Show Notes
In this week’s Conflicted Conversation, UCL associate professor Philip Cunliffe makes a provocative case: far from being polar opposites, global Islamism and American unipolarity were born of the same globalised order. But what happens when that order starts to fall apart? And is today’s rising New Left inadvertently fighting to save the liberal-imperial system it says it wants to destroy?
For deeper dives and world-class Q&As with Aimen Dean, join the CONFLICTED COMMUNITY here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm
Philip and Thomas discuss:
How U.S. unipolarity and globalisation reshaped the world after the Cold War
Why Cunliffe thinks ‘global Islam’ is a distinctly modern political phenomenon
How early state-seeking Islamism gave way to transnational Islamism and jihadism
Why neoliberal globalisation weakened state sovereignty and boosted Islamist networks
The strange overlap between liberal humanitarianism and jihadist causes
How the CIA, Afghanistan and Syria blurred the line between ally and enemy
Why the new American Left could revive the logic of liberal interventionism over Israel
What comes after the decline of American empire: sovereign nation-states or rival new blocs?
Find Philip on X: https://x.com/thephilippics
Find us on X: https://x.com/MHconflicted
And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted
And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Conflicted is a Message Heard production.
Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.
Produced and edited by Thomas Small . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from CONFLICTED
We welcome back friend of the show Baraa Shiban, who was recently on the front lines in Yemen. The Houthis have surrounded Taiz once again. Can the city that has defied Yemen's tyrants for generations hold out against another devastating siege?
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Ruben Andersson, professor of social anthropology at Oxford University's Department of International Development, discusses his new book Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession.
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, journalist Adrian Wooldridge discusses his latest book Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius of Liberalism.
Sudan’s civil war has become a regional proxy struggle, with the UAE, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and other powers backing rival armed camps as the country fragments under the pressure of war. But while the RSF’s foreign support has drawn intense scrutiny, the forces sustaining Sudan’s army — from Islamist networks to drones, money and weapons supplied from abroad — have received far less attention.
The war is widening, diplomacy has stalled, and the Middle East is once again sliding towards escalation as the relationship between Israel and the Gulf states grows closer while pressure on Iran is mounting at sea, in the air, and across its network of regional allies.