Doug Bandow, policy analyst and Robert A. Taft fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance, discusses the War Party’s need for a new enemy, their attempt to make China fill that role, the progress toward liberty there since the days of Mao, the defensive nature of their military establishment, the lack of neccessity of American hegemony in the east and the benefits of free trade.

MP3 here. (23:08)

Doug Bandow is a Washington-based political writer and policy analyst and Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He served as a special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and as a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign.

He has been widely published in leading newspapers and periodicals and has appeared on numerous radio and television shows. He has written and edited several books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire (Xulon Press), The Korean Conundrum: America’s Troubled Relations with North and South Korea (Palgrave/Macmillan, coauthor), Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World (Cato), Perpetuating Poverty: The World Bank, the IMF, and the Developing World (Cato, coeditor), and Military Manpower and Human Resources (National Defense University). His latest book is Foreign Follies (Xulon Press).

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, discusses the new arms race in North Asia, Japan’s abandonment of their tradition of non intervention since WWII, “containment” policy toward China, the status of the nuclear deal with the DPRK and the possibilities and obstacles to Korean reunification.

MP3 here. (39:43)

John Feffer is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He is the author of North Korea, South Korea: U.S. Policy at a Time of Crisis (Seven Stories, 2003), among other books.