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.

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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.

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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.

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