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The Foreign Affairs Interview

by Foreign Affairs Magazine · English · News

Foreign Affairs invites you to join its editor, Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, as he talks to influential thinkers and policymakers about the forces shaping the world. Whether the topic is the war in Ukraine, the United States’ competition with China, or the future of globalization, Foreign Affairs’ weekly po

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr
Latest: 15 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026 · 1 hrNew

Iran’s Long War: A Conversation With Ali Vaez and Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

Nearly eight months since it began, the war in Iran has settled into a grim stalemate. Two essays in the new issue of Foreign Affairs consider just how long this stalemate could continue—and what decision-makers in Tehran think they can achieve in the coming months. In “The New Forever War,” Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group argues that Iran prefers deadlock to any plausible compromise with Washington. In “Why Iran Escalates,” Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar of Texas A&M argues that Tehran will pursue a more ambitious goal: forcing the United States out of the Middle East altogether.…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

8 Oct 2026 · 59 min
Russia’s Widening War on Europe: A Conversation With Julianne Smith
Since the start of the war in Ukraine almost five years ago, Russia has mounted ever more aggressive attacks in Europe, far from the battlefield. These attacks were long talked about as a form of “hybrid warfare.” But as Julianne Smith, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, notes in a new piece in Foreign Affairs, they have reached a level of risk and flagrancy where that label may no longer apply. And these attacks come in the context of escalation in Ukraine and dissension in the transatlantic alliance, as the Trump administration calls into question basic commitments to Europe. Smith has…
1 Oct 2026 · 54 min
What America and China Fear Most About AI: A Conversation with Kyle Chan and Helen Toner
Over the course of just a few months, artificial intelligence has become one of the most central issues, and one of the most fraught issues, in the relationship between the United States and China. Policymakers in Washington and in Beijing simultaneously worry about which country’s tech sector has the advantage and wonder whether the search for advantage will itself lead to catastrophe for both countries and everyone else. Recent bilateral meetings, including the one last week between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, have yielded only minimal progress toward…
24 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Caught in the Middle of the Iran War: A Conversation With Anwar Gargash
By all accounts, Iran’s neighbors, even those long at odds with the Islamic Republic, opposed the U.S.-Israeli war that began on February 28. Yet it is those Middle Eastern states that have paid some of the highest costs in the months since. As their governments grapple with the consequences of a war that is still far from settled, they are also struggling to shape a new Middle Eastern order. But there is little consensus about what that order should be—or what it should mean for relationships with the United States and China, for future economic models, or for the Israeli-Palestinian issue.…
17 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
How to Understand the New Age of War: A Conversation With Lawrence D. Freedman
By some measures, there is more war in the world today than at any point since World War II. Today’s wars have brought a level of destruction, disruption, and global risk that would have been hard to imagine not long ago, often in places where such combat seemed a thing of the past. Policymakers once again worry about nuclear use, and military planners once again contemplate war between great powers, including the United States and China, and NATO and Russia. And all of this comes as the Trump administration dismantles key pieces of the international system and technology scrambles…
10 Sep 2026 · 54 min
The Iran Shock Is Not Over: A Conversation With Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan
When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz six months ago, the world seemed on the verge of an energy crisis that would upend economies, governments, and much else. It was, as Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff pointed out in Foreign Affairs at the time, the largest disruption of global energy flow in history. The world’s ability to manage that disruption has been surprising—the crisis many expected has not come. But in just the last few years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the fits and starts of the green transition, and the AI buildout have remade energy markets and the politics undergirding…
3 Sep 2026 · 50 min
What Does China Want? A Conversation With Jessica Chen Weiss
There has been no shortage of dizzying shifts in American foreign policy since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year. But perhaps none have been as surprising as the shift on China. In his first term, Trump helped create a hard-line consensus centered on fears of a growing threat. Now, he seems much more interested in striking deals—as he presumably will be when Xi Jinping comes to Washington later this month. Many analysts of U.S. China policy have reacted to this reversal with dismay. But Jessica Chen Weiss sees it as an opportunity to forge a more sensible approach. Weiss, a…
E5 · 27 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 14 min
Afghanistan After America: A Conversation With Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith
Five years ago this month, the United States ended its war in Afghanistan. Washington’s exit was chaotic; as Taliban forces swept through the country and the U.S.-backed government collapsed, officials scrambled to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who might fall victim to repression and retribution. In the years since, Afghanistan has practically vanished from American foreign policy discussion. But the situation in the country remains dire, and the collective forgetting of the United States’ longest war carries costs of its own. Laurel Miller and Graeme Smith have each spent many years…
20 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 17 min
Is a Post-American World Inevitable? A Conversation With Kurt Campbell, Rush Doshi, and Mark Leonard
Ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, a big question has loomed over any discussion of global politics: How much of the change he has brought to U.S. foreign policy, and to the international system, will endure beyond this presidential term? Two essays that open the new issue of Foreign Affairs offer different answers to that question. Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi, two senior officials in the Biden administration, argue that the U.S. alliance system will not just survive Trump but can emerge stronger, even better suited to countering China and its partners. Mark…
13 Aug 2026 · 1 hr
From the Archive: How the Past Shadows China's Future: A Conversation With Odd Arne Westad
At the end of last year, editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke with the historian Odd Arne Westad about China’s complicated past and how that history shapes the way Chinese leaders see their country’s place in the world today. Policymakers and analysts argue over the implications of China’s rise, the extent of its ambitions, the nature of its economic influence, and the meaning of its growing military strength. Underlying these arguments is a widespread sense that where Beijing once seemed likely to slot comfortably into a U.S.-led international order, China now poses a profound challenge to…
6 Aug 2026 · 57 min
Cyberwarfare in the AI Age: A Conversation With Jen Easterly
It’s been nearly 15 years since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned of a “cyber–Pearl Harbor.” Since then, most people have become fairly inured to such a risk. That’s true even as there’s been a steady clip of cyberattacks on the United States and other countries, some of them quite alarming, and even as a new, more powerful AI model is released by an American or Chinese lab seemingly every week. Jen Easterly has spent much of the past 20 years defending U.S. cyberspace against such threats. She has been both a military officer and a top civilian official, most recently running the…
30 Jul 2026 · 53 min
The End of Free Trade: A Conversation With Robert E. Lighthizer
Almost no one in the last several decades has done more to change the American approach to trade than Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer was the U.S. trade representative in President Donald Trump’s first term. In that role, he set out to reverse Washington’s long-standing commitment to a global trading system. It was a crusade—using tariffs, among other tools—that targeted China above all but also any other country that, as he saw it, benefited from that system at the expense of the United States. Lighthizer recently laid out his vision for a new trade order in Foreign Affairs. With Trump…
23 Jul 2026 · 47 min
The Future of Palestine: A Conversation With Salam Fayyad
In the nine months since a cease-fire ended full-on war in Gaza, the world’s attention has in many ways moved on. That has been especially true since February, with the start of the war in Iran. But the situation in Gaza remains grim and unsettled, and the state of affairs in the West Bank has become increasingly fraught. Meanwhile, the way forward for Palestinian politics is murky, and the prospect of any durable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems more remote than ever. Salam Fayyad served as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from 2007 to 2013, after a long…
16 Jul 2026 · 54 min
The End of American Military Dominance? A Conversation With Paul Scharre
The war in Iran pitted two of the world’s mightiest militaries against one weakened by years of strikes, sanctions, and sabotage. And yet it was the smaller country that appears to have emerged with the advantage. In Ukraine, similarly, Russia expected an easy victory, only to be repeatedly thwarted by apparently outmatched Ukrainian forces. These outcomes may seem surprising. But Paul Scharre argues that they should not be. The innovations that have in recent years transformed battlefields have also leveled the playing field between powers great and small. And as Scharre wrote in a recent…
9 Jul 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
What China Thinks It Can Gain From a Disordered World: A Conversation With Oriana Skylar Mastro
Like the rest of us, China’s leaders are confronting a world in turmoil. They see uncertain American commitments to allies, even as many of those allies ramp up their own defense efforts. They see changing relationships, whether deepening ties between Russia and North Korea or new connections among anxious middle powers. They see American military action in the Middle East and Western Hemisphere, with effects on American power in China’s own region. And yet, as Oriana Skylar Mastro sees it, far from surprising Beijing, such disruptions are being taken as confirmation of what Chinese leader…
2 Jul 2026 · 54 min
The AI Race Nobody Can Win: A Conversation With Sebastian Mallaby
The breakneck pace of AI progress and the intensity of the competition for AI supremacy has left U.S. policymakers in a difficult position. They must encourage the innovation needed to ensure an advantage over China and to power economic growth; protect against a national security catastrophe; and assuage the concerns of an anxious and skeptical public. Sebastian Mallaby calls this the “AI trilemma” in his most recent essay for Foreign Affairs. And he argues that it requires more than the piecemeal measures currently on offer in Washington—or, for that matter, in Beijing or Brussels. Mallaby…
25 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
America, Iran, and a World in Turmoil: A Conversation With Ian Bremmer
The war in Iran may have come to an end, but both the course and the conclusion of that war have brought into sharp relief the forces that increasingly define a world of weaponized power and systemic risk: unconstrained leaders willing to gamble with military force; the search for, and use of, economic leverage; technologies destabilizing both decision-making and development models; and old alliances fracturing and new alignments forming. Ian Bremmer is a leading geopolitical analyst and the president and founder of the Eurasia Group. His most recent piece for Foreign Affairs is about the…
16 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Is the Iran War Coming to an End? A Conversation With Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr
The Iran war may be coming to an end, as Washington and Tehran prepare to sign a framework agreement later this week. That deal should reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade of Iranian ports, even as it leaves unresolved the issues that brought both sides to war in the first place, including the fate of Iran’s nuclear program. But policymakers in Washington and other capitals are just starting to confront the ways in which the war has transformed Iran—and how it could transform the Middle East moving forward. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr…
11 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Is Cuba Next? A Conversation With Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Zuniga
U.S. President Donald Trump has insisted that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” Although the administration has not specified what that might mean, following interventions in Venezuela and Iran over the past six months, there is reason to take seriously the possibility of some kind of forceful U.S. action, including military action. Already, a combination of U.S. pressure and the Cuban government’s own failures has resulted in unrelentingly dire conditions on the island—leading many to expect some kind of break before long. In recent weeks, two of the sharpest observers of Cuba and…
4 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
Are America’s Allies Finally Learning to Deal With Trump? A Conversation With Philip H. Gordon and Mara Karlin
Six months ago, Philip Gordon and Mara Karlin wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs about the plight of the United States’ allies in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. What was surprising, they argued, was not the administration’s cajoling and threats, or all the ways U.S. policy had called into question the basic principles of these relationships. The surprise was that allies were surprised by these moves in the first place. Almost a year into Trump’s second term, they had done little to develop a plan B. The months since have brought a wave of new challenges to U.S. alliances—the…
28 May 2026 · 54 min
How to Prevent the Next World War: A Conversation With Thant Myint-U
The world today is more dangerous and more violent than it’s been at any time since 1945. States everywhere have jettisoned commitments to cooperation and opted for aggression. The so-called rules-based order seems to have come apart. Yet the international body founded after World War II with the charge of preventing World War III finds itself increasingly on the margins. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the historian and former UN official Thant Myint-U considered what it would take for the United Nations to regain a meaningful role in preventing and managing global conflict. That…
21 May 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
Does Trump Have a Strategy? A Conversation With A. Wess Mitchell
Both of Donald Trump’s presidential administrations have prompted sharp debates about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. But how to discern a strategic logic behind Washington’s approach, and whether it’s even possible to do so, have been particularly vexing questions since Trump returned to the White House. A. Wess Mitchell helped shape these debates as assistant secretary of state in Trump’s first term, and he has been uniquely interested in shedding light on them since, including in a number of essays for Foreign Affairs. Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Mitchell on Monday, May 18, about how…
16 May 2026 · 41 min
The View From the Front Row of the Trump-Xi Summit: A Conversation With Orville Schell
Orville Schell may be the United States’ greatest chronicler and observer of several decades of U.S.-Chinese relations. Foreign Affairs was extremely lucky to have him in Beijing this week for the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It was not the first time Schell has had a front-row seat at a meeting of U.S. and Chinese leaders. Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to him on Friday, May 15, about how he read the interactions between Xi and Trump, what they did—and did not—say about the hardest and most dangerous issues in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and…
11 May 2026 · 57 min
When Two Superpowers Meet: A Conversation With Nicholas Burns
Not long ago, it was practically a truism to say that a hard line on China was the only real bipartisan position in American foreign policy. To the extent such a consensus ever existed, Donald Trump has upended it in his second term—leaving considerable uncertainty about just what he wants to achieve when he travels to China to meet with Xi Jinping this week, and what Xi hopes to achieve in return. To make sense of how the Chinese are approaching the summit and the options U.S. policymakers have at their disposal, Dan Kurtz-Phelan spoke to Nicholas Burns, a longtime American diplomat who…
7 May 2026 · 1 hr 7 min
Trump, Putin, and Genghis Khan: A Conversation With Fiona Hill
Fiona Hill has spent her career trying to understand—and, in one case, advise— leaders with grandiose ambitions, high risk tolerance, and an unshakeable sense of themselves as world-historic figures. She has been a close observer of Vladimir Putin for decades, as a scholar and a member of the U.S. intelligence community. In Donald Trump’s first term, she was a senior member of the National Security Council before becoming a household name during Trump’s first impeachment, for testifying about his relationship with Putin and with Volodymyr Zelensky. Now, Hill is watching as Trump and Putin,…
30 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
Learning to Live With a Nuclear North Korea: A Conversation With Victor Cha
For most of the past few decades, North Korea was considered a top challenge for American foreign policy. In the past few years, however, it has mostly receded from attention—not because the U.S. approach to the problem succeeded but because it so completely failed. U.S. policy insisted that North Korea could never become a nuclear power, yet North Korea’s program has accelerated year by year, threatening not just American allies, but now the American homeland. U.S. policy aimed to isolate the Kim family’s totalitarian regime, yet the North Korean leadership has managed to skillfully…
23 Apr 2026 · 59 min
Is America Losing the High Ground? A Conversation With Jake Sullivan
It is an understatement to say that the United States finds itself at a particularly fraught geopolitical juncture. The outcome of the war in Iran is still uncertain. The war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight. Add to that U.S.-Chinese competition, overlapping planetary crises, a highly erratic hegemon—the list could go on. Such an unstable world presents a formidable test for policymakers in Washington and in every other capital, and no one understands that test better than Jake Sullivan. He served as U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser for four years, after serving…
16 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 29 min
How the Iran War Is Shaping a Post-American World: Conversations With Matias Spektor and Kishore Mahbubani
The shockwaves of the ongoing war in Iran are being felt far and wide. The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sparked a global energy crisis, one that could be accentuated by a U.S. naval blockade. Countries as disparate as Chile, South Korea, and Zambia have been forced to take extraordinary measures to deal with shortages and surging prices. But the war’s effects are not just material. Washington’s decision to attack Iran is accelerating a process already underway: the receding of both the inspiration and the reality of American power. That, at least, is the view of our two…
8 Apr 2026 · 31 min
Will the Cease-Fire With Iran Hold? A Conversation With Suzanne Maloney
On Tuesday night, as the world held its collective breath, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a temporary cease-fire with Iran, just hours after warning that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranian regime did not completely open the Strait of Hormuz. In exchange for a cessation of American and Israeli strikes, Iran has agreed to allow oil and other commodities to pass through the strait for two weeks and to stop its own attacks on its neighbors, giving both sides time to negotiate a more comprehensive peace deal. But many of the details of the cease-fire remain unclear, as do its…
2 Apr 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
America in a World of Upheaval: A Conversation With William J. Burns
In 2024, when he was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns wrote in an essay in Foreign Affairs about “the plastic moments that come along only a few times each century”—and argued that “the United States faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period.” If that claim seemed bold at the time, events in the past couple of years have made it undeniable—a major war in Europe, two wars in the Middle East, sharpening U.S.-Chinese tensions, a U.S. administration committed to projecting power in new and disruptive…

About The Foreign Affairs Interview

The Foreign Affairs Interview is a English news podcast from Foreign Affairs Magazine. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Foreign Affairs Magazine
Language: English
Category: News
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 1 hr
Latest episode: 15 Oct 2026
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