On this week's episode of Security Dilemma, John Allen Gay and A.J. Manuzzi spoke with Michael Brenes. Dr. Brenes is Co-Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at Yale University. His research interests include United States foreign policy, political history, and political economy.

He is the author of For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy, published by University of Massachusetts Press in 2020, as well as the co-author (with fellow former Security Dilemma guest Van Jackson) of The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.

Our conversation focused on why a framework of "great power competition" is unlikely to reinforce peace and democracy, Cold War liberalism, and the principles of a progressive foreign policy.