The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy -- An Interview with Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt

After the ‘End of History’

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After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project.

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Our guest this week is Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of numerous works appearing in the pages of Diplomatic History and Reviews in American History, among other places.

Brandon’s most recent work, The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq (Stanford, 2021) “weaves together histories of Arab nationalists, US diplomats, and Western oil execs to tell the parallel stories of the Iraq Petroleum Company and the resilience of Iraqi society.” He joined us for a two hour discussion on his personal and political background and what brought him to his scholarship on the historiography of US-Iraq relations. We’re very happy to share this conversation here in Episode 24.

Of particular interest to our previous explorations of the strategic vision of American foreign policy planners, Professor Wolfe-Hunnicutt dispels the “oil scarcity myth” through an anti-imperialist lens. He explains that the history of oil nationalization in Iraq shows both the political savvy of anti-colonial Iraqi political agents throughout the post-World War II and Cold War periods, as well as the fractured unity of imperialist state bureaucracies.

Brandon’s book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the deeper political context of US depredations in Iraq and the Middle East, offering a challenging and unique perspective on the origins of the national security state, the country's bloody record of anti-Communism, and threat inflation as means of imperialist intervention. It is filled with rich historical specificities of paranoid State Department actors and the anti-colonial resistance they faced on the ground.

Patreon subscribers will also receive a bonus episode in which Brandon takes us through his research methodology, including recent forays into early modern political philosophy.

Thanks for listening. As always, the music you hear on After the 'End of History' is kindly provided by Jason King.

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