The Scholar's Stage

What kind of world does the Communist Party of China want? How can we know what they are thinking? These questions are the subject of "How Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ Should Have Ended U.S. Debate on Beijing’s Ambitions," a report by National Intelligence College professor Dan Tobin that was originally published as testimony to Congress. This episode uses Tobin's research as a starting point to discuss a web of issues at the core of Western attempts to understand the Chinese system. We talk about why Western analysts often struggle to understand the Communist Party, which parts of the "China watching" world are most successful doing this, and why any of this should matter to the "average" American citizen with no particular stake in China. Joining me (Tanner Greer) to discuss this report is Peter Mattis. Mattis is a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and most recently was the Senate-appointed staff director at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, where he was part of the legislative team that passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, and the Tibetan Policy and Support Act. He is the coauthor of Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer and the author of Analyzing the Chinese Military: A Review Essay and Resource Guide on the People's Liberation Army (2015).

In today’s episode I discuss Captain Wayne Hughes (USN) book Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations with Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Lauterbach. We explore why Marine Corps officers need to think more like sailors. We discuss why many so called “principles of war” and tactical maxims invented by its soldiers do not make sense in the world of the sailor, why naval warfare is inherently a process of attrition, why the offense has the stronger hand in naval conflict, and how these tactical dynamics might lead to strategic instability in a competition with China.

How does a movement win a war of ideas? What are the mechanisms by which politics and culture change over time? These were the questions behind Frederich Hayek's 1949 essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism." Hayek was a believer in free markets and libertarian politics. When he wrote this essay just after the Great Depression and World War II, free marketers like Hayek were an extreme minority. Forty years later the situation had flipped: the ideas of Hayek and his fellow free marketers were setting policy across the Western world. "The Intellectuals and Socialism" presents the strategy they followed to bring about this terrific change in the climate of ideas. Joining me (Tanner Greer) to discuss Hayek's seminal essay is Trevor Burrus. Burrus is a research fellow at the Cato Institute whose research focuses on constitutional law. He is the senior editor of the Cato Supreme Court Review and the co-host of the popular libertarian podcast Free Thoughts. The full show notes for this episode are available at www.scholars-stage.org.