Foreign Exchanges: the Podcast

I welcome back Ryan Cooper (@ryanlcooper), national correspondent for The Week magazine and co-host of the exciting new Left Anchor podcast (you can also check them out on Twitter). Ryan wrote a piece last week (his full archive is here) looking at the alternative to the ossified “free trade” consensus that’s emerging on the left in the Democratic primary, and he’ll walk us through the development of that consensus and why it’s so ripe to be challenged now.Tom Friedman and The Mustache of Understanding make a cameo appearanceYes, I know I introduce the episode as “August 7,” but that’s because we did in fact record the interview yesterday evening. I’d hoped to send it out yesterday in fact but by the time I got done with my usual amateur efforts at cleaning it up I decided it would be better to send it out in the morning. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

All of FX’s interviews are available to the public, but if you’d like to support the podcast and get access to exclusive content, subscribe today:I’m joined by Stephen Wertheim (@stephenwertheim on Twitter), Co-Founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Research Director of its Ending Endless War program and a Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Stephen has been trying to make sense of the Blob for a while now and he’s here to share his thoughts about an overly militarized, interventionist U.S. foreign policy establishment. We discuss the development of the Blob and the role he sees the new Quincy Institute playing in trying to bring new perspective to the foreign policy debate in DC. This episode also features a guest appearance by my dog, so be sure to listen for that. Enjoy!Quincy’s logo, pilfered from their website This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

I’m very pleased to welcome Andrew Fishman (@AndrewDFish), managing editor for the Intercept Brasil. He’s here to guide us through the bombshell reporting the Intercept is currently doing on the scandal involving the Operation Car Wash scandal (yes, it’s a scandal over a scandal) and what seems to have been the very politically motivated corruption prosecution of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. That prosecution prevented Lula from running for president again in 2018 and paved the way for the election of far-right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro. We’ll talk about Lula, Operation Car Wash, and the timeline of events that brought them together, and then Andrew will take us into what the Intercept has learned about Lula’s case and the actions of its presiding judge (now Bolsonaro’s justice minister), Sérgio Moro. Enjoy!For English readers, you can find the Intercept’s series on the Lula prosecution here (that’s part four but there are links to the previous three pieces). If you know Portuguese, you can go here and check out all seven parts published to date (the English series is a little behind). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

I’m very grateful to be joined in this episode by Darren Byler, lecturer in anthropology at the University of Washington. Darren’s research focuses on art and culture in Xinjiang and he’s done considerable field work in the region. He’s here to walk us quickly through Uyghur history, to talk about his own work in the region, and to give us a sense of the Chinese government’s campaign to stamp out Uyghur culture under the guise of “counter-terrorism.”LINKS:Darren has a website, “The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia,” that covers art and politics in Northwest China and Central Asia and provides a digital home for Xinjiang artists to tell their stories and display their work. Check it out at LivingOtherwise.com.Darren also writes a regular column on Xinjiang for supchina.com, which you can find here.Finally, his recent Guardian piece on high-tech state surveillance in Xinjiang is here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

I’m joined by Australia’s own Matt Brady to discuss Saturday’s election and the sordid cast of characters involved in its decidedly unexpected outcome. We look at what happened to the Labor Party and what to expect now that Scott Morrison has a whole term ahead of him—at the risk of spoiling the ending, it’s not good. Enjoy! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

I'm joined for either the first or third time by Alex Thurston from Miami University of Ohio to talk about inter-communal violence in Mali, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, as well as an update on the Boko Haram(s) conflict in Nigeria. Alex is an expert on the Sahel region who writes at several places, but you should definitely check out his Sahel Blog and his books:* Salafism in Nigeria from Columbia University Press* Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement from Princeton University PressYou can also follow him on Twitter.I’ve uploaded two previous interviews I did with Alex when I was at Patreon, which you can find most easily on our Archive page. And to answer your other question, we do now have an RSS feed for unlocked episodes, so please plug it in to your favorite podcast app: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast?publication_id=6479. RSS feeds for subscribers are still in the works but should be available soon. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

Hey folks. This is just a short introductory message to welcome you here to Substack and explain a bit about how the podcast end of things is going to work. Mostly it’s an excuse for me to test out Substack’s podcasting feature before doing a real episode, which I will be doing later this week. I know there have been some questions about an RSS feed and I answer those as best I can in the audio. I’ll have more updates on that as I hear more from Substack. If you have additional questions/issues regarding podcasting please use the comments or email me: attwiw@gmail.com (I’ll be changing that but for now I’m still using it. Thanks for listening! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

We're a day earlier than usual with this week's first episode, but I like to get interviews out quickly because of the possibility they'll be overtaken by events.As promised, I'm joined by John Carl Baker, a senior program officer at the Ploughshares Fund who works on North Korea, to discuss last week's failed US-DPRK summit in Hanoi. John walks us through the history of US-North Korea diplomacy back to the Clinton administration, offers his thoughts on the positives and negatives of the Trump approach toward North Korea, and suggests a better way forward that centers inter-Korean engagement and lets Koreans take the lead for a change. Enjoy!John's recent Defense One piece with Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione, on Democrats' response to Trump's North Korea diplomacy, is here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

In something of an emergency episode brought on by the sudden onset of a political crisis in Venezuela, I'm joined by political scientist and DSA member Jared Abbott. Jared specializes in Latin America and just returned from doing fieldwork in Venezuela, and he's here to hopefully put recent events into some context. This episode is open to the public so feel free to share.The Jacobin interview Jared mentions toward the end of the show can be found here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/venezuela-maduro-chavez-military-intervention This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe

For our final regular podcast of 2018, I'm joined by political scientist Ann Marie Wainscott of Miami University of Ohio. Ann is currently researching the religious sector in Iraq, but I wanted to talk about her past work in Morocco (ruled by King Mohammed VI, pictured). We talk about the Moroccan government's efforts to bureaucratize religious expression after the Casablanca bombings of 2003, Morocco's efforts to position itself as a "third pole" in the Islamic World, between and apart from the Saudi-Iran rivalry. Finally she helps shed some light on conditions in the Rif surrounding the 2016-2017 Hirak Rif protests and on recent developments in the frozen Western Sahara conflict. This one will be open to the public. Enjoy!Ann's book is Bureaucratizing Islam from Cambridge University Press. The 2017 Journal of Politics and Religion article she mentions can be found here if you have some institutional access, and she's also got a 2015 article in the Journal of North African Studies on Islamic education in Morocco post-Casablanca. Check out her website, annmariewainscott.com, and give her a follow on Twitter, @AnnMWainscott.Finally, since this is it for our regular podcasts in 2018, let me say Happy Holidays to you and yours, and see you in 2019! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.foreignexchanges.news/subscribe