself honest: ditch jargon, avoid gratuitously fancy words, and don’t signal that you’re writing only for insiders. That’s pretty much how I approach it.
BW: Since you're dealing with such complex topics—ones that can also be incredibly powerful in their implications—how do you keep that in mind as you’re writing?
JS: I think it’s really important to be careful and make sure you’re not misleading anyone. You want to portray your subject as accurately and fairly as possible.
But it’s also important not to become too enamored with the topic or too awed by what’s happening. At the end of the day, what we’re covering is a group of people making decisions. Important decisions, yes—but they’re still just people, not wizards or gods. Keeping that in mind helps keep the work grounded.

Covering the Fed
BW: When you were covering the Fed, how did you decide who you were going to reach out to and what you were going to ask?
JS: When I was on the Fed beat, I was in regular contact with almost every member of the Federal Open Market Committee—the twelve regional bank presidents and the seven governors in Washington. I went to a lot of conferences. I was always around Fed meetings and international economic gatherings.
The more complicated decision was how much time to invest in the broader Fed ecosystem—how often to visit regional banks, how deeply to engage with the people working inside them. Those are really valuable sources, but it’s a lot of work to keep in touch with that many institutions, and it’s a constant balancing act. That part came down mostly to trial and error.

Europe, Regulation, and Spillover Effects
BW: As you’ve spent more time in Europe, have you noticed any major differences in how policymakers talk about things like fiscal restraint, industrial policy, or the green transition—especially compared to Washington? And do those differences matter in a globally connected economy?
JS: Yes, the differences absolutely matter in an interconnected world.
One of the clearest areas is the green transition. Europe has generally been more proactive in trying to push companies along—passing regulations and policies meant to really accelerate the shift. But now they’re starting to walk some of that back and are under a lot of scrutiny and pressure, because in a globalized market those regulations trigger backlash from other economies, including the U.S.
The same is true for digital regulation. Europe has been much more forthright in trying to ensure platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok police content that’s potentially harmful. The U.S. is more cautious about that approach, especially when it comes to regulating speech on the internet. But because the market for digital platforms is global, Europe’s rules end up having broader effects, and that turns into a geopolitical conversation.
BW: So Europe’s push for stricter content moderation spills over into U.S. tech policy?
JS: Absolutely. Take the Digital Services Act. It requires companies like Meta to make sure their content-moderation rules comply with local laws—so if they’re operating in Germany, they have to enforce German law. That’s much stricter than what we see in the U.S.
Because Meta and others have to build the infrastructure to comply in Europe, they end up developing the capability to enforce those rules more generally. That’s led to pushback not only from companies like Meta but also from the U.S. government. The Trump administration has been especially vocal in opposing the DSA and the broader Digital Markets Act. We’ve even seen people like J.D. Vance talk about these issues directly at the Munich Security Conference. So this has clearly spilled over into geopolitics in a way that feels new.
BW: And that sort of direct criticism—especially at events like the Munich Security Conference—is that new? Or is it just more visible now because of social media?
JS: We’ve always seen differences between the U.S. and Europe on free speech, the green transition, and regulation more broadly. That part isn’t new.
What is new is how forthright the Trump administration has been in criticizing Europe—and how it has folded those disagreements into the broader trade disputes with many countries. So the “volume level” is new. It’s louder, more public, more performative. And that’s made it a really interesting time to report on U.S.–EU relations.

Learning Brussels
BW: Shifting gears—when you first got to Brussels, was it a pretty unsettling environment, especially after covering the Fed for so long?
JS: Oh, totally. I was a complete newbie. I got here at the end of February and I’ve been on a steep learning curve ever since.
I’m covering the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European Council—and I’m also pitching in on national-security coverage. NATO is right down the street, so we’ve got a constant stream of people coming through to talk defense, trade, and security.
It’s been an exciting time to arrive in Brussels. With the new Trump administration coming in, the story has been very active. In a way, it’s been a good time to learn the beat because there’s so much going on.

Hard Stories and Proud Moments
BW: What’s been one of the most challenging stories you’ve written—either because of the complexity or the politics? And is there one you’re especially proud of?
JS: The hardest stories were probably about the repo market. There were a few episodes of turmoil while I was covering the Fed. The repo market sounds simple, but it’s not, and breaking it down in a way readers could understand without oversimplifying was tough.
Another very challenging story was a piece I did on BlackRock’s conversations with the Fed during the 2020 crisis response. That was hard both because the information wasn’t public and because I wanted to be careful not to get spun. I had to decide how much to give the Fed and BlackRock the benefit of the doubt versus how much to frame it as something people should be concerned about. I’m happy with where I landed, but it was difficult.
As for stories I’m proud of: we did one on a young man named Monroe Campbell, who was the first Black research assistant at the San Francisco Fed. He pushed for a more diverse cohort of hires, and the story looked at how economics as a field can lock out people without a certain pedigree—which often correlates with privilege. It was about Monroe, but more broadly about access to opportunity in the field. I heard from a lot of people that it sparked meaningful conversations, and I was really proud of that.
BW: Going back to that BlackRock article—was that a particularly long piece to write?
JS: That one probably took about two months from start to finish. It wasn’t the only thing I was working on—this was 2020, when we were all writing daily—but it required FOIA requests, follow-ups, and a lot of reporting. It wasn’t a quick turnaround, but it was really interesting.

Perfectionism and Process
BW: Is there a standard amount of time you aim to spend on an article? And if so, how do you stay on track?
JS: It depends.
For breaking news, you know you need to get it done as quickly as possible. I actually find that easier. I started at Bloomberg, so I’m what the industry calls a wire reporter—I’m very used to writing fast and on deadline.
The harder stories are the longer-term ones, the ones that might take weeks or a month. There’s no hard deadline, so deciding when they’re “done” becomes more of an artistic judgment. I’m a perfectionist—I either want to tinker forever or finish right away. That’s why everyone needs an editor. They’re the ones who say, “Okay, you need to file this now.”
BW: I don’t write nearly as often as you do, but I definitely relate to the perfectionism. Do you have any advice on how to manage that?
JS: I’ve been doing this for thirteen years and I haven’t totally figured it out. But I do think it helps to recognize early when something is going to be a big project.
If it’s going to take two months, then commit to that: file the records requests, go after the hard-to-get interviews, really report the heck out of it. Sometimes I set artificial deadlines and then forget to step back and ask whether I should make the piece more ambitious.
With time, you learn that sometimes it’s better to decide up front that a story is going to be a bigger undertaking, and then fully embrace that.

Getting into Journalism
BW: How did you first get involved in journalism? Was there a defining moment, or did it evolve over time?
JS: Honestly, I decided I wanted to be a journalist when I was eight years old. My second-grade class made a newspaper, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I said I wanted to be a journalist and I stuck with it.
I went to UNC, then straight to journalism school. From there, I went to Bloomberg, and I’ve basically been a journalist ever since.

Advice for Aspiring Journalists and Policy People
BW: A lot of our readers are students thinking about how they want to engage with public policy or journalism. Are there any skills or traits you think are especially important for people going into these fields?
JS: I think the most important trait in journalism is curiosity. If you’re not genuinely interested in the thing you’re covering—or in the world in general—it’s probably not the right field for you.
Good gossips often make good journalists, honestly. That instinct of “I have to know what’s going on” makes for a strong reporter.
The other key trait is resilience. Journalism is not always a pretty field. There’s constant upheaval. Your career will go through phases. You won’t always do the kind of journalism you want to do—you might end up writing deadline headlines, or doing TikTok videos, or podcasting. So flexibility matters.
If you stay focused on getting good information to readers, rather than locking yourself into a specific format, you’ll usually end up both happier and more successful.

Recommended Reading
BW: Last question. If you could recommend one piece of literature—a book, essay, article—to someone who wants to better understand either how the economy works or what’s going on in the EU beyond the headlines, what would it be?
JS: This probably won’t be the world’s most popular recommendation, but if you’re really into macroeconomics, Alan Blinder—who was vice chair of the Fed—wrote a book called A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961–2021. It’s incredibly useful as an overview.
You have to approach it as what it is—an insider’s account—but I found it really valuable. He’s also relatively funny and takes a critical eye to his own role in some of the events he describes. If you want to understand macroeconomics and the Fed, I’d start there.
BW: Jeanna, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it—and I know our readers will too.
JS: Thanks, Ben!

Michael Beckley is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. A leading scholar of U.S.–China strategic competition, he is the author of Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower and co-author, with Hal Brands, of Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China. In this conversation, Beckley reflects on the family stories and Cold War memories that drew him to geopolitics, why he thinks the United States retains huge long-term advantages over China, and why that very imbalance makes the coming decade especially dangerous. He talks through his concerns about China’s debt, militarization, and potential for aggression, his skepticism toward parts of academia, and the growing demand for geopolitical analysis across government, think tanks, and the private sector. For students thinking about foreign policy careers, he offers blunt advice on expertise, risk-taking, and avoiding the temptation to “build a brand” before you’ve done the hard work. 
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.​

Early Influences and the Pull of Geopolitics
BW: Professor Beckley, thank you for speaking with me.
To begin, I’d love to hear about the path that led you to this field. What sparked your interest in international relations and U.S.–China competition? Was there a defining moment, or was it a long-standing passion?
MB: I think it’s always been a passion of mine. I’d point to two big influences.
One is my family—I’m half Japanese. On the Japanese side, my grandmother was interned during World War II, but her three brothers were fighting for the U.S. military. One was killed, one was wounded, and one of her cousins served in a special operations unit in the Asian theater. He spied on Japanese units and called in strikes—he was later inducted into the Army Rangers Hall of Fame.
Meanwhile, another cousin protested the internment and took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. He lost in a unanimous 9–0 decision and was sent to jail. So knowing that family history gave me a sense that geopolitics can have massive impacts on people’s lives.
The second influence was just growing up in the 1990s, right after the Cold War. One of my earliest memories is of the Gulf War. I remember expecting it to be like World War II, and instead seeing the U.S. military just demolish Iraqi forces. That showed me the immense power of the United States, and I’ve always been fascinated by that.
And then, of course, there were all the movies--Top Gun, The Hunt for Red October. I thought that stuff was so cool. So I was always really interested.

Academia, Policy, and the Frustrations of the Ivory Tower
BW: You’ve worked in both academic and policy circles. How do those worlds differ, and how has that shaped your approach to research and influence?
MB: I was trained as an academic, which is good in the sense that it teaches you rigor and research design. But I actually think a lot of what academia produces is pretty irrelevant and useless.
The direction academia has been going for a long time is, in my view, pretty poor: increasing specialization, an overemphasis on methods for their own sake, and a lot of what I’d call faux social justice work rather than hard-hitting analysis. I’ve become increasingly disgusted with academia in general.
I’ve always been much more interested in policy, because I feel like: what’s the point unless you’re engaged in major debates that actually have an impact? Especially coming from the United States, I think the U.S. has a special obligation to use its power responsibly. If you’re writing about international affairs, you have an obligation to engage in those national debates.
For me, I always wanted to do policy, but there isn’t much “middle management” in the policy world. You’re either a lowly research assistant or a senior scholar. I had to get a PhD and go through the academy to earn credentials and show my work before I could really have a consistent voice in national debates.
So it’s always been about wanting to do policy, but having to get the academic training and earn my stripes along the way. I’m glad I did it, but it wasn’t particularly fun.

U.S. Power, China, and the “Danger Zone”
BW: On that note, in Unrivaled you argue that fears of U.S. decline are exaggerated, and that fears of China’s inevitable rise are overblown. That message feels especially urgent today, with rising tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Do you still believe the U.S. holds a decisive long-term advantage—and what metrics matter most?
MB: After Unrivaled, which focused on big-picture indicators of national power, I still think the U.S. has tremendous latent advantages: its wealth, its technology, its military potential, its alliances, the dollar’s global role, and energy production. The U.S. is a hub for many countries—militarily, economically, diplomatically—and that gives it enormous power.
What China is really good at is churning stuff out. They’re massively ramping up their military. So I worry a lot about the local balance of power, especially in the Taiwan Strait and across maritime East Asia.
I also worry that the United States historically doesn’t really mobilize until it gets punched in the face. I see the U.S. being fairly lackadaisical about countering China.
In 2019, I wrote a Foreign Affairs article called “The U.S. Should Fear a Faltering China,” where I looked at cases of rising great powers whose ascent stalled. The pattern is that they tend to militarize and become more aggressive in the short term. It seems like China is doing the same thing.
That led to my second book with Hal Brands, Danger Zone. The argument is that in the long run, the U.S. has significant advantages over China. But in the short term, because China is militarizing and mobilizing so quickly, there’s this extremely dangerous window where Beijing might “roll the iron dice”—gamble on an assault on Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan, or other targets in East Asia.
There’s a lot the United States needs to do to insulate itself and deter that kind of move from happening in the first place. So I’ve become less confident about the U.S. ability to deter China in the near term, even though I remain relatively confident about the long-term balance of power. But that can all be thrown off if the U.S. gets thrashed in a war over Taiwan—that would change the trajectory dramatically.
That’s why so much of my work in the last five or six years has been trying to sound the alarm about what China is doing.

The Costs of a Taiwan War
BW: Do you think a conflict over Taiwan would ultimately be better or worse for American global positioning?
MB: I think it would be catastrophic for everyone involved. I don’t see any real winners.
A lot would depend on how the war played out, but even if the U.S. “wins”—meaning China fails to take Taiwan—if you look at the history of great power wars, they tend to be much messier and longer than people expect going in.
And given that both the U.S. and China have nuclear weapons, it’s just not something I even want to contemplate. I think it would be catastrophic for China, but that doesn’t mean it would be good for the United States.

Debt, Power, and U.S. Vulnerabilities
BW: What do you make of the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio in terms of American global positioning? It’s top of mind right now with the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” passing the House, which critics say could add trillions to the national debt. Is that a telling indicator?
MB: First, I’d use different statistics. The Bank for International Settlements measures total credit to the non-financial sector—that includes government, household, and business debt. For China, that figure is over 300 percent of GDP, and that’s probably conservative because local governments hide a lot of debt.
You can easily find reporting on this. Even the People’s Bank of China acknowledges how serious the problem is. China’s debt situation is extremely bad. But that doesn’t mean America’s fiscal position is good.
I’m very concerned about U.S. debt, especially with possible extensions of massive tax cuts. With interest costs rivaling the defense budget, plus the wave of baby boomer retirements, we’re putting a huge burden on future generations. Just because others are worse off doesn’t mean we’re in good shape.

Skills and Career Paths for a New Generation
BW: Shifting gears, many of our readers are students trying to find their path in international policy. What skills or mindsets do you think are most valuable for contributing meaningfully to foreign policy analysis or academia?
MB: There are different skill sets that are useful.
One path is the one I took: academic, original research. That’s valuable because it forces you to think systematically—like a scientist—about how to build a valid body of evidence and test your hypotheses. Even if you don’t use that language when you’re writing essays, going on TV, or briefing policymakers, that style of thinking helps you avoid cherry-picking evidence and just spouting hot takes.
Another great training ground is journalism. I have a lot of respect for journalists who know what it takes to really get to the bottom of a story—talking to everyone involved, reading everything, and then coming to solid conclusions.
There are also increasing opportunities in the private sector for your generation. When I was growing up in the 1990s, people thought we were at the “end of history,” and that major geopolitical conflicts were unlikely. There wasn’t as much demand in the private sector for geopolitical expertise. Now, almost every bank I know has some kind of geopolitical or political risk analysis wing, and there are major firms that specialize in that.
That kind of work can be very rigorous, because when there’s money on the line, people tend to take analysis seriously.
Then you have the government analyst route, and the area specialist path—immersing yourself in a particular country or region, learning the language, living there, going into the archives like a historian.
To me, it’s about the depth of knowledge you can acquire when you’re young so that later you have real expertise to draw on. Starting narrow and then building outward is a good way to go.

How to Contribute in a Time of Great Power Competition
BW: For students who are trying to build that foundation—if someone in college asked, “How can I contribute meaningfully to U.S. foreign policy in a time of great power competition?” what would you say?
MB: There are so many ways, and I actually think long-term planning is a bit overrated.
My advice would be: do next year what you genuinely want to do next year, and really throw yourself into it. Then see where things shake out.
In our conversation, I’ve given you a neat summary of my career path, but it only makes sense in retrospect. At the time, it felt incredibly chaotic and uncertain and all over the place.
You’re learning so much, you never know who you’ll meet or what opportunities will open up. So go with your gut and what seems like the best option right in front of you.
Maybe that’s a really interesting study abroad program, or an independent research project you can take on. Usually, the opportunities that are tough and require you to move or stretch yourself—those are the ones to take as early as possible, when your opportunity costs are lower.
As you get closer to your thirties, life gets real very quickly, and it becomes much harder to just pack a bag and go. So I’d say: take the plunge early, whether that means moving to a foreign country, taking on a massive research project, or something similarly demanding.
What I often see instead is young people setting up social media accounts and Substacks as if they’re already big-name public intellectuals. They spend so much time building a “brand” instead of really honing expertise. They might sprint ahead of their peers for a bit, but they’ll fall behind those who have accumulated real expertise, research skills, and experience.
So my advice is: take your medicine early.

Reading the World
BW: Thank you so much for those insights. One last question—you’re clearly well read. If there were one book, essay, or other piece of literature you’d recommend to someone interested in your career path or foreign policy more generally, what would it be?
MB: It sounds cliché, but I think you should definitely read War and Peace. It’s such an amazing, granular yet sweeping epic. It tells you a lot about the lived experience not just of war, but of mass social movements and how people get swept up in them.
I’m also a huge fan of Stephen Kotkin. His claim to fame is his three-volume biography of Stalin, but his many other books and talks—he’s a Russia/Soviet specialist—give him a very clear-eyed view not just of Russia today, but also of the Chinese Communist Party and geopolitics more broadly. You don’t even have to read all his books; just listening to his podcasts is incredibly valuable.
And if you want to do U.S.–China specifically, you’ve got to read John Mearsheimer’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, even if you don’t agree with everything. It’s important for framing how you think about what to look for in the behavior of big states. Those would be my main recommendations.

BW: Dr. Beckley, thank you again for sharing your insights today. Your work challenges some of the most dominant assumptions about global power, and I really believe our audience—especially students thinking about their role in public service or international affairs—will benefit from hearing a more grounded, long-term view.
MB: Thanks so much for having me, and best wishes with all your studies. I look forward to seeing how your career progresses.

Getting Started in Foreign Policy
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you so much for joining me. The Pathway Blog is meant to help students understand careers in foreign affairs, law, and public service by learning from people who’ve done the work. You’ve done that across multiple presidencies and regions—from Latin America during the Cold War to the Middle East in the 21st century. To start, what first drew you into public service? Was foreign policy always the goal, or did your interests evolve?
EA: For me it was always foreign policy. Going back to college, that’s what interested me most, and I was pretty sure I wanted to do something related to Washington and international affairs.
I was lucky to meet Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson and work on his presidential campaign. After law school, I tried practicing law and found it boring. That was the moment I decided, “Okay, I need to get back to what I actually care about.” I got in touch with Senator Jackson, went down to Washington, met with him again, and joined his staff. That’s how it started.

Serving Under Different Presidents
BW: You’ve served across very different administrations. That kind of longevity requires both flexibility and conviction. How do you maintain strategic focus while navigating the ideological shifts from Reagan to Bush to Trump?
EA: The key is understanding that shifts are inevitable. Each president is different, and obviously there will be big changes when power moves between Republicans and Democrats. That’s fine—as long as you know what you believe.
You also have to remember that you’re not the president, and you’re not the secretary of state. You’re advising. You’re going to lose some battles—times when you’re convinced “A” is the right course but your principal picks “B.” That’s part of the job.
Government is a gigantic bureaucracy with lots of compromise. You accept that as the price of having any influence at all. The line I’ve tried to keep is: if a policy decision is fundamentally unconscionable and directly related to what I’m working on, that’s when you have to be prepared to leave. If it’s outside your lane—say you’re working on Iran and Venezuela and you disagree with immigration policy—that’s harder to justify as a reason to resign.

Morality, Realism, and Human Rights
BW: Diplomacy is often portrayed as a game of grand strategy, but it also carries serious moral weight. How do you personally weigh moral imperatives against strategic necessities, especially in regions like the Middle East?
EA: Every official has to decide how much weight to give human rights and democracy promotion compared to other interests—security, economics, diplomacy. A government is not an NGO; trade-offs are inevitable.
Let me give you an example. At the end of Trump’s first term, I was working on Iran. We had the “maximum pressure” campaign. The goal—at least as Trump saw it—was not regime change, but a deal that ended their nuclear program.
I remember thinking: if he wins reelection and we get to a point where sanctions are lifted in exchange for a nuclear deal, that could mean a lot more money for the regime and a kind of normalization with the Islamic Republic. I would have seen that as a serious abandonment of the Iranian people, and I don’t think I could have stayed.
More broadly, you can adopt a very “realpolitik” approach where human rights and democracy are almost irrelevant to your definition of the national interest. That’s essentially Donald Trump’s view—he made it quite clear, for example, in his Riyadh speech. I think that’s a mistake. Americans do care about values. I don’t believe they want a foreign policy that’s indifferent to the oppression of women, the execution of gay people, or stolen elections.
And beyond morality, our association with liberty is itself a strategic asset. Look at countries facing China or Russia—the fact that the United States stands for freedom helps hold alliances together.

Arguing with Kissinger (and Others)
BW: You’ve been compared to Henry Kissinger in the sense that both of you operated at the intersection of realism and moral complexity—and both faced criticism. How do you respond to those critiques? Do they play any role in your decision-making?
EA: I hope the critiques themselves don’t drive decision-making. What should matter is your own judgment about the balance of American interests.
Kissinger and I have disagreed for decades, going back to the Reagan years. We argued a lot about Latin America. His view was that figures like Chile’s military ruler, Augusto Pinochet, were valuable Cold War allies—anti-communist—and that pushing too hard for democracy risked producing something worse, as he believed had happened in Iran under the Shah or Nicaragua under Somoza. Jeanne Kirkpatrick had a version of that argument too.
My view was more conditional. If pressing for human rights and democracy is likely to produce a more repressive, anti-American regime, then don’t do it. But in Chile’s case, I didn’t think that was true. Chile had a long democratic tradition. We knew the democratic opposition leaders; they came to Washington, and I took them to see Secretary Shultz. We had a very good sense of what a post-Pinochet government would look like. So we pushed for elections.
To me, these are prudential judgments. Where I think Kissinger, Nixon, and Trump are wrong is in discounting the value of America’s reputation as a champion of liberty. That’s not just moral vanity—it’s a real source of strength.

The 21st-Century Challenge: China
BW: Looking generationally, what’s one foreign policy challenge you believe my generation will have to approach differently than previous ones?
EA: The big one is China. During the Cold War, we faced a military adversary, the Soviet Union, whose economy was weak and largely disconnected from ours. We traded almost nothing with them.
Now, in the 21st century, we face a major military and intelligence challenge from China and a level of economic interdependence that would have been hard to imagine in the 20th century. We need their supply chains and they need our markets.
That combination—deep economic ties plus strategic rivalry—is something we’re still learning how to handle. And it’s not going away. If you and your fellow students are in government in 2050, you’ll still be dealing with it.

Why Students Should Still Choose Public Service
BW: Many young people today are passionate about global affairs but skeptical of institutions or disillusioned by politics. What would you say to them?
EA: Get involved. It’s not going to get better if principled people opt out.
There are always plenty of people without strong principles who go into government for power or as a springboard to money later on. The only way to counter that is to have better people in the system—both the elected officials and the thousands of appointees every president brings in.
I was fortunate to work with a lot of talented, principled civil servants and young political appointees who really did see government as a period of service before moving on. If people like your peers walk away, nothing will improve about the nature and quality of our government.

Lessons About Luck and Public Life
BW: Is there anything you know now—about leadership, decision-making, or public service—that you wish you’d understood at the start of your career?
EA: Two things.
First, luck is critical. You don’t control who wins elections. Your team may win or lose, and that can determine your entire trajectory. If you don’t get that first or second job, you may never get the third or fourth. You should work hard, write, and prepare—but luck plays an enormous role.
Second, American politics today is in a pretty ugly cycle. The parties attack each other personally in ways they didn’t, say, 25 years ago. People entering public life should expect unfair attacks at some point. That comes with the territory in a way it doesn’t if you stay entirely in the private sector.

Reading Recommendations
BW: You’re clearly well read. If you had to recommend one book or essay to someone who wants to follow a similar path or get involved in government, what would it be?
EA: There isn’t one definitive book, especially since I’ve never worked at the state level. But for understanding the presidency and national security, Peter Rodman’s Presidential Command is excellent—it shows what presidents actually do and how they do it.
I’d also recommend Dean Acheson’s memoir, Present at the Creation, for a sense of what it’s like to help build U.S. foreign policy from inside government in its early postwar years.
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you again for your time and candor. I know many of our readers hope to enter foreign policy, law, or diplomacy, and they’ll take a lot away from this conversation.
EA: I hope it was useful. Thank you—and good luck.

Polarization at Home
BW: You’ve talked before about the “dying art of disagreement.” One stat I dug up for my capstone: today, fewer than a third of marriages are between people of opposing political parties, and only about 6% are between Democrats and Republicans—a big drop since the 1970s. What civic consequences do you see coming from this kind of political sorting?
BS: The short answer is mutual incomprehension.
In 2016, many Democrats couldn’t understand how anyone could vote for Trump and concluded that those who did must be ignorant or morally corrupt—hence Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” line. On the other side, many MAGA Republicans see Democrats as elitist, unpatriotic, or anti-American.
All of that is shaped by increasing political homogeneity in our communities and families. When people mostly live, marry, and socialize with those who agree with them, it becomes easier to see the other half of the country as alien—or even contemptible. That’s dangerous for democracy, and it’s bad politics. I think Democrats lost in 2024 partly because they didn’t grasp the priorities of voters who don’t live inside their cultural or media bubble.

Families, Echo Chambers, and Learning to Argue
BW: Given that rise in ideological echo chambers, how does polarization affect public discourse at a human level?
BS: One of the most important places we learn how to be citizens is at home.
In politically diverse families, kids watch disagreements play out around the dinner table. They learn that people they love can hold opposing views and still respect one another. That’s an education in both argument and empathy.
In homogenous households, kids mainly learn certitude. They grow up without hearing smart, good-faith versions of the other side. I grew up with parents who didn’t always agree politically. My father was more conservative than my mother, and they debated around the table. That experience helped me later when I became a conservative columnist at a very liberal paper. I’d already learned how to argue for my views before an audience that didn’t share them.

Why Social Media Is “Terrible” for Disagreement
BW: You’re not very active on social media, but people often blame it for polarization. Is social media fundamentally bad for disagreement?
BS: Yes. It’s terrible for disagreement.
It’s impersonal. On Twitter, I could insult you—call you a moron—not that I would! But it’s much easier to do that online than face-to-face. And if you reply, I can just block you. Social media lets you speak without compelling you to listen.
It doesn’t foster humane, thoughtful exchanges. It encourages cruelty because the interaction is disembodied. You’re not engaging with a whole person, just their opinions floating in the ether. That’s a very unhealthy way to practice politics.
BW: So is social media the main driver of polarization?
BS: It’s a major contributor, but not the only one.
We’re also polarized because of how districts are gerrymandered, how cable news separates audiences into tribes—Fox versus MSNBC—and more. But social media introduced a new kind of political interaction that’s omnipresent and difficult to adapt to.
Every new communication technology has unforeseen consequences—radio in the 1930s is a classic example. We’re still grappling with the consequences of this one.

Performative Politics and the Breakdown of Governing
BW: Politics today feels performative—driven by outrage rather than policy. How does that affect lawmaking and governance?
BS: Look at Donald Trump. He figured out how to use social media to dominate his party.
If a member of Congress crosses him, a single post can threaten their career. That kind of direct, unmediated power would have been unthinkable in the Reagan era.
What’s changed is that there’s no longer an intermediary between politicians and the public. In the past, journalists and editors played a filtering role—contextualizing and, frankly, sometimes sanitizing what leaders said. Now, leaders speak directly to millions in real time. In some ways, it’s like Franklin Roosevelt using radio—except the tone can resemble darker examples, like how demagogues also used radio.
With no filter, public opinion is constantly being whipped around, and Congress struggles to perform its traditional role as a deliberative body.

What Journalism Can Do
BW: I recently spoke with Jane Kamensky, who made a similar point about the loss of filters and the way people now choose media that simply reinforces their beliefs. Given your experience in print and digital media, are there reforms journalism itself could pursue to help?
BS: Yes, there are things we can do.
One example is the running debate I have with Gail Collins at The New York Times. Our exchanges force readers to engage with two distinct viewpoints in one place. I’d love to see more of that—structured, good-faith debates, rather than siloed opinion spaces.
Television could do something similar: instead of assembling panels where everyone agrees, bring on people who genuinely disagree and let them argue substantively, not just shout.

Can Institutional Reforms Help?
BW: Some scholars argue polarization alone doesn’t kill democracy, but when it’s combined with declining trust in institutions, it can lead to democratic erosion. Are there institutional reforms you think might help?
BS: I’m cautious about institutional tinkering. Reforms often fix one problem and create another.
Take ranked-choice voting: it sounds attractive in theory, but it can produce bland, lowest-common-denominator candidates. That doesn’t excite anyone.
What I’m more drawn to are social reforms that rebuild basic human contact. I sometimes joke about a “Congressional date night”: every week, randomly pair a Democrat and a Republican, and have them go to dinner and talk about life—not politics. Just building human connection.
We may not need to fix the hardware of democracy first. We probably need to start with the software—our habits, relationships, and norms.

Hope, History, and College Advice
BW: Big-picture question: do you think we can reverse polarization, or are we stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle?
BS: I don’t think we’re doomed. We’ve been through very polarized periods before—the 1960s and ’70s, with Vietnam, civil rights, and Watergate. Those were wrenching times.
But we came through them. Abraham Lincoln talked about the “better angels of our nature,” and I still believe those exist. The fact that people like you are asking these questions is encouraging. Democracies have an unusual capacity for self-criticism and self-correction. Autocracies don’t.
BW: On a more personal note, I’m literally driving back from a college visit with my dad as we talk. Any advice for college?
BS: My father always told me: “Get full value.”
Take the hard classes. Don’t be embarrassed to be the last person in the library. My son is at Colorado College, doing exactly that—he’s not taking the easy route. I worked my tail off at the University of Chicago, and that made hard work feel easier later in life.
People talk about “work–life balance,” but I prefer to think in terms of choices. Make good choices early, especially about how seriously you take your education, and you’re unlikely to regret working harder than everyone else.
BW: Thank you again for your time. This has been incredibly helpful—for my capstone and for thinking about college.
BS: My pleasure. Good luck with both.

What the Founders Can Teach Us About Parties and Disagreement
BW: Thank you so much for speaking with me, Professor Kamensky. I’ve been thinking a lot about how political parties have evolved in the U.S.—how they both reflect and shape our civic culture. I’m especially curious how the founding generation thought about political division. Do their experiences offer any lessons for dealing with today’s polarization?
JK: That’s exactly the kind of question we’re asking at Monticello.
Parties in the early republic were, in many ways, an attempt to manage disagreement—to bring people together around broad visions so they didn’t fracture along more immediate, potentially dangerous lines. We’re launching a tour called Founding Friends, Founding Foes that looks at James Madison’s fear of faction and how parties emerged partly as a way to build broad coalitions.
We look at alliances like Southern Whigs and Northern Democrats, but the emotional center of the story is the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. You could focus on Jefferson and Hamilton, whose visions were very far apart, but Jefferson and Adams had something different: a deep civic friendship.
They rose together in the Revolution, then fell out—so far that Adams didn’t attend Jefferson’s inauguration. After eleven years of silence, they began writing to each other again in 1813 and exchanged more than a hundred letters. Those letters are a model for engaging across difference: honest, clear about disagreements, but grounded in mutual respect and a shared belief that both were working for the good of the American people.
That’s the core lesson: history isn’t just content; it’s also a set of skills. If we can show visitors how Jefferson and Adams rebuild their relationship—by asking questions, presuming goodwill, and finding limited areas of agreement—maybe people will feel more able to do the same today.

How We Got to “Winner-Take-All” Politics
BW: One of the case studies in my capstone is the Great Compromise and how it emerged from deep disagreement. It feels like polarization has always been with us, but something about today seems different. Over your lifetime, how have American political ideologies evolved? What’s driving the current hyperpolarization?
JK: I’d say I’ve watched the change more across my life than just my career.
Starting in the late 20th century—especially the early 1990s—American politics shifted toward a winner-take-all mindset. The goal of politics became less “let’s come together to make change” and more “let’s stop them, even if it means we don’t move forward either.”
There are many ingredients. One is the media landscape. The end of the Fairness Doctrine in the late 1980s opened the door to talk radio and cable news that no longer had to present opposing viewpoints. When I was your age, there were four major channels. During something like Watergate, people of all political stripes saw the same coverage and heard the same trusted anchors. There was more shared factual ground, even with political disagreement.
Now, media outlets can survive—and even thrive—by feeding their audiences only what they already believe. That’s a powerful accelerant for polarization.

The Nationalization of Politics and Decline of Local News
BW: That resonates with what I’ve been reading. How has the decline of local news changed our political culture?
JK: The loss of local journalism has been devastating for civic life.
Local papers have been shuttering at an alarming rate. When people lose local reporting, they lose trusted sources who cover school boards, city councils, zoning—everything that shapes their immediate lives.
Instead, they end up getting most of their political information from national outlets, which are often highly partisan or geared toward outrage. That “nationalization” of our discourse makes it harder to say, “I disagree with you on this issue, but we agree on that one, so let’s work together.” Nuance gets crowded out.
On top of that, civic education has eroded. In the 1960s and afterward, many civics courses were dropped, sometimes by people on the left who worried those classes were just patriotic indoctrination. The unintended result is generations who know less about how government actually works. Where knowledge declines, trust usually follows.

Social Media and Identity Politics
BW: You’ve mentioned media changes and civic education. What about social media? Platforms today seem to reward outrage and performative behavior. How do you see that shaping polarization?
JK: Social media is the most extreme expression of trends that began with cable. It’s a business model built on neuropsychology.
I find Jonathan Haidt’s work persuasive: these platforms are designed to be addictive. They rewire our brains, even absent bad actors. Add in disinformation campaigns, and you get an environment that’s very poor for civil conversation. People are placed into echo chambers where their identity gets bound up with what they “like” and what they “hate.” That’s not fertile ground for dialogue.
BW: And how do you think identity politics fits into all this?
JK: We all have multiple, overlapping identities—but modern politics and social media often flatten us down to one or two.
You might be a young white man. I’m an aging white woman. Someone else might choose one of dozens of gender identifiers. None of that captures the fullness of who we are or what we care about.
What gives me some hope is that, in the 2024 election, voting behavior didn’t always follow the identity lines people predicted. That suggests identity doesn’t entirely dictate belief. I’m a big fan of the research group More in Common; they focus on what unites Americans, and it turns out that’s still quite a lot.
The American “genius” has been to build an incredibly diverse, pluralistic society around a shared set of ideals: that all people are created equal and have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Identity politics can make us forget that North Star—but it doesn’t erase it.

Bowling Alone, Marrying Apart, and Reasons for Hope
BW: One study I came across found that in 2020, less than a third of marriages were between people of different political affiliations—down from nearly half in the early 1970s. How do you think about statistics like that?
JK: That ties directly into Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone.
Putnam shows how we’ve lost “middle spaces” of association—bowling leagues are his famous example—where people of different backgrounds and beliefs came together for reasons unrelated to politics. Those spaces created cross-cutting ties that made it harder to demonize one another.
Now, even dating is algorithmic; people can sort potential partners by political label. Neighborhoods are more ideologically sorted, too. You used to see opposing yard signs on the same street. Now people move to enclaves of the like-minded.
But let me end on a hopeful note. Your generation is, in some ways, more skeptical than mine—polls show young Americans less likely to say democracy is essential. That’s worrying. At the same time, you’re also more aware of how social media manipulates us, and less willing to let corporations or political machines dictate your beliefs.
These trends are not destiny. They’re patterns. And patterns can be changed.
BW: Thank you again for taking the time to talk with me. I’m really excited to share my capstone with you when it’s finished.
JK: I’m looking forward to reading it. And please keep me posted on your college decisions—you’ve got an exciting path ahead.

Discovering Journalism
BW: Thank you so much for speaking with me, Mr. Stephens. To start, what inspired you to pursue a career in journalism?
BS: It started in high school.
I launched a very contrarian alternative student newspaper because I didn’t care for the official paper, which I found dull. That little project turned out to be the most interesting thing I did in high school.
There’s a funny twist to the story: the editor of the mainstream student paper—who was a few years ahead of me—is now the editor in chief of The New York Times, Joe Kahn. So both of us, in our own ways, ended up where we probably belonged. High school journalism was the direct path to everything that followed.

What Makes a Good Opinion Writer
BW: I work on my school newspaper too—though mine is the mainstream one, not the contrarian one. For students thinking about opinion writing, what skills or qualities matter most, and how can we develop them?
BS: I’d highlight three things.
First, you have to be an opinionated person. Not everyone is, and that’s fine. Some people are naturally hesitant to offer strong views; they’re more comfortable just reporting facts. But to write opinion, you need to know that you yourself are someone with strong, considered views.
Second, you need a lot of information at your disposal. I often compare writing a column to cooking a meal. You need a well-stocked pantry—your long-term knowledge of history, ideas, and context—and a well-stocked fridge—the current news, the “perishables.” Good opinion writing is combining those in a way readers find nourishing.
Third, there’s the craft of writing itself. I call it a craft rather than an art because it’s something an intelligent person can learn through practice. The best way to learn is by reading great writers and imitating them. Over time, in the gap between your imitation and the original, you begin to discover your own voice.
BW: Who were the writers you tried to imitate when you were younger?
BS: In high school, the big one for me was George Will.
I admired his style and substance. He was conservative, and I was a young conservative, so I agreed with many of his views. But more than that, he wasn’t a cookie-cutter partisan. He could surprise you. That independence was very appealing.
But before George Will, there was my father. My dad had a business career but wrote a column on the side for our hometown paper in Mexico City. On Saturdays, when his column appeared, we’d go to the kiosk to buy the paper. Seeing his words in print, watching them spark conversations and arguments—that feeling made a huge impression on me.

On Journalism School (Don’t Go)
BW: With journalism changing so quickly—and everything being accessible online—do you think journalism school is still important? What educational path would you recommend for aspiring opinion writers?
BS: My short answer: the biggest mistake a young journalist can make is going to journalism school.
I think it’s a waste of money and, more importantly, a waste of time. I’ve hired many journalists, and I don’t think any of them had journalism degrees. If anything, I’d be suspicious of someone who did.
What you need instead is a combination of habits, skills, and knowledge. If you want to be a foreign correspondent, learn a tough language—Mandarin, Arabic, Russian. Read widely, not just news but literature and history. Build a dense mental map so that when someone mentions 1948, 1956, or 1967 in the Middle East, those dates mean something to you.
You can’t connect the dots if you don’t know where the dots are. A lot of young journalists simply don’t have enough in their heads—no shared historical or cultural references with the people they’re covering. That, to me, is a much bigger problem than not having a journalism credential.

Seeing America from Abroad
BW: You’ve written extensively about the Middle East. Last time we talked, you mentioned traveling to Gaza and how that hands-on experience shaped your perspective. How has time in the region informed your analysis compared to journalists who cover it mostly from afar?
BS: Direct experience changes everything.
I’ve built deep relationships with people in many regions. Just today, for example, I spent a few hours driving to pick up my daughter from school and used that time to have long calls with sources in the Middle East. That kind of ongoing conversation gives you insight you’ll never get from simply reading other people’s reporting.
Even if you plan to cover local issues, I think every journalist benefits from leaving the country. Living abroad lets you see America in a new light. I learned a tremendous amount about the United States from my years in Mexico because that outsider vantage point makes you notice what residents take for granted.

Staying a Student (Even as an Expert)
BW: As a student, I sometimes worry about not knowing enough to write about big issues. How do you handle writing on topics you’re still learning about? Do you wait until you fully understand something before you publish?
BS: A thoughtful person never stops being a student. You don’t age out of that.
Even as someone seen as an expert, you should be constantly learning and open to surprise. The danger is thinking you know everything you need to know. I try very hard to resist that.
From time to time, you realize you’ve been wrong. The right response is to say so. Having a column means you’re in an ongoing conversation with readers. You owe it to them to be candid. In a recent piece titled “Done With Never Trump,” I wrote about rethinking aspects of my stance toward the Trump presidency. Some readers were furious; others appreciated the honesty. That’s how it should be.

Being a Conservative at a Liberal Paper
BW: You’ve sometimes clashed with other Times columnists. How do those internal disagreements shape the opinion section? And what is it like being a more conservative writer in a largely liberal newsroom?
BS: We try not to have public feuds, but of course there are disagreements—that’s by design.
The editors who hired me knew I wouldn’t line up with many of my colleagues. That was the point: they wanted ideological diversity. There have been a few moments where clashes have been more visible, but those are the exception, not the rule.
Do I feel like a minority at the paper? Sure—but that’s not a surprise. I knew what I was signing up for. And there are upsides. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be the dissenting voice; people may pay more attention, whether they agree or not. I’ve chosen this role, and I’m glad to be where I am.

Breaking In and Moving Up
BW: On a personal note, journalism is something I’m seriously considering. Say I follow the path you suggest—study history or a language, read widely, develop a knowledge base. What comes next? Is it just applying to smaller jobs and working my way up, or is there a more specific path?
BS: There really isn’t a single beaten path—especially in opinion journalism with a foreign policy focus. There might be a couple dozen jobs like that in the entire country.
People arrive there by very individual routes. In my case, I grew up abroad, which gave me a distinctive background. I had a strong interest in journalism from high school onward. I read voraciously and stayed open to unusual opportunities.
So my advice is: build deep knowledge, write constantly, and be willing to take the less conventional path if it gets you closer to the work you want to do. There’s no rigid ladder—but there are lots of ways up.
BW: Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it—and I know our readers will too.
BS: Thanks for having me. And keep writing.