The Realignment: Wrapping the Week's Ukraine Coverage + Show Schedule Update
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Welcome Back to The Realignment
Hey everyone,
Daily episode schedule: I’ve decided to run the daily episodes through the week of April 4th. Apologies if you’re exhausted by Ukraine. As I mentioned on the podcast, our overall downloads each day exceed our previous records. For these next two weeks, we’ll be sure to be ultra-specific to differentiate future episodes in the series.
Where’s Saagar: A commenter on YouTube asked where Saagar’s been. Here’s what I responded with: “Saagar can only tape in the afternoons two days per week, so the only way we could do this is by me taking over. We’ll shift back to the regular once we get to April.”
Discussion episode next week: That said, Saagar will be back on the show for our one-on-one discussion episode. Write in with questions and topics for us to cover. As I’ve mentioned, moving out of the daily episodes, we’ll do a back and forth episode twice a month.
Next week’s episodes: So far, we’ve got daily episodes next week on the topics of the new rules of war, the state of nuclear weapons, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Indian foreign policy. More to come. Let us know what we should cover.
If you have responses to our episodes, suggestions for future topics to cover, and/or questions for me and Saagar to discuss next week. Let us know. Email us at realignmentpod@gmail.com or reply/comment below.
This Week’s Episodes
Episode 222: William Drozdiak: Emmanuel Macron and a Fractured Europe Confront Putin’s Russia
Episode 221: Mark Valentine: Cna Artificial Intelligence Disrupt the Battlefield
Episode 220: Robert Farley: Air Wars in Ukraine and Beyond
Episode 219: Amy B. Zegart: Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The Future of U.S. Intelligence After Ukraine
Episode 218: Elbridge Colby: Is Taiwan Next?
Aaron’s Response: Taiwan Episode
Aaron Visser, the show’s researcher/producer responds to this week’s Elbridge Colby episode on Taiwan:
During this series of episodes on Ukraine, The Realignment has focused on the question of “what does this mean?” rather than “what should we do?” All the prediction trees for possible scenarios and the decision trees of US policy collapsed the moment Russia invaded Ukraine. NATO policy solidified: we would attack Russia indirectly, through arms transfers and sanctions, but direct warfare such as ground troops or no fly zones are off the table. Now any important decisions are made by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia as they determine how to conduct war and peace.That’s why Taiwan interests me so much. The island, 100 miles from mainland China, is the most contentious area of great power conflict. So far, US policy for the last 75 years has succeeded, combining strategic ambiguity and non-recognition to protect independence to its 23 million people on everything except paper. But this isn’t your grandmother’s China. Its economy is massive and rapidly growing, with the military not far behind. American policy is in flux, realigning if you will, and until the invasion occurs we determine our response and preparation.
Elbridge Colby, who appeared in the fantastic episode posted on Monday as well as one last year, has strong opinions on the subject. His argument is simple. Taiwan is vital to our security interests. We are unprepared. We must adapt diplomatic and military policy to deter (more likely defeat) the Chinese invasion.
I agree with his logic. Taiwan is important to our security interests. It is our “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” and a valuable ally in any fight against China. It controls vital shipping routes and most of the world’s semiconductor capacity. I also agree that currently we’re unprepared. Fighting a war across the Pacific would be extremely difficult even if our military was optimized for it, which we are not.
In Taiwan I’m not equipped to give answers, but I can raise questions, questions like: Is a hot war with a superpower really a good idea? How do we know the fighting will stay limited? What’s stopping China from launching a second invasion of Taiwan if the first one fails? Is this an appeasement situation? Do the Chinese actually want to expand beyond their borders or just take Taiwan, which they view as part of their country? Are great power conflicts solved militarily? Didn’t we beat the Soviets because our system functioned better, not because we had better weapons? Will militarily defeating China in a single conflict actually prevent its rise? Is there a number of soldiers we can kill or equipment we can destroy that will change the hard facts that they will overtake us economically? How can we coexist with China?
I’m curious what your answers are to these questions. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
The Realignment Bookshop
As a reminder, we’ve created a Realignment Bookshop affiliate store showcasing books by guests, what we’re actively reading this year, and deeper dives into the featured topic of an episode.
If you purchase a book using our link, the show gets a 10% commission, a local, independent bookseller gets support, and you get an awesome book!
We’re reorganizing our book lists over the next few weeks, so for now, check out our primary one:
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