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In this conversation with Barry Stevens, Col. Larry Wilkerson argues that the United States has utterly destroyed the international legal order it once led in creating, eroding its legitimacy, and turning it into a global pariah. He says the war with Iran is strategically self-defeating: to win, Iran only has to survive, while the U.S. and Israel require a decisive victory that remains elusive. One consequence could be a global recession. Meanwhile, China benefits from American overreach without direct confrontation. In the long run, Wilkerson warns, the real danger is not just war itself but the collapse of cooperation on the defining challenges of climate change and nuclear weapons—problems no country can solve alone.

This interview was originally published on May 19, 2023. We are republishing it as the war in Iran continues to escalate. Historian, Assal Rad, explores identity formation in modern Iran, both under the Pahlavi dynasty as well as after the 1979 Revolution under the Islamic Republic. Her book “State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran” examines top-down and bottom-up manifestations of national identity as narrated by state structures and popular culture, respectively. Her fascinating analysis is based on a historical assessment of how modern state-building in Iran inculcated a sense of national belonging in the population, as well as on interviews with people in Tehran and examples taken from popular music and film. Can national identity play a positive role in liberation struggles?

Miloud Chennoufi, professor of International Relations at the Royal Military College of Canada, tells host Barry Stevens that the rapidly escalating war on Iran is not about democracy or self-defense, but a dangerous and illegal conflict driven by Israel, which has long sought to reshape the Middle East while avoiding a resolution of the Palestinian question. He claims the United States has been drawn into a war it did not need to fight, launched despite ongoing diplomacy and in the absence of any imminent threat. Far from bringing freedom, Chennoufi warns, such violence is more likely to produce shattered states and prolonged chaos. He insists that non-violent political solutions are not just morally preferable but strategically smarter—offering the only real path away from endless violence and toward an elusive peace. 

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), joins Barry Stevens to discuss the alarming wave of complaints from U.S. military personnel. Over 200 service members from 50 installations have reported that commanders in their chain of command are framing the war in Iran as part of God\'s divine plan to bring about the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming. Weinstein describes how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth holds monthly Christian Nationalist prayer services in the Pentagon\'s largest auditorium during the duty day, and how this top-down signaling is emboldening commanders to push religious ideology on their subordinates. Weinstein also confirms that some of the Christian Nationalists within the military are in positions involving nuclear weapons.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson — former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell at the State Department and Joint Chiefs — joins Paul Jay and gives his unfiltered assessment of the U.S. war on Iran. Wilkerson argues the conflict is unconstitutional, unwinnable, and strategically catastrophic. Topics include: Iran\'s military resilience and long-term strategy, Israel\'s nuclear threats, the depletion of U.S. and Israeli air defense munitions, China\'s push to replace the dollar with the renminbi, the collapse of American alliances worldwide, the threat to the 2026 midterm elections, and whether impeachment proceedings against Trump are inevitable.

Trump’s State of the Union and Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference reveal a sweeping — and deeply troubling — vision for American foreign policy. Historian Gerald Horne (University of Houston) and journalist Jonathan Katz (The Gangsters of Capitalism) join Paul Jay to break it down. What emerges is less a foreign policy than a neo-colonial project: regime change in Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba; a reordering of Europe under American dominance; and an ideology rooted in Christian civilization, white supremacy, and the Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt’s concept of Grossraum — the world divided into spheres where great powers do as they please. Katz decodes the fascist dog whistles embedded in Trump’s speech — including a number that traces directly to Nazi message boards — while Horne connects Rubio’s Munich address to a broader rollback of the anti-colonial gains of the post-WWII era and the civil rights movement at home. Is this the return of unapologetic imperialism — a neocon project stripped of any pretense of democracy and freedom? And what does Trump’s self-styled role as “king of the world” through the so-called Board of Peace mean for the United Nations and global governance?

The Epstein files are naming names — CEOs, politicians, a current and former president. This is the stratum of people making decisions about nuclear weapons in an uncontrolled arms race with no arms limitation treaties, no diplomatic channels, and AI now integrated into nuclear command systems. Paul Jay talks with Matt Korda of the Federation of American Scientists about where the U.S. nuclear modernization program actually stands — the Sentinel ICBM, hundreds of billions in cost overruns, the Golden Dome fantasy, and a launch-on-warning doctrine that even its defenders can’t rationally explain. The logic behind ICBMs collapses under scrutiny. The Golden Dome can’t work. The real objective, as with every arms race boondoggle from SAGE to SDI, is the money. As Paul puts it, “It’s not about the dome, it’s about the gold.” Meanwhile, Russia and China aren’t talking to Washington. The arms control architecture is gone. And the media is barely covering any of it. We need an anti-nuclear movement like the one that existed in the early 1980s. Midterms and a presidential election are coming. Make this an issue. Matt Korda is a senior researcher at the Federation of American Scientists.

Paul Jay joins Maria Hall, Jim Lafferty, and Michael Smith on the Law and Disorder radio show. They discuss his upcoming documentary How to Stop a Nuclear War, based on extensive interviews with Daniel Ellsberg and narrated by Emma Thompson. Jay reveals how post-World War II economic decisions drove nuclear weapons expansion, explaining why the Soviet threat was largely manufactured according to declassified CIA documents. He breaks down why Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system actually increases nuclear war risk, discusses the dangers of AI in nuclear command and control, and outlines seven concrete steps citizens can demand to reduce the threat of nuclear catastrophe, including ending presidential sole authority to launch nuclear weapons and negotiating new arms control treaties. Learn more at stop-nuclear-war.org or visit theAnalysis.news for ongoing investigative journalism.

 In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the “Doomsday Clock” to draw attention to the existential dangers posed by human technology. The time was set to seven minutes to midnight, with midnight symbolizing the destruction of life on Earth. Just two years before, in 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world saw firsthand the potential of nuclear annihilation. As World War II was ending, a different kind of conflict was underway: the Cold War. And over the next four decades, the United States and Soviet Union competed for nuclear dominance—not only through foreign policy and military strategy, but also on the home front, using propaganda and retaliation against critics. Throughout this period, people of conscience, like Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the early 70s, repeatedly sounded the alarm. Ellsberg and others warned that there was no way to “win” a nuclear war. If one side launched a nuclear weapon, the other would inevitably respond, leading to mutual destruction. Today, more than 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race continues. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, nine nations continue to stockpile nuclear weapons, including the US, Russia, China, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, France, the United Kingdom, and North Korea. On January 27, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock forward to 85 seconds to midnight—the closest humanity has ever come to global catastrophe. The question remains: Is there time and the will to change our trajectory, to learn from the past, and avoid a path to global destruction?

Gerald Horne, Johnathan M. Katz join Paul Jay: Trump’s ICE killings in Minneapolis have exposed deep splits inside the Trump camp and among business and political elites, many who now see him as dangerously unstable for capitalism itself. These fractures create a rare opening: massive street protests and sustained organizing can push harder than ever, while progressives use the crisis to run bold anti‑ICE, pro‑worker campaigns and turn elite disunity into real electoral gains.

Mark Carney’s Davos speech was widely praised as a bold stand against the breakdown of the so-called “rules-based order” and the rise of naked great-power politics under Trump. But speeches do not change power relations. In this wide-ranging analysis, Paul Jay argues that Trump did not rupture the global order so much as strip away its cover—exposing a U.S. system in internal crisis, increasingly authoritarian at home and openly coercive abroad. From hemispheric dominance to trade war and militarization, Jay situates Canada inside that system: deeply embedded in U.S. military strategy, financial capitalism, and projects like missile defense and Arctic militarization. Without a break from those foundations, talk of sovereignty and middle-power independence risks becoming performance rather than substance. The issue is not tone, but whether Canada—and others—will challenge the economic and military structures of U.S. power, or merely bargain for a safer place within them.

Director Paul Jay discusses his upcoming documentary How to Stop a Nuclear War, featuring Daniel Ellsberg's final interviews before his death. In conversation with Cole Smith, a former Air Force nuclear missile operator, Jay explains why Ellsberg's journey from Cold War hawk to whistleblower provides the perfect lens for understanding our current nuclear crisis. The discussion covers Cold War lies, the risks of AI-controlled nuclear systems, and concrete steps toward disarmament, including phasing out ICBMs and ending launch-on-warning policies. TranscriptListenDonateSubscribe Cole SmithIt's a privilege to be here, obviously, in a space that's strange for me because I used to work in these silos or ones that were very similar to these. For five years, I was a nuclear missile operator in the Air Force from 2012 to 2017, during which time many journalists, including Geoff Brumfiel, who's here somewhere, did fantastic reporting on some of the shortcomings of the missile force. Anyway, that's a whole other story.It does strike me after the last panel that what we've moved into after lunch is something that is sort of a tone shift in some ways. There's an old quote that you might have heard that a lot of people attribute to Damon of Athens, which is, "Show me the songs of a people, and I care not who writes the laws." I think in some ways, that is not to say that policy is not important, but that one of the ways that we have to move forward on this subject is through the stories that we tell.So, Paul, if you could begin by telling us where you're at with your film. If you could also just catch us up on how you came into your career to be a filmmaker on this subject.Paul JayHi. I think it's a brilliant idea to have the meeting here. Seeing that missile out there. I grew up at a time when I was... I have a young son, he's 13. He's actually up here. I made a deal with him. If he sat through all the panels, he gets to go trail riding in Bentonville.Cole SmithCan I get in on that deal?Paul JayAbsolutely. Please, because I won't get on a bike. He could use some company. So I was around his age during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I was well aware. I was into newspapers when I was six, seven years old, so I was as scared to death as everyone was during that time. By the time I was in high school, I had quit in grade 10 and never went to university because I was absolutely sure I'd be dead by the age of 20.It's interesting because my film features Daniel Ellsberg. When he worked at RAND Corporation, he was offered a pension, and he laughed and said, "I'm not putting money into a pension fund. We're not going to be here."But by the '90s and the end of the '90s, I was pretty much in as much denial about the risks of nuclear war as most others. Then, in around 2018, I read Dan Ellsberg's book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, and that book scared the shit out of me. I said to myself, "This is the most important book I've ever read in my life because of what's at stake." So, I interviewed Dan, and eventually he agreed that I could make a documentary film featuring him, and so the more I get into the topic, the more I realize how dangerous the moment is.Before we watch the trailer, I would like a promise from everyone. Of course, you're not going to make it, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can everyone please stop saying, since the end of the Cold War? It did not end. The Cold War wasn't just about the Soviet Union. The Cold War was about suppressing domestic dissent, weakening workers' unions. It was about exaggerating the external threat, whether it was the Soviet Union or now China.Listen to the rhetoric of President Trump. Is it different than McCarthy's? Is it different than the 1950s? How about Joe Biden saying he's going to defend Taiwan and risk nuclear war? How is that different than what we heard all throughout the Cold War? The Cold War didn't end. We are in the midst of it, and most of us are looking at the world through the filters that we were taught as children, a fabric of lie after lie after lie.If I had more time, I could give you the whole history of the lies, but Dan Ellsberg asked us with this film, he said directly, he said he thought we had the opportunity to do what the Pentagon Papers did, which is uncover the lies of the nuclear era. And then we also want to propose solutions, which you'll see a little bit teased in the trailer, because I am a clinical optimist. Every rational bone in my body says there's nothing to be very optimistic about, and we'd better face up to this.You know, the danger of the moment we're in, yes, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and probably far more dangerous because maybe we'll talk a bit about AI. We're at a convergence of the existential threat of climate, the existential threat of nukes, we don't know about new pandemics, and the financial architecture. '07, '08, if you listen to the business community that really knows, '07, '08, it was a whisper of what's coming. It's all coming at the same time.So are we humans going to make it? Well, every rational bone in my body says, probably not. As I said, I'm a clinical optimist, and I really do think we can make it, but we'd better face up to this crazy fabric of b******t that we swim in.Cole SmithTo pivot back to you, Paul, a trusted voice to me, and obviously to you as well, one of the most trusted voices in terms of patriotism to this country, for me, is Daniel Ellsberg. But one of the things that I come up against as a former nuclear missile operator is when I talk to people under a certain age and tell them what I used to do, they look at me like, "What are you... People still do that?"Not to be disrespectful, but Daniel Ellsberg may fall into that category as well for a lot of Americans, where it's become a name that means a lot to maybe fewer amount of people, which, of course, is all the more reason to make a film about him. But I wonder if you could speak a bit about Daniel Ellsberg, and the question that every filmmaker gets is, why now? And so why is it important to lead into this conversation with his voice, specifically at this point in time?Paul JayWell, first of all, it's not a film about Daniel Ellsberg. It's a film about our current moment, what's at risk, and what we can do about it. My approach, my belief is we cannot really face up to the reality of the risk and what solutions are if we don't get past our Cold War mentality. Because we have such a built-in belief system that's been deliberately fabricated, promoted, and inculcated in Americans, in Canadians, and Europeans, right from 1945, '46, at the very least. The reason Ellsberg is a good way to tell the story, part of the story, is because he was a true believer. Ellsberg was the most militant Cold Warrior you could possibly find. I don't know if you know who Curtis LeMay was, but he was almost on the same page. He didn't want to launch. Curtis LeMay was, for people who don't know, the head of STRATCOM, the guy who actually firebombed Japan, ordered the dropping, and actually engineered the dropping of the nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ellsberg was on his page.And then over the course of his time working at RAND Corporation, advising the Pentagon and the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he started to realize this is all based on lies. They lied about the bomber gap. They said the Soviets had 1,000 nuclear bombers, when the Americans only had about 300, 400. The truth turned out to be completely the opposite.Then they had, and out of that, by the way, I'm going to cover some things pretty fast here, but if you want to know more, I'm around. They created something called the SAGE Radar System that came out of the bomber gap, where, "Oh, they're going to come get us with bombers. We're going to have a radar system in Northern Canada that's going to have BOMARC missiles. When they come in, we're going to shoot them out of the sky because they have the advantage; they have more bombers."First, it was a lie. There were no bombers. Second of all, the bloody thing never worked because they never figured out how to deal with radar jamming. But get this, and how come none of you... Raise one person who has ever heard of the SAGE radar system before. Maybe Matt. Not even Matt. Okay, here's one. Oh, two, three. That's remarkable. I almost never get-Cole SmithYou're in good company today.Paul JayI don't know if you know this, but the SAGE Radar System... Now, the Manhattan Project was the biggest industrial project in the history of the United States, and SAGE cost three times more than the Manhattan Project. Did you know that? I didn't know that until recently. It was a boondoggle. It was a scam. It never worked.Then they have the missile gap. You saw it here. "Oh, they have a thousand. We only have 40." It turned out the Soviets had four. But out of that, they created a program called BMEWS, B-M-E-W-S. This was linked to SAGE, and it was going to have a system that could knock out ICBMs on the way in. Never worked. The whole thing was nonsense. Another in today's dollars, billions and billions of dollars.It's been lie after lie, and you can draw a line from this lying right to the Golden Dome, because the anti-ballistic missile systems... I mean, my line about it is, "It's not about the dome, it's about the gold." These are boondoggles, but they're very dangerous boondoggles because they can destabilize the whole balance of nuclear power. Because the problem... I'm jumping way faster, but we don't have much time. The problem with the Golden Dome is that it's SDI of Reagan, but with AI.So, is it possible, and you know that they've always said it's impossible to hit a bullet, meaning an incoming missile, with a bullet, meaning a missile. Now they're saying, "Oh, no, with AI, now we can hit a bullet with a bullet." But it's an entire lie, because even if you can,

Venezuela’s oil industry has long been a site of struggle—between national sovereignty and foreign control, between social development and extraction for profit. In this wide-ranging conversation, Gregory Wilpert situates today’s crisis in that longer history, from the Chávez government’s effort to reclaim PDVSA for Venezuelans to the current U.S. strategy of tying sanctions relief to oil exports. As Washington pushes Caracas to increase production and redirect crude away from China, Wilpert examines whether interim leadership in Venezuela is navigating an impossible economic bind—or whether the country’s oil and sovereignty are once again being bargained under coercion.

Richard Sakwa and Volodymyr Ishchenko on what is misunderstood about this war — and why it matters for the peace we need so badly.  In Part Two, Sakwa and Ishchenko turn to NATO’s expansion, Russia’s internal politics, and the peace proposals now being pushed. Sakwa dismisses the claim that NATO is merely defensive and rejects the idea that Russia poses a serious military threat to Western Europe. He traces the crisis to post-war settlements that shut Russia out of Europe’s security order — even after Moscow sought NATO membership. Ishchenko argues that Central European states joined NATO less out of fear of Russia than from a desire to become “European,” while Putin’s own political fears at home partly shaped the invasion. Both are skeptical of existing peace plans — yet argue that Trump’s blunt proposal, however imperial, may come closer to confronting reality. The priority: stop the killing, save as many people as possible, and prevent the ultimate catastrophe.

Richard Sakwa and Volodymyr Ishchenko on why peace was lost—and who helped destroy it. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine did not come from nowhere. In this first of two parts, Richard Sakwa and Volodymyr Ishchenko cut through the common narrative that reduces the war to Putin alone, without excusing the invasion itself. The failure — and in key moments, US sabotage — of an inclusive European security order after the Cold War helped lay the ground for conflict. Inside Ukraine, post Soviet class conflicts led to the weaponization of language, identity, and nationalism. And the far right used the threat of violence to block President Zelensky’s early efforts to pursue peace. Sakwa and Ishchenko show that understanding history is not justification — it is indictment.