James M. Lindsay | Distinguished Senior Fellow | Council on Foreign Relations

James M. Lindsay joins Clearer Than Truth for a wide-ranging conversation about the future of American power and the international system the United States helped build. Lindsay is a longtime scholar of U.S. foreign policy and the policymaking process at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he previously served as senior vice president and director of studies and where he hosts The President's Inbox.

For roughly eight decades, American foreign policy has operated around an assumption that U.S. security and prosperity depend on an active role in the world. Lindsay argues that consensus is now under enormous strain, but says the story did not begin with Donald Trump. The American-led system has evolved through several distinct eras, from the bipolar Cold War order to the post-Cold War “unipolar moment,” before the return of great-power competition forced Washington to confront a more complicated geopolitical environment.

The conversation then turns inward, examining the changing balance between Congress and the presidency. Lindsay explains why the modern “imperial presidency” predates 9/11, how Congress gradually gave presidents greater discretion in foreign policy, and why that authority has proven difficult to reclaim. He also discusses the limits of courts as a check on presidential power and the enduring political difficulty of constraining a president once military action has begun.
Lindsay also examines the emerging cooperation among China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, cautioning against treating them as a formal alliance while acknowledging the growing incentives for bilateral cooperation among them. The discussion ultimately returns to the larger question: what comes after American primacy? Lindsay argues that the American-led order is coming to an end, but says historians will debate for years how much of that decline was structural and how much resulted from America's own decisions.

00:00 James M. Lindsay on the Future of American Power
01:04 What Broke America's Foreign-Policy Consensus?
01:54 From the Cold War to the Unipolar Moment
02:58 The Return of Geopolitics
03:28 Why Congress Lost Influence Over Foreign Policy
04:56 The Rise of the Imperial Presidency
05:46 What Congress Learned From the 1930s
07:44 Why Presidents Were Given So Much Discretion
08:06 How Presidents Expanded Their Authority
09:14 Why Courts Rarely Check Presidential Power
10:11 The Courts, Trump & National Security
12:30 When Expansive Presidential Power Serves a Purpose
13:55 How Far Can the President Go Militarily?
15:21 Congress and the Authorization of War
16:22 Why Congress Struggles to Rein In Presidents
18:12 Is There Really an Axis of Autocracies?
19:20 Why China, Russia, Iran & North Korea Cooperate
21:01 Why You Should Watch What Countries Do
22:03 Why Military Power Doesn't Equal Victory
23:07 Can Economic Pressure Bring Down Iran?
24:45 Can Leaders Become Too Detached From Their People?
25:51 Why Iran Hasn't Become Another Vietnam
26:21 How War Hits Americans at Home
28:56 What Vietnam Teaches Us About Public Trust
29:49 Can America Split the Axis of Autocracies?
31:03 Why the Nixon-Kissinger Strategy May Not Work Today
32:13 Why Regime Change Is So Hard to Predict
33:24 Was American Bipartisanship Ever Real?
34:03 Washington, Jefferson & America's First Foreign-Policy Fight
36:20 What Institutions Like CFR Actually Do
37:30 From Diagnosis to Policy to Implementation
38:25 The American-Led Order Is Ending
39:35 Was America's Decline Inevitable?
40:10 The Mistakes That Weakened American Leadership
41:54 Did America Fall Behind China?
42:21 How U.S. Policy May Have Accelerated Decline
43:21 What Happens to American Leadership Now?

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