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Welcome back to After the End of History. This discussion was recorded on August 27th, 2026. The many false starts and stops of the war on Iran tell us, unhappily and perversely, that this conflict will stretch well into our future – just as we recognize its long past continuity from the 2016 strikes on Syria to the war on Iran in 1980 just after its revolution. This follows recent episodes where we talked to Brandon Wolff -Hunnicutt about the Iraq wars, and Nicholas Mulder about sanctions often preparing and precipitating total war. The long draw up to this war, and its likely duration, suggest that Iran’s sin against the West is not only its success in outmaneuvering sanctions but the Islamic Republic itself as a future-orientated form, birthed by necessity, that contributes a heretofore unknown model of popular democracy underwritten by religious law. Our guest today describes the life and ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the IR, which initiated a process that continues to develop and deepen even in a war against the world super-power. Dr. Nura Hossainzadeh is the author of the 2016 dissertation in Political Science at UC Berkeley, “The Constitutionalism of Ruhollah Khomeini's Theory of Guardianship.”  (read it here: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rg2c49c ), as well as recent articles in Middle East Eye: www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-boogeyman-mullahs-trope-led-us-war-iran In conversation with our own Pat Cabell, she describes the constitutionalist responses to Iran’s early 20th Century occupations by imperial powers, and how conceptions of anti-imperialism turned to the Islamic tradition for guidance. This is a rich and rarely heard perspective on Iran as not disfigured by its battle with the empire but emboldened to inaugurate a new stage in the journey of spirit, and a new chapter of revolution, akin to the historical role of the Mexican and Russian peasants at the beginning of the century. A partial list of works mentioned in this discussion: - Homa Katouzian. Iran and the Revolution (2026) - Vali Nasr. Iran's Grand Strategy (2025) - Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi. Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2019) as well as https://phenomenalworld.org/analysis/mosaic-of-deterrence/ - Ruhollah Khomeini. (anonymous) Kashf al-Âsrâr (unveiling of secrets). 1943. - Khomeini. Hukumat-i Islami: Velayat-e faqih (Governance of the Jurist). 1970. Hawks and Sparrows is a research collective that has been publishing and podcasting about international relations, Marxist and conservative political philosophy, history and aesthetics since 2020. Our primary archive can be found at the Patreon page for the After the End of History podcast patreon.com/afterhistory where you can also subscribe and support our work. ATEOH on X https://x.com/after_history Support the show

Welcome back to our jaunt through Alejo Carpentier’s “El siglo de las luces”, a maritime escapade in the Americas at the time of the French Revolution. With some of the literary theory covered already in episode 1, where we made the case for why this is a unique example of historical realism, we finally enjoy retelling the arc of the story and reading sections of its lurid prose. A deserted island boar feast, a guillotine being rowed into Guadalupe’s bay by starlight, former revolutionaries reimposing slavery amidst the malarial swamp of Guyane… this one’s got it all.  [Recorded December 2025] Support the show

[Recorded on 29 July 2025.]  We sat down with the always insightful Christopher Mott of the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy to talk about the patterns of American culture and their effects on foreign policy. His distinctive blend of cultural criticism, global history, and strategic thinking were on full display. Listeners will enjoy our discussion of the deep history of Eurasia in his 2015 book The Formless Empire: A Short History of Warfare and Diplomacy in Central Asia. We asked him questions about his amazing white paper Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism and the sarcastic wisdom found on his blog The Trickster’s Guide to Geopolitics. But the core of our conversation revolved around the prospects of a new realism in American foreign policy since the disasters of Ukraine, the Middle East and looming war with China.  Links: The Formless Empire: A Short History of Diplomacy and Warfare in Central Asia Woke-Imperium The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics | International Relations for the Outsider Modus Vivendi: Realism's Missing Link Support the show

[Recorded 31 January 2025] A continuation of our discussion on Marx's "forgotten text," Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers' Movement.  Support the show

Welcome back to our mini-series on realism and the Latin American novel. In this episode, we provide a thorough engagement with the late Peruvian master, Mario Vargas Llosa, an author of major works from all the way back in the 1950s to the current decade. Pat speaks with Neil Larsen, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, about his seminal essay, “Mario Vargas Llosa: The Realist as Neo-Liberal.” What makes Vargas Llosa revolutionary as a storyteller, but a reactionary ideologue? We cast a glance over Perú’s distinct 20th century history and how Vargas Llosa’s anti-leftism oddly heralded the Milei/Bolsonaro New Right, possibly soon to include Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori. Thus, we discuss in detail Vargas Llosa's great novel Historia de Mayta, about a failed 1958 highlands insurgency, written during the Sendero Luminoso uprising. We also consider two of Vargas Llosa's strongest 21st Century works, the interlinked La Fiesta del Chivo (2000) about the Dominican Republic and Tiempos Récios (2019) about Guatemala, which seem to confirm Neil’s thesis that despite his reactionary politics he couldn’t help but depict a CIA coup with anything but bone-chilling precision and sober pessimism. Support the show

[Recorded on 15 December 2025] In this opening installment of our series on literary realism, we focus on Alejo Carpentier’s El siglo de las luces (Explosion in a Cathedral). This work holds particular significance for the show, as host Pat dedicated a substantial portion of his dissertation to Carpentier's life and literature. We approach the novel as a primary example of how literature can map the "grand epochal changes" of history. After a brief biographical sketch of Carpentier, we present his work against the volatile backdrop of the French Revolution as it spreads to the Caribbean, centering on the dual struggles for abolition and independence. Our analysis is framed by the perspective of Perry Anderson, who identifies realism as a vital academic and political project. Further, by engaging with the work of Georg Lukács and Fredric Jameson, we use this episode to reconstruct a theory of "the totality," the idea that the things we read and watch are not isolated incidents but parts of a larger, ensnaring system.  Support the show

We sat down with Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Associate Professor of History at California State University Stanislaus. He specializes in the history of the modern Middle East, American foreign policy, and the political economy of oil and natural gas. His previous book The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy: Oil and Arab Nationalism in Iraq was the subject of one of our first interviews at After the End of History. The book details a number of historical transitions: the shifting of American business and political coalitions as the Texan oil majors gained the upper hand in setting foreign policy, especially in the presidency of LBJ, the origins of OPEC as developmentalist growth model for Arab nationalists, and the conflicts between layers of the Iraqi military in 1960s. Brandon has also published articles in the journals Diplomatic History, Diplomacy and Statecraft, and Reviews in American History.  In this episode, we discuss the continued power of the Neoconservative tendency in setting the agenda of American foreign policy, the nature of the Israel Lobby, and comparisons between the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the current US/Israeli war on Iran. Support the show

Nicholas Mulder is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Cornell University. His previous book is The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War and he is currently close to completion on a book entitled The Age of Confiscation: Making and Taking Property in the Creation of the Modern World. He also started a Substack last year which contains some of the best commentary on the geo-economic conflicts unfolding before our eyes, often with very useful historical analogies for thinking about sanctions, embargoes and tariffs. It is called WeltinnenPolitik.  It is hard to imagine a book being published at a more perfect time than Nicholas Mulder’s 2022 book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. After the start of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent announcements of massive US-NATO sanctions against Russia, many of us turned to Mulder’s book to try to make sense of our period of great power tensions, economic and technological competition, and major war in Europe. The Economic Weapon brought readers a fresh and technical analysis for interpreting the breakdown of peace in the interwar period and the dashing of liberal visions of international cooperation. Most importantly, Mulder’s book did not just reaffirm the well-known cliches of liberal orthodoxy about free societies versus totalitarianism, but situated economic sanctions as a paradoxical tool of coercion and warfare - sometimes conceived as preventing war, while other times as precipitating it.  His story begins with the efforts of British naval officials and financial authorities during WWI to leverage British naval power to enforce a blockade against the Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The central paradox of his narrative is how a tool originally designed to escalate a total war strategy and coerce civilian populations would come to be thought of as a tool in preventing aggression in the League of Nations. While sometimes effective, Mulder also shows how diplomatic wrangling, ideological competition and the Great Depression often blunted multilateral commitment to use the economic weapon properly. And fear of sanctions by the late 1930s itself became a driver of strategic visions that saw territorial expansion as the only way to secure the energy, food and extractive resources that could maintain the viability of revisionist states. While far from any kind of apologia for the actions taken by the Axis powers, there is something in your account of the spirit of AJP Taylor’s Origins of the Second World War in which the Allied Powers are not absolved of some blame.  Support the show

Interest in Karl Marx is surging amidst current debates on economic inequality. Join us as we sit down with historian Andrew Hartman to discuss his fascinating new book, Karl Marx in America, a comprehensive account of how Marx's writings have been used and interpreted in the United States from the late 19th century through the modern era. Professor Hartman explores the century-plus evolution of Marxism in America, including how early socialists navigated the unique social and cultural conditions that underpin ideas of "American exceptionalism." We delve into Marx's own surprising views on American economic and political life, including his writings for the New York Daily Tribune and his thoughts on the Civil War. Our discussion also illuminates the critical debates surrounding W.E.B. Du Bois's Black Reconstruction, analyzing whether Du Bois was adapting Marx to the American racial order or revealing something essential that others had overlooked. The episode also explores the chilling effect of the Cold War on the reception of Marx's thought, the complexities of Cold War liberalism, and the long-term influence of Trotskyism and the New York Intellectuals. Finally, we consider the legacy of the New Left's focus on cultural criticism and how future historians might judge their contributions. Don't miss this essential deep dive into a powerful, enduring, and often contradictory intellectual history. Support the show

One of the most striking developments in recent intellectual life has been the convergence of critics from both the conservative and Marxist traditions, united in their skepticism toward the excesses of progressive liberalism. Few outlets embody this shift as much as Compact magazine, where unlikely allies have found common ground in challenging America’s domestic administrative state, its global reach, and the pressures of cultural conformity. The intellectual touchstones of this post-liberal moment are names like René Girard, Christopher Lasch, and above all, Alasdair MacIntyre. Our guest, Nathan Pinkoski, has been central to this conversation. He’s the translator of Emile Perreau-Saussine’s new biography of MacIntyre, and the author of “Actually Existing Postliberalism,” an article that reframed the post–Cold War transformation not as a triumph of globalization, but as the rise of new hierarchies shaped by finance and the fusion of state and society. In our conversation, we ask him what first drew him into philosophy and political theory, why MacIntyre remains essential reading today, and how thinkers like Judith Shklar and Samuel Moyn fit into this broader debate. We’ll also explore his analysis of globalization’s hidden architecture, the late Cold War’s imprint on U.S. foreign policy, and what the 1990s really meant for the world we inhabit now. This is a wide-ranging discussion about the erosion of liberal order, the paradoxes of American power, and the uncertain horizons of our post-liberal age. Support the show

In this episode, we sit down with historian Greg Grandin to discuss his new book America, América, which reimagines the hemisphere’s intertwined republican traditions and confronts the United States’ monopolization of the very idea of “America.” Known for landmark works such as The Empire of Necessity and The End of the Myth, Grandin has long illuminated Latin America’s central role in the making of the modern world. We explore how Latin American thinkers used immanent critique to measure U.S. democracy against its own ideals, and why common republican foundations led to divergent political paths across the hemisphere. We also ask how his earlier prediction of a more repressive United States after the closing of the frontier has held up, and whether America, América offers an alternative diplomatic and intellectual horizon. Along the way, we consider the Catholic and scholastic legacies in Latin American thought, comparisons of racial orders across the Americas, the contested meaning of independence for the dispossessed, and the enduring tensions of social democracy in the region.  Support the show

On this episode, we're excited to present an interview Pat recorded on July 10th with the author and researcher Aaron Good. As with other upcoming interviews, this was a great opportunity to break out of the inherent insolation of social media and inform our positions on the interstate order by engaging with one of the brightest perspectives in the political science discipline. In addition to offering an invaluable backstory to the phenomenon of 'the deep state' and its progeny like Jeffrey Epstein, the discussion ranges broadly around the means and methods of narrative control, as well as how would-be knowledge producers can navigate the modern prison-house. Aaron Good hosts the American Exception podcast, appears regularly on Youtube in discussion with major figures like Jeff Sachs, Oliver Stone, and Daniele Ganser, and has taken the torch of counter-intelligence research from mentors like Peter Dale Scott and David Talbot. In this hour, they address what the JFK assassination signified for those authors, and what Aaron has contributed since, to our understanding of involvement by the mob, teamsters, and Mossad. Pat also asks him to describe his intellectual journey, the state of academia in the empire, his top 5 podcasts, reflections on the relationship between literature and espionage, and the way our institutions are promoting narrative capture, even as they are falling in credibility. More about the author: Aaron is host of the American Exception Podcast and author of 'American Exception: Empire and the Deep State,' which you can check out here. You can find more of Aaron's work on his engaging, provocative and regularly updated Substack where he covers a host of topics related to the Deep State:  The Gray Alliance and JFK's AssassinationThe Lansky-Teamster Syndicate and the Deep State Global Drug ConnectionThe Gray Alliance: How Ultra-Zionist Neoconservatism Took Over the American Deep StateSupport the show

[Recorded on 26 April 2025] After the End of History discusses The Grayzone's interview with Andres Duran.  Support the show

[Recorded on 14 April 2025] In this week's discussion, ATEOH take a look at the New York Times long read, "The Secret History of the War in Ukraine." What "revelations" has the article surfaced, and how does this all bode for the broader implications of the war? Is NATO headed for collapse? What are the strategic lessons for future conflicts, particularly with China? Our conversation concludes with reflections on the US's declining global influence and the limitations of proxy wars. Support the show

[Recorded 31 January 2025] A continuation of our discussion on Marx's "forgotten text," Herr Vogt: A Spy in the Workers' Movement.  Support the show