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On the latest episode of GoodFellows, senior fellows John Cochrane, H.R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson, joined by moderator and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, tackle topics from the Middle East to academic politics. Along the way, the guys consider the presidential prospects of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and whether the United States is likely to embrace democratic socialist candidates in upcoming elections.
Read on for highlights from this conversation on several of the biggest stories of the summer of 2026.
Quote of the Day
John Cochrane explains why, in his view, economic sanctions haven’t been very effective in Iran:
What’s the point [of sanctions]? Is it to destroy the economy? As we’ve pointed [out] on the show many times, North Korea, Cuba, they’ve suffered sanctions for a long, long time and it has destroyed the economy and not brought down the regime. The reporting I’m hearing says that the Iranians are on a full war footing. They are going to tough it out, take any reprieve as a chance to rebuild and shoot missiles at the Strait of Hormuz as necessary, and get ready for the next one.
The Central Issue: The War in Iran
Bill Whalen asks Niall Ferguson whether a strategy of “economic shock and awe” will be sufficient to compel the Iranian regime to change its behavior. Says Ferguson:
The issue is whether economic measures such as the blockade that has been imposed by the United States on Iran can be effective where military measures, in particular airstrikes, have not been effective. The lesson of history, to go back to John’s point, is that it seldom succeeds if you just use economic warfare. In the history of the British Empire, blockades were imposed, but they were usually imposed, for example, in World War I as part of an all-out military effort that included land forces, sea forces, and later in the war air forces.
Ferguson then explains how he sees the current state of the Iran war:
So what we’re really looking at here is a war that’s been going on for six months now in which the United States has failed to achieve its objectives except for regime change, which it did achieve, except it ended up with a worse regime than intended. Everything else has failed, and a new problem has been created. . . the economic problem of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. I do not think, because it hasn’t worked so far, that economic coercion is going to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened.
Former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster describes how American strategy should change to deal with an Iranian regime that remains intact:
The real key is an integrated approach to the application of all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners. . . I think what we should be doing overall at this moment is weakening the regime’s grip on power as well as restricting the resources available to them. And the way to do that, I think, is to use Stephen Kotkin’s “Five Sources of Authoritarian Control.”
McMaster lays out the tenets of Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin’s argument on breaking authoritarian regimes, by degrading the pillars they rely on for control and stability:
What do [authoritarian regimes] need? Cashflow. Okay. . . restrict their cashflow. What do they need? Security forces. Well, divide those security forces, as maybe they’re having a problem and not being able to pay those security forces because you’re restricting the cashflow. What else do they need? They need control over life chances. So we should be trying to break the regime’s grip on these bonyads [charitable trusts that account for a significant share of Iranian GDP]. And we should realize that if we try to liberalize or to restore cash flows, it’s just going to restore their grip on power. They need propaganda. They need stories to tell their people. We should be getting around the firewall, providing the Iranian people with alternative sources of information. And finally, they need an international system that helps them along. And this is what they get from China and Russia, to a lesser extent in North Korea. So we should be working on this from the outside in.
Key Takeaways
What does rising support for “democratic socialism” portend for the Democratic Party and for American politics more generally?
John Cochrane offers a blend of economic, technological, and political insights into the direction of the Democratic Party as it seeks to regain control of Congress and the presidency in upcoming elections.
The [moderating] mechanism is not likely for the next presidential election because the forces driving polarization are there and stronger than they were in the 1990s. The Democrats are playing a long game. They’re [asking] what is the party and probably the country going to look like in 2035, 2040. And first they have to take over their own party to do that. . . What AOC is doing is moving hard towards the center. She wants to be the Bill Clinton. She’s actually thinking about not just the Democratic primary, but winning the general. . . The interesting thing is that [hers is] such an old set of ideas. Rent controls, huge taxation and redistribution, and we kind of know how it comes out. So I’m interested that she can run on the 1909 Socialist Party platform and think that’s going to work.
What lessons can be drawn from the demise of former Cambridge professor Jason Arday?
Resident Briton and leading authority on the politics of higher education Niall Ferguson:
This was a tragic case, but it was also a farcical case. And it wouldn’t have ended this way if there had not been a concerted effort, not just by Cambridge University, but by other universities too, to promote Jason Arday vastly above his talents and capabilities in pursuit of the great goal of Woke One, which was maximum diversity regardless of the costs to intellectual quality. It is a tragic case. I have to say I had a sense it might end this way when I began to pay attention to Jason Arday because he seemed so obviously a fragile fabulous. For those who haven’t followed the case closely, it wasn’t just that his resume was padded. It was just a massive confection of fantasies, almost none of which in fact could be documented. . . The list of fantastical stories was just extraordinary to the point that I began to wonder if Jason Arday was a Sacha Baron Cohen character. But when one actually took a look at the man, you saw that he was being used. . . I think it’s a tragedy because they used him and he was utterly exposed once he had been hyped in the way that he was hyped by Cambridge. And it really wasn’t hard to show that the whole story was a tissue of lies.
Recommended Reading
Niall Ferguson shares that he has recently been reading some of the novels of Scottish author Iain Banks.
H.R. McMaster recommends “The Weakness of the Strongmen“ by Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin, which discusses the pillars of authoritarian regimes’ power.
Bill Whalen also recommends the new movie, The Brink of War. Says the distinguished moderator, “It’s a just released film about the 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev Summit in Reykjavik. It stars the character actor J.K. Simmons as the late great [Hoover Senior Fellow and Secretary of State] George Shultz.”
Parting Wisdom
H.R. McMaster reflects on the long deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln, spanning over 250 days at sea. Against the grain of much media coverage, McMaster says this deployment, while challenging, is what these sailors and their officers have been trained to do, and they’ve done the job well.
I don’t think those sailors are burned out. I mean, I’m sure there’s some sailors, obviously you reach the breaking point. But the thing about our military is people come into the military from all different backgrounds, all different experiences. They have different personal lives happening back at home. And so everybody has a breaking point. I mean, all of us have breaking points and combat and the pace of events puts additional stress on people and some people hit their breaking point. The key for leaders is to prevent that from happening by providing the purpose, motivation, and direction to the unit; [and to] explain to them how important it is for them to accomplish this mission, but also to look for the warning signs and those who are showing evidence of combat stress and combat trauma and so forth. That’s just part of your leadership responsibility in combat.
That wraps up this GoodFellows conversation guide. If you like this companion to the show, or have any recommendations for future conversation guides, please let us know in the comments below.
John H. Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. An economist specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics, he is the author of The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level. He also authors a popular Substack called The Grumpy Economist.
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Ascent of Money, Civilization, and Doom; columnist with the Free Press; founder of Greenmantle; and co-founder of the University of Austin.
H. R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and distinguished visiting fellow at Arizona State University. He is author of the bestselling books Dereliction of Duty, Battlegrounds, and At War With Ourselves.