Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine is Europe's largest. In March, Russian forces captured the plant and a crew of Ukrainians are maintaining operations at the plant -- effectively at gun point.  In recent weeks, fighting around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power plant has intensified, causing some damage to the plant and raising the prospect that in the context of armed conflict a catastrophic nuclear accident becomes a very real possibility.  In this episode, we are joined by Jon Wolfstol, senior advisor at Global Zero and a member of board of Science and Security at Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. We kick off by discussing how Zaporizhzhia operates in normal circumstances and how the fighting may have impacted current plant operations. We then discuss what a catastrophic event at the power plant may look like. This includes the global impact of  a nuclear meltdown at Zaporizhzhia.

In this episode, we are joined by Ali Wyne, senior analyst with Eurasia Group's Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, focusing on US-China relations and great-power competition, and author of the new book "America's Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition," which is generating a great deal of buzz in foreign policy circles. Ali Wyne offers a  critique of using competition with China and Russia as an organizing principle for US foreign policy. Great power competition, Ali Wyne argues, is inherently reactive and should not be the blueprint that drives US strategy. Rather, in an era of a resurgent China and revanchist Russia, the US can leverage certain comparative advantages it has to pursue a pro-active and forward looking agenda on the world stage. 

When national security professionals discuss "missile defense" they are are typically referring to technologies that can intercept an in-coming nuclear missile and blow it out of the sky. In 2002, the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the US signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. Since then, there has been a sharp increase in the development of missile defense technologies around the world. This has seriously complicated nuclear deterrence  Sanne Verschuren is a Stanton Nuclear Security post doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. She is working on a book about why missile defense developed and takes the forms that it does today. The book is built from her dissertation on the topic, which was awarded the prestigious the Kenneth Waltz Award for Outstanding Dissertation in the field of International Security Studies. 

Why have some countries experience durable economic progress while other countries remain left behind? This basic question has vexed development economists for decades -- and for decades economists have tried to reverse engineer one country's economic successes story to discover a blue print that could be applied elsewhere.   Stefan Dercon, was one of those economists when he had an insight that forever changed his approach to the field of development economics. He explains this insight in his new book: Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose. Stefan Dercon is professor of economic policy at the University of Oxford and a former senior official in the UK government, including as the senior economist of the United Kingdom's premier overseas development agency. 

Longtermism is a moral philosophy that is increasingly gaining traction around the United Nations and in foreign policy circles. Put simply, Longtermism holds the key premise that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time. The foreign policy community in general and the the United Nations in particular are beginning to embrace longtermism.  Next year at the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 2023, the Secretary General is hosting what he is calling a Summit of the Future to bring these ideas to the center of debate at the United Nations. Will MackAskill is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He is the author of the new book "What We Owe the Future" which explains the premise and implications of Longtermism including for the foreign policy community, particularly as it relates to mitigating catastrophic risks to humanity.       

Rapidly identifying an emerging infectious pathogen is critical to  prevent a disease outbreak from becoming an epidemic -- or even a deadly pandemic. But right now, there is no agreed international mechanism to do so. Veteran UN diplomat Angela Kane is trying to change that. She is working to create a new UN body to strengthen UN capabilities to investigate high-consequence biological events of unknown origin. Angela Kane, is the Sam Nunn Distinguished Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She is a veteran diplomat who has held several senior positions at the United Nations, including Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Under-Secretary-General for Management, and High Representative for Disarmament.     

Kenya's Ambassador to the United Nations Martin Kimani gave a viral speech at the UN Security Council on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Months later, Ambassador Kimani reflects on the impact of that speech and why Russian aggression against Ukraine is so resonant to Africa's own experience with colonialism.  Our conversation was recorded live at the Aspen Security Forum in Mid July and Ambassador Kimani also discusses the impact of the war in Ukraine on Kenya and what opportunities still exist for multilateralism in a divided world.   

Prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Middle East was heavily dependent on importing food from Ukraine and Russia. The disruption of grain exports from the Black Sea region has had a profoundly negative impact on food security in the Middle East. I'm joined today my Arnaud Quemin, Middle East regional director for Mercy Corps. We kick off discussing what the food security situation in the region looked like before the war and then have an extended conversation about how the global food crisis is impacting people and politics in the Middle East. 

On May 9th, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was elected President of the Philippines. If that name sounds familiar to you, it is because he is the son of Ferdinand Marcos Senior, the brutal kleptocrat who ruled the Philippines for nearly 20 years. Marcos Jr., who is commonly known as “Bongbong,” took office on June 30th succeeding Rodrigo Duterte, whose six year term was marked by a sharp deterioration of human rights in the Philippines, including a so-called “war on drugs” in which several thousands of people were extrajudicially killed by state security forces. Bongbong Marcos’ vice president is Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte.  To help explain this new chapter in Philippines politics is Dr. Tom Smith, Principle Lecturer in International Relations for the University of Portsmouth, and the Academic Director to the Royal Air Force College.

Kenyans will go to the polls on August 9th to elect a new president. The current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, is term limited from seeking re-election and the two main candidates are both very familiar figures in Kenyan politics.  William Ruto is currently the Deputy to President Kenyatta. But the two men had a falling out and now President Kenyatta is backing Ruto's main rival, Raila Odinga. For his part, this is Odinga's fifth time running for president.  Kenya has a recent history of highly competitive elections that are sometimes accompanied by violence. Disputed elections in 2007 lead to over 1,000 people killed and hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes. On the line with me to help make sense of all this political intrigue and explain the significance of these elections is Caroline Kimeu. East Africa Correspondent for The Guardian.