Imperialism and Foreign Policy

Thawra Ep. 5 – The Struggle for Syria

23 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FIFTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the early years of a struggle for Syria that...

Thawra Ep. 4 – From the Nakba to Nasser

11 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the FOURTH episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out the politics surrounding the Zionist settler colonial destruction of...

Thawra Ep. 3 – The Post-Colonial Arab State System

04 Mar 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the THIRD episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment is a comprehensive overview of the Middle Eastern Arab state system...

Thawra Ep. 2 – Birth of Arab Nationalism

27 Feb 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the second episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment lays out 20th century anti-colonialism, including Iraqi, Syrian, and Palestinian Great...

Thawra Ep. 1 – Europe’s Imperial Juggernaut

21 Feb 2024
Featuring Abdel Razzaq Takriti, this is the first episode of Thawra (Revolution), our rolling mini-series on Arab radicalism in the 20th century. Today’s installment sets the stage: European imperialism in the Arab Mashriq from the...

Yemen and the Houthis w/ Helen Lackner

23 Jan 2024
Featuring Helen Lackner on the Houthis, the politics of their attacks on Red Sea shipping, and the long history of Yemen from British colonial Aden through the current civil war.

Global Palestine Politics Ep. 2 w/ Richard Seymour

20 Nov 2023
Featuring Richard Seymour on the global politics of the Palestinian struggle and Israel’s war on Gaza. The *second* of a two-part interview.

Global Palestine Politics Ep. 1 w/ Richard Seymour

15 Nov 2023
Featuring Richard Seymour on the global politics of the Palestinian struggle and Israel’s war on Gaza. The first of a two-part interview.

War on Gaza w/ Noura Erakat & Arielle Angel

18 Oct 2023
Featuring Noura Erakat and Arielle Angel on the apartheid system and the violence it drives in Palestine.

AOC on US Hegemony and Latin American Sovereignty

31 Aug 2023
Featuring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Latin American left and the long history of US intervention in the region.

Transcript: The United States Has Used Latin America as Its Imperial Laboratory (with Greg Grandin)

23 Mar 2023
Read Jacobin’s edited transcript here: https://jacobin.com/2023/03/greg-grandin-interview-us-policy-latin-america

American Militarism w/ Nadia Abu El-Haj

05 Mar 2023
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. How the civil-military divide makes troops into super citizens and what it means that agents of state violence are turning...

Combat Trauma w/ Nadia Abu El-Haj

25 Feb 2023
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring...

You Can Thank George W. Bush’s War on Terror for Donald Trump (with Spencer Ackerman)

01 Feb 2023
Read the transcript of the first part of our interview with Spencer Ackerman on the War on Terror: https://jacobin.com/2023/02/war-on-terror-bush-trump-911-islamophobia

Iran, 1953-1979: From the Shah to Islamic Revolution

07 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the third episode in our four-part series. We pick up in the wake of the US-British 1953 coup against Mossadegh, assess...

Iran, 1941-1953: Tudeh, Mosaddegh, Oil, and the CIA-MI6 Coup

01 Nov 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran. This is the second episode in our four-part series. We begin in 1941 with the British-Soviet occupation of Iran, the ouster of Reza...

Iran: 1906-1941 w/ Eskandar Sadeghi & Golnar Nikpour

27 Oct 2022
Featuring Eskandar Sadeghi and Golnar Nikpour on the history of modern Iran, from 1906 through the present. This episode is the first in a four-part series, covering the period from 1906 until 1941, from the...

Transcript: Clash of Empires w/ Ho-fung Hung

17 Aug 2022
Transcript of the second part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political and economic history: the 2008 financial crisis, how China’s response deepened global and domestic economic imbalances and (alongside...

Transcript: China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

16 Aug 2022
Transcript of the first part of Dan’s two part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but...

Clash of Empires w/ Ho-fung Hung

23 Mar 2022
The second of our two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political and economic history. This episode covers the 2008 financial crisis, how China’s response deepened global and domestic economic imbalances and (alongside the...

China Boom w/ Ho-fung Hung

18 Mar 2022
Part one of a two-part interview with sociologist Ho-fung Hung on Chinese political economic history from the 18th century to 2008: why capitalism took off in England and then elsewhere but not in China; and...

War w/ Sophie Pinkham and Nick Mulder

10 Mar 2022
Sophie Pinkham and Nick Mulder on the war, its origins, how it’s being experienced by Ukrainians, Russians, Europeans, and Americans—and also its geopolitical and global economic ramifications, particularly sanctions.

Russia Invades w/ Tony Wood

28 Feb 2022
Tony Wood returns to The Dig to discuss Russia’s invasion, what it reflects about Russian politics and geopolitics today and historically, and how the Left should be thinking about it all.

Transcript: Russia Invades w/ Tony Wood

08 Feb 2022
Read the transcript here

Ukraine w/ Volodymyr Ishchenko

28 Jan 2022
An in-depth interview on the historical and political-economic context of the Ukraine crisis with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko.

Visions of Freedom w/ Piero Gleijeses Part 2

24 Nov 2021
The second of Dan’s two-part interview with Piero Gleijeses on his book Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991. This is the story of Cuba’s military defense of the...

Visions of Freedom w/ Piero Gleijeses Part 1

19 Nov 2021
Part one of Dan’s two-part interview with Piero Gleijeses on his book Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991. This is the story of Cuba’s military defense of the...

Transcript: Afghanistan with Tariq Ali

12 Oct 2021
Read the transcript here

Afghanistan with Tariq Ali

12 Oct 2021
Legendary socialist scholar Tariq Ali on the long history of Afghanistan: the 19th and early 20th-century wars against the British Empire; the communist coup, Soviet invasion, and US-backed mujahideen war; the rise of the Taliban;...

War on Terror W/ Spencer Ackerman Part 3

20 Sep 2021
Episode three of The Dig’s War on Terror trilogy with Spencer Ackerman: Decadence, Trump, and Biden.

War on Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman Part 2

15 Sep 2021
Episode two of The Dig’s War on Terror trilogy with Spencer Ackerman: Obama, ISIS, and the Sustainable War.

War on Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman Part 1

10 Sep 2021
Episode one of The Dig’s three-part War on Terror series the with Spencer Ackerman: 9/11, bipartisan war fever, and George W. Bush.

The Media War w/ Adam Johnson and Eric Levitz

02 Sep 2021
Media critic Adam Johnson and New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz on the media’s warmongering attack on Biden’s withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.

Empire's Workshop with Greg Grandin

21 Jun 2021
The history of the United States is in no small part the history of US intervention in Latin America. Historian Greg Grandin on his classic book Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the...

Empire in the Philippines with Rick Baldoz

24 Apr 2021
US empire in the Philippines, Filipino migration, labor organizing in the fields, and the nativist campaign for Asian exclusion. Dan interviews Rick Baldoz on his remarkable book The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in...

Empires Without Imperialism with Jeanne Morefield

10 Feb 2021
Dan interviews Jeanne Morefield on her book Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection and how the disavowed wars have come home on the American Right.

China and the US with Tobita Chow and Jake Werner

19 Dec 2020
A big-picture interview with Tobita Chow and Jake Werner on China that puts today’s geopolitical conflict and repression into the context of global capitalism.

Cops and Counterinsurgency with Stuart Schrader

24 Jul 2020
Our police system is a product of Cold War US imperialism too. Dan interviews Stuart Schrader on Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.

Empire Unhinged with Aslı Bâli & Aziz Rana

11 Jun 2020
Dan interviews returning guests Aslı Bâli and Aziz Rana on the long history behind the crisis of American imperial legitimation that has become so manifest amid the pandemic.

America's Long War with Nikhil Pal Singh

17 Jan 2020
The wars at home and abroad have always been connected. Dan interviews Nikhil Pal Singh on US attacks on Iran and the politics, history, and culture of American warmaking.

From the archives: Aziz Rana on Two Faces of American Freedom

26 Jul 2019
Dan is taking his first week off ever in Dig history to finish his book. Here’s a classic from deep in the archives: our first interview with Aziz Rana, on his book The Two Faces...

Transcript: Our History Is the Future with Nick Estes

29 Jun 2019
Listen to Episode Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance DD:Nick Estes, welcome to The Dig.  Nick Estes:Thanks for having me.  DD:You write...

Our History Is the Future with Nick Estes

29 Jun 2019
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Empire and the War in Yemen

17 Apr 2019
The US has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a direct war against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula...

A Theory of ISIS with Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou

13 Mar 2019
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou explains: it’s not just that the War on Terror has warped American and European politics and society; it’s that the War on Terror and Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS have become mutually-critical...

Palestine Politics with Linda Sarsour

06 Feb 2019
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Venezuela

01 Feb 2019
Alejandro Velasco, Gabriel Hetland and Naomi Schiller on the profound economic, social, and political crisis in Venezuela. More than three million refugees and migrants have fled the country. Opposition figure Juan Guaidó has declared himself...

Madawi al-Rasheed on Saudi Royal Brutality

30 Oct 2018
The brutality of the Saudi royal family had been hiding in plain sight. It was an open secret convenient to the political, media and business elites for whom the Kingdom means big business and an...

Patrick Blanchfield on Serious Men

25 Sep 2018
Serious people in Washington are seduced by vapid and self-serving accounts of their savvy operation of the machinery of government—works like Bob Woodward’s latest exercise in extended stenography Fear: Trump in the White House. The...

Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part II

17 Aug 2018
Part two of a two-part interview with Aslı Bâli on the Syrian civil war and the larger geopolitical conflicts that shape the Middle East—with an emphasis on the role played the United States. During part...

Aslı Bâli on Syria, Part I

15 Aug 2018
Aslı Ü. Bâli joins Daniel for part one of a two-part interview on the Syrian Civil War and the murderously instrumentalized geopolitics that fuel it. Syrians continue to suffer and to die while various actors...

The Trump Doctrine and Its Mandarin Detractors

29 Jun 2018
Stephen Wertheim, a Lecturer in American and international history at Birkbeck, University of London, breaks cuts through the suffocating foreign policy debate that shapes American Empire under Trump.

Free Palestine with Noura Erakat

18 May 2018
Israel is massacring Palestinians daring to approach a fence that occupation forces have built to shore up an ethno-state founded on the principle of apartheid. Nothing could be more clear. But you wouldn’t no that...

Petro-Imperialism with Timothy Mitchell Part II

13 Apr 2018
Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the second of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In part 1,...

Petro-Capitalism with Timothy Mitchell Part I

10 Apr 2018
Historian and political theorist Timothy Mitchell joins Dan for the first of a two-part interview on his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, published in 2011 by Verso. In this first episode,...

Aziz Rana: Reviving Resistance to Empire

07 Apr 2018
It’s our 100th episode and the launch of our spring fundraising drive! Aziz Rana returns to The Dig 15 years after the invasion of Iraq to reflect on the paucity of substantive anti-imperialist politics across...

Real Sanctuary Means Ending Mass Policing with Kade Crockford

25 Mar 2018
Perhaps nothing has more defined the monstrosity of Donald Trump than his racist demonization and targeting of immigrants from Mexico, Muslim-majority countries and those nations he deems to be “shitholes” or, according to another account,...

Aziz Rana: The Cold War’s Late Demise

14 Feb 2018
What if the Cold War only just ended in November 2016, as Donald Trump grotesquely encircled and then captured the presidency, finding it, to his surprise, unguarded? The Cold War proper, of course, ended with...

Building an American Empire with Paul Frymer

30 Jan 2018
We are living on land from which indigenous people, over hundreds of years, were violently removed. On some level, everyone knows this—yet it’s mostly nowhere to be found in stories that Americans tell themselves about...

A New Poor People’s Campaign with Nijmie Dzurinko

16 Jan 2018
Martin Luther King Jr. launched the Poor People’s Campaign alongside other organizers shortly before he was assassinated 50 years ago. Today, organizers nationwide are relaunching that movement as The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call...

That Trump Book Tho with Patrick Blanchfield

13 Jan 2018
Your first Diglet of the new year, and we’re talking about that Trump book. At n+1 Patrick Blanchfield makes the case that Fire and Fury is not, as some might think, a bunch of meaningless...

Troop Veneration and US Empire with Catherine Lutz

03 Jan 2018
The protest movement against the onset of the Iraq War was countered by a call to “support our troops” from militarists on the right. Venerating American soldiers, of course, is not about supporting actual American...

Peace Can Happen in Korea with Tim Shorrock

05 Dec 2017
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The Reality of Central American Migration with Noelle Brigden

21 Nov 2017
Trump’s demagogic rhetoric on MS-13 is designed to obscure the truth about the reality and origins of mass Central American migration: the roots of migration from Central America lie in significant part in the violence...

Universalizing American Liberty with Aziz Rana

31 Oct 2017
Rana overturns conventional accounts of American history, from settlement and Revolution to the Populists and the present day. In reality, settler-colonialism, empire, and a brutally exploitative economic system grounded in racial subjugation have always been...

Khaled Beydoun: The War on Terror Made Trump's Islamophobia A Reality

26 Sep 2017
Islamophobia is conventionally regarded as racist and bigoted views about Muslims expressed by ignorant individuals, including the one who somehow became president. But legal and critical race scholar @KhaledBeydoun explains that the reality is more...

Stephen Wertheim: America Was Never Exceptional But We Used to Think It Was

19 Sep 2017
Trump is normal in more ways than people care to admit, but he is different in that he parts from the bedrock ideology of American exceptionalism that has governed this country from its violent founding....

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández: On DACA

08 Sep 2017
Immigration law scholar @crimmigration breaks down the lies, misdirections and bigoted absurdities conveyed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions when he announced that the Trump Administration would cruelly make some 800,000 young people who came to...

Andrew Bacevich: This Is the War That Never Ends

22 Aug 2017
This is the war that never ends. The War on Terror’s permanence should be remarkable. It should be an outrage. But it is precisely because the war has become permanent that it has long since...

Peter Andreas: Trump's Wall Is Already Built

31 May 2017
Donald Trump won the presidency in significant part by pledging to do something that his predecessors had already mostly accomplished: building a big, beautiful wall on the border with Mexico. For liberals and centrists, the...

Adam Johnson: All the fake news that’s fit to print

02 May 2017
The media has become a part of the story like perhaps never before. Journalist probing has irritated our touchy president. But media outlets have also played a role in Trump’s rise. During the campaign, cable...

Glenn Greenwald on Trump and the National Security State

10 Jan 2017
Presidents Bush and Obama both presided over an expansive War on Terror and a national security state with a lethal and global reach. Permanent war and warrantless snooping have become the bipartisan consensus backdrop of...