Episode 179: Max Boot

Max Boot is a foreign policy commentator and historian. Just this week he was named a contributing writer to the Op-ed page of the Washington Post. He is the author of several books;  his most recent is The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam  Lansdale was a CIA officer who was the inspiration behind the title character of the famous Graham Green novel, The Quiet American. As Max explains Lansdale pioneered a "hearts and minds" approach to the Vietnam quandary and sought to avoid a massive American military buildup in Vietnam, but was ultimately overruled.  We discuss this history in detail and also the relevance of Lansdale to American foreign policy today. We then have an extended conversation about Max's background, including his own intellectual evolution. And here, Max explains how the Trump administration is causing him to re-think certain assumptions he once held as a movement conservative and Republican.