Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning - [Invest Like the Best, EP.490]
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What is the current state of America’s role in the world?
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus along with all of our podcasts at Colossus.com.
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit psum.vc.
Walter, I've been looking forward to this for many, many months. We were introduced through Jeremy Stern, who runs Colossus, who I know credits you with a lot of his skill in writing and thinking about the world. I've been so excited to do this with you. We've got such a wide range of topics that I thought it would be appropriate to begin by having you frame your view of America in the world today. In very, very broad strokes. You've written a lot about how and why the UK. And then sort of us as the successor in America have sort of won the last several hundred years of global affairs. I'd love you to talk about the sweep of that winning, how you conceive of us and our role in the world today. It's a really interesting.
Time because on the one hand, the Pax Americana that we kind of developed after 1945 and then refurbished in 1990 at the end of the Cold War is really in crisis. But if you step back a little bit, American power is not in crisis. The networks that we built up, the way of dealing with the world, the institutionalized relations with Europe and And so on, those are all burning or crumbling. But the United States as a power, it seems to me, is if anything, thanks to the information revolution and sort of this extraordinary raises in productivity that I believe we have experienced and are about to experience, I think we're still charging ahead. It's this odd picture of a dynamic country and a collapsing world system.
The Trump presidency has kind of exaggerated a lot of the disruption. I'm optimistic about America's position medium to long term. I do think we're in rough waters right now. What do you mean by collapsing world system? Well, you think about the World Trade Organization. We used to have this rules-based system for trade. Now your tariff is more or less what President Trump wakes up in the morning and thinks. As a country, we exercised more of our power through institutions, the NATO Alliance, the UN, even at times. And we're not doing that. Since World War II, it's been sort of a principle of American foreign policy that we want to be steady, predictable. You want everybody to know where America's red lines are.
You want everybody to be able to do that. Everybody to be able to rely. We made a commitment in nineteen fifty-five. Unless we announce with great fanfare that it's changing, it's still there. So we were trying to provide this bedrock of solidity in the world. And we're obviously not trying to do that anymore. For President Trump, I think he believes he maximizes his advantages by being completely unpredictable and also crossing a lot of So that past presidents probably would not have said things like, okay, if you don't raise your defense budget, we're going to double your tariffs or something of that kind and try to solve problems through channels. Trump would make the argument that didn't work. And so he's now completely trashing the institutional networks that for a very
Long time were the vessels of American power. And I think he's doing it in a way that's going to be very hard for his successors.
To rebuild. How would you teach someone else his method? You've written a lot about this.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the current state of America’s role in the world?
0:01–5:23
2
How did Trump turn fame into political power?
5:23–11:44
3
What is the five‑point playbook that has driven global dominance?
11:44–18:56
4
How does the U.S. rivalry with China shape the future of power?
18:56–27:09
5
What are the “tech Hamiltonians” and why are they rising?
27:09–39:24
6
How do the four historical schools of American foreign policy differ?
39:24–53:57
7
What does the erosion of deterrence mean for the Middle East?
53:57–1:02:32
8
What does it mean to be American in a rapidly changing world?
1:02:32–1:14:02
Speakers
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