Chatter: Fixing America To Bolster National Security with Richard Haass

David Priess, Richard Haass
Thursday, March 2, 2023, 12:00 PM

Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
Brookings

For the past 20 years, Richard Haass has led the Council on Foreign Relations, building on his national security experience in government and his related work in academia and think tanks. Although his efforts have focused overwhelmingly on foreign policy, his central concern has turned to something closer to home: the decline of democratic norms in the United States. Haass has even written a new book about this problem and something we all can do about it, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens.

David Priess and Haass discussed the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Haass's experiences leading it, reflections on his service in the Bush 41 and Bush 43 administrations, the mission of the Council on Foreign Relations and Haass's longest-ever tenure of leading it, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its many implications, the roles of China and India in this shifting strategic landscape, democratic decline in the United States, the ten habits that American citizens can adopt to heal our divisions and safeguard representative democracy in the U.S., and more.

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Noam Osband and Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.

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Works mentioned during this episode:

The book The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens by Richard Haass

The book Foreign Policy Begins at Home by Richard Haass

The movie History of the World: Part I

The book Thinking in Time by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May

The TV show Full Swin


David Priess is Director of Intelligence at Bedrock Learning, Inc. and a Senior Fellow at the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security. He served during the Clinton and Bush 43 administrations as a CIA officer and has written two books: “The President’s Book of Secrets,” about the top-secret President’s Daily Brief, and "How To Get Rid of a President," describing the ways American presidents have left office.
Dr. Richard Haass is a veteran diplomat and a prominent voice on American foreign policy. He is the former Special Envoy for Northern Ireland and former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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