Podcast / The Time of Monsters / Dec 14, 2025

Trump’s Global Culture War

On The Time of Monsters: Stephen Wertheim on the government’s new National Security Strategy.

(Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images)

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy is a marked shift from not only earlier administrations but also Trump’s first term in office. While the new policy statement eschews the goal of global hegemony, it promotes culture war in Europe by promising support for anti-immigration political parties; economic rivalry in Asia with China; and a renewal of US military hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. To survey this document and Trump’s often contradictory foreign policy, I spoke to frequent guest of the show Stephen Wertheim, an American Statecraft senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer
The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

The Time of Monsters podcast features Nation national-affairs correspondent Jeet Heer’s signature blend of political culture and cultural politics. Each week, he’ll host in-depth conversations with urgent voices on the most pressing issues of our time.

Mark Carney Proclaims the End of American Hegemony w/ Stephen Maher
byThe Nation Company LLC

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made headlines at Davos with a much-noticed speech

where he candidly acknowledged that the US led alliance system created in World War II was

coming to an end. Carney called for middle powers such as Canada and its European allies to

give up the illusion that a US led world is still viable and instead try to create new institutions to

preserve their values and their sovereignty. I talked to Canadian journalist Stephen Maher, who

has written a biography of Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau, about the far-reaching

implications of this speech.

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Jeet Heer

Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The GuardianThe New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

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