Kissinger’s Corruption and Palestinian Solutions
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Matt Duss on moving on beyond war.

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Matt Duss and Jeet Heer on moving on beyond war.
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An Israeli soldier walks past a destroyed house in Kibbutz Be’eri, near the border with Gaza, on October 11, 2023.
(Menahem Kahana / Getty)This week, I talked with Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, about the recent death of Henry Kissinger and how the violence in Israel and Palestine could realistically give way to diplomatic solutions.
We take up two pieces Matt has written. One is a New Republic essay on how Henry Kissinger trafficked his public service into a lucrative private career. Kissinger was a actually a pioneer in this type of self-enrichment through influence peddling.
With Nancy Okail, president of the Center for International Policy, Matt wrote an important essay in Foreign Affairs laying out a road map for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians. This path would require the United States to seriously push for a political settlement. We talk about the political obstacles to such a plan, including Joe Biden’s long held ideological convictions. But we also take note of the changing politics of this issue, particularly among progressive voters.

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neoconservatism, died on December 16 at
age 95. His legacy is a complex one, since in recent decades neoconservatism has been
supplanted in many ways by American First conservatism. But many aspects of Podhoretz’s
influence still play a shaping role on right. I take up Podhoretz’s career with David Klion (who
wrote an obituary for the pundit for The Nation) and the historian Ronnie Grinberg, who had
discussed Podhoretz in her book Write Like a Man.
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