Fred Kaplan, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for Slate and author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power argues that America lost much of its influence with the end of the Cold War and that the War Party has weakened what’s left of our empire by overplaying it and overspending and his profile of Robert Gates.

MP3 here. (15:07)

Fred Kaplan is Slate’s “War Stories” columnist and the author of Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.