America in a World of Upheaval

America in a World of Upheaval

From The Foreign Affairs Interview by Foreign Affairs Magazine

April 2, 2026 · 1h 9m

About this episode

William Burns discusses the current geopolitical upheaval and its implications for U.S. foreign policy.

In 2024, when he was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns wrote in an essay in Foreign Affairs about “the plastic moments that come along only a few times each century”—and argued that “the United States faces one of those rare moments today, as consequential as the dawn of the Cold War or the post-9/11 period.” If that claim seemed bold at the time, events in the past couple of years have made it undeniable—a major war in Europe, two wars in the Middle East, sharpening U.S.-Chinese tensions, a U.S. administration committed to projecting power in new and disruptive ways, and technologies adding complexity across all of these other challenges. “Inflection point” is an overused term. But this is a moment when, as Burns argued in that essay, it really does fit. Before becoming CIA director, Burns was one of the most highly respected diplomats in recent American history. He started the secret negotiations that led to the Iran nuclear deal. He served as ambassador to Russia. As the State Department’s top Middle East official, he warned internally of the consequences of invading Iraq in 2003. He has spent years sitting across the table from American allies and…

People in this episode

Host: Dan Kurtz-Phelan

Guest: William Burns

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Affairs

Places: United States, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Middle East

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