The Burn Bag Podcast

In this week’s episode, A’ndre and Ryan discuss President Biden’s investigation into the origins of COVID-19, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and the shocking air piracy by Belarus. They also discuss the crisis in Ethiopia and recent US ambassador nominations. .

This week, A’ndre and Ryan speak with Ambassador Nathan A. Sales, former State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism (2017-2021) and former Special Presidential Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. Ambassador Sales also served as Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights (acting).  Ambassador Sales opens the episode by providing a general overview of the state of U.S. Counterterrorism efforts, which is especially insightful given he left office just this past January.  Ambassador Sales then spends the majority of the episode discussing the fight against ISIS, outlining how the U.S. and Coalition forces have been successful in recent years against the terror group.  Digging deep into how ISIS managed to become so formidable, filling a power vacuum in Iraq and Syria in the early 2010s, Ambassador Sales details the power structure and leadership of ISIS, and how they operated on the ground, before going into how U.S. military strategies were adapted and why they worked to significantly reduce the ground held by ISIS in recent years.

[NOTE: This episode was recorded on Thursday afternoon, just before the ceasefire was announcement, and before President Biden's speech] In this week's episode, A'ndre and Ryan provide an update on the recent escalation in Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They also discuss the migrant crisis on the Morocco-Spain border, movement in Iran nuclear negotiations, and Havana syndrome hitting the homeland.You can also find this episode on YouTube!

In the final installment of The Burn Bag Podcast’s miniseries with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center, A’ndre and Ryan have Barry Pavel and Matthew Kroenig, the Center’s Director and Deputy Director, on to reflect on the Biden Administration’s performance in the actual first 100 days with respect to security policy. We discuss how the first 100 days might indicate future trends in policymaking, such as with alliance building and the swift toughness the Biden Administration has shown on China and Russia. Both Barry and Matt provide their praise and criticism of some decisions, praising the quickness with which President Biden has addressed some issues such as cyber, while expressing concern over  a lack of policy on North Korea and an underestimation in terms of the “need for speed” with regards to China’s developments. We spend the rest of the interview going over some overarching themes and trends within the first 100 Days, and the challenges that lie ahead for President Biden.

This week, A’ndre and Ryan speak with Ambassador Ronald Neumann, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Algeria, and Bahrain about the recently announced U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, scheduled to take place by September 11th, 2021. Ambassador Neumann provides a contextual background on Afghanistan pre-2001, focusing on the repercussions of the Soviet Invasion in the 1980s, the U.S. aid to the Mujahideen, and the linkages between the Mujahideen and Al Qaeda. We then dig into the Taliban — providing a brief overview of their governing style, their power in the country,  their actual beliefs, and their relationship to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda during, before, and after the 9/11 attacks. The second half of the interview sees Ambassador Neumann criticizing the Biden Administration’s decision for a non-conditional withdrawal, citing the relinquishment of a range of secondary goals, the likely subjugation of women, children, and other U.S.-favored Afghans, and a spate of violence that has already struck parts of the country. Ambassador Neumann expresses pessimism about the future of Afghanistan post-withdrawal, and voices concern for Afghans who had strongly believed in U.S.-based values.Ambassador Neumann currently serves as the President of the American Academy of Diplomacy, and you can find out more about his work there, here.

In this week's episode, Javed Ali joins A'ndre and Ryan to discuss the ransomware attack against the Colonial Pipeline and the Biden Administration's domestic terrorism measures. They also address the recent escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.Be sure to check out Javed's new op-ed on combating domestic terrorism.

In this week's episode, A'ndre and Ryan dissect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with University of Michigan Professor Victor Lieberman. This episode provides a broad overview of the conflict itself, going back more than a 100 years and framing the conflict as not one between Muslims and Jews, but one between two rival nationalisms -- Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism. Professor Lieberman provides a timeline that goes back to the days of the Ottoman Empire and then into the British administered Mandatory Palestine, the demographic shifts that occurred in the region due to European anti-Semitism, and the political and armed conflicts leading up to creation of the State of Israel. Professor Lieberman digs into the wars between Israel and its Arab state neighbors, the nature of Palestinian political leadership, and the relationship between the goals of the Arab states and the goal of a Palestinian state.  Land, borders, and failures in diplomacy form a large bulk of the discussion, and Professor Lieberman rounds out the conversation with why he is cautiously pessimistic about any potential resolution to the conflict. The conversation aims to effectively and objectively cover the hundred year conflict in one hour, providing a primer that will help our audience formulate opinions on their own, given the issue's sensitive nature.  Professor Victor Lieberman teaches a popular course on the Arab-Israeli conflict at the University of Michigan, where he serves as the Raoul Wallenberg Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Asian and Comparative History. His effective and objective teaching style was rewarded with the Golden Apple Award in 2014 -- given to a professor for outstanding teaching, by the students.   

In this week's episode, A'ndre and Ryan provide an update on the COVID crisis in India, breakdown the protests in Colombia, and dig into the political situations in the United Kingdom and Israel.  They also discuss Facebook's Oversight Board and whether dogecoin is going to the moon. 

Welcome to the fifth installment of The Burn Bag Podcast's special collaboration with The Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Security and Strategy,  where we highlight contributions to the Scowcroft Center's "100 Ideas for the First 100 Days" project. The fifth episode in the series delves into two big ideas by Stephen Shapiro, and Lt. Col. Matthew Crouch and Clementine Starling. Stephen talks about why the U.S. Government's domestic intelligence operations need significant reform, and proposes the idea that there be a Deputy Director of National Intelligence who'd lead domestic coordination amongst the varying intelligence agencies. In the second idea, Lt. Col. Crouch and Clementine dig into why the U.S. needs to spearhead a multilateral security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, given the rise and bellicosity of China.

In this week's episode of The Burn Bag Podcast, A'ndre and Ryan speak to Professor Stephen Walt, a distinguished thinker in international relations who currently teaches at Harvard University. Professor Walt, a leading scholar and subscriber to the school of realism in international relations, spoke to us about the state of U.S. power in the world today, and on the idea of primacy (the U.S. being the 'first among equals') and why/how the U.S. can maintain it. This leads to a broader conversation on U.S. grand strategy and the viability of 'offshore balancing' versus hegemony. A discussion on U.S. alliances and the threats from China and Russia follows, wrapping with Professor Walt's thoughts on the post-COVID world order.Professor Walt is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy, and you can check out the litany of books and other publications he has here.