Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

I caught up with Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Pryzdaz at the Aspen Security Conference in mid July.  Poland is a front line state to the crisis in Ukraine and has been directly impacted by Russia's invasion, including hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees. Poland was also and early target of Vladimir Putin's efforts to use gas exports as a kind of blackmail; and when Poland refused to pay for Russian gas in Rubles, Russian gas was abruptly cut off.  I kick off my conversation with the Deputy Foreign Minister with a discussion about the refugee situation in Poland. We have an extended conversation about how Poland responded to Russia's abrupt suspension of gas exports and what lessons from that episode Poland might impart on other countries in Europe. We then have a broad conversation about how Poland's proximity to the fighting in Ukraine is shaping its approach to that conflict.  

Official and unofficial pronouncements from many sectors of the American foreign policy and political establishment routinely portray China as a major military threat to the United States --even claiming that this threat is existential.  This is part of a pattern that my guest today calls "threat inflation" which he argues leads to policy decisions that paradoxically leaves the US less secure.  Michael D Swaine, is director of the east asia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is the author of a new report titled "Threat Inflation and the Chinese Military" which shows how US officials may be exaggerating the military threat from China and what he argues are problematic policies that stem from inflated threat perceptions.  

In November 2021, a rebel group known as M23 carried out a series of surprising attacks in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. By the spring and summer of 2022, M23 had captured even more territory in this region.  These attacks caught many by surprise because the M23 was believed to be largely defunct But nearly 10 years later, the group is now engaged in battles with the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo for control of strategic locations in eastern DRC. My guest today Kwezi Mngqibisa is a Research Associate at the Center for African Diplomacy and Leadership at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. We kick off discussing the background of the M23 rebel group, before having a broader discussion about its apparent re-formation and why a persistent failure to address the legitimate grievances of people in the eastern DRC are fueling conflict in the region.   

Joe Biden is traveling to the Middle East for the first time as President, with stops in Israel, Palestine -- and most notably Saudi Arabia. As a candidate for president, Biden called the Saudi government a "pariah." Just weeks after taking office, he released an assessment from the US intelligence community revealing that US intelligence believes that Mohammad bin Salman approved of the operation that lead to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.  Yet in the face of high oil prices and the perceived need to re-calibrate US alliances in the region, Biden apparently feels compelled to make this trip. Kristin Diwan is senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC . We kick off discussing the recent history of US-Saudi relations -- going back through key moments of the Obama and Trump administrations before having a broader conversation about what this trip says about both Biden's approach to the Middle East and the Saudi government's key foreign and domestic policy priorities.     

Food prices are soaring around the world, and along with it so are rates of food insecurity and the risk of famine.  As my guest today, Sir Mark Lowcock explains, this is only partly due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which exacerbated an already worsening situation. Mark Lowcock is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of the new book Relief Chief: A Manifesto for Saving Lives in Dire Times. He served as the top United Nations humanitarian official from 2017 to 2021 and prior to that had a long career in the British government, including as the top civil servant in the Department for International Development. We kick off discussing what we know about the worst global food crisis in several decades before having a broader conversation about its causes, consequences -- and specific actions that can be taken to prevent this crisis from getting worse.    

As the Syrian civil war escalated, the Syrian government began obstructing access to humanitarian relief in rebel held parts of the country. So, in 2014 the UN Security Council took the extraordinary step of allowing the United Nations to deliver humanitarian relief to parts of Syria without the consent of the Syrian government and in violation of Syrian sovereignty. Since then, humanitarian aid has been able to reach besieged parts of Syria through border crossings, mainly from Turkey into Northern Syria. But in recent years divisions at the Security Council, namely Russian objections to this arrangement, have significantly limited this aid operation. There is now just one border crossing in which aid is delivered from Turkey to rebel held parts of Idlib province in northern Syria. And on July 10th, that last border crossing may close.  Today's episode is in two parts. First, you will hear from Vanessa Jackson the UN representative for Care International. She explains the broader diplomatic context in which this last border crossing may be forced shut by Russia. Then, you will hear my conversation with Ismail Alabdullah who is a volunteer in Idlib with the White Helmets, a local humanitarian relief and rescue organization. He discusses at length the humanitarian situation in Idlib and the implications of severing the last cross border lifeline of humanitarian aid. 

Brittney Griner is an American basketball superstar. On February 17th, she was arrested in an airport outside of Moscow allegedly for possession of cannabis oil. She has been held in a Russian jail ever since and her trial is scheduled to begin on July 1.  Brittney Griner's case is a text book example of what my guest today calls "Hostage Diplomacy." Dani Gilbert is an Assistant Professor of Military and Strategic studies at the US Air Force Academy.  She is a leading researcher and expert on the causes and consequences of hostage taking in international security. We kick off discussing the circumstances of Brittney Griner's arrest and detention in Russia and then have a conversation about how the US government approaches situations in which an American abroad is wrongfully detained. This leads us to a broader discussion about trends in hostage diplomacy around the world.   

Sweden and Finland have both formally requested to become members of the NATO alliance. To admit new members to NATO requires the approval of all existing NATO members and so far, Turkey is objecting. My guest today, Sibel Oktay, is associate professor at University of Illinois at Springfield and non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  We kick off with a discussion about Turkey's specific grievances with Sweden and Finland and then have a broader conversation about how this dustup between Turkey and the rest of NATO fits into broader patterns in Turkish foreign policy. This includes a long discussion of Turkey's approach to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On June 19th, reports began to emerge of a mass atrocity in the Ethiopian region of Oromia committed against members of the Amhara ethnic group. This latest attack fits into a broader pattern of ethnic violence in Ethiopia since the outbreak of civil war in November 2020. Laetitia Bader is the Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. She contributed to a joint Human Rights Watch-Amnesty International report titled "We Will Erase You from This Land:  Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing in Ethiopia’s Western Tigray Zone."  The report finds evidence of an organized campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayan people, which is occurring in the context of Ethiopia's ongoing civil war. 

In early June, Iran took the dramatic step of turning off some monitoring cameras in key nuclear facilities that had been installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The move came in reaction to a vote by the IAEA board of governors to censor Iran over its lack of cooperation with IAEA inspectors. This latest turn in the ongoing saga of nuclear diplomacy with Iran is further indication of just how precarious the 2015 Nuclear deal seems to be.  Laura Rozen is a veteran reporter who has closely followed the contours of Iran nuclear diplomacy over many years. She is a member of the Just Security editorial board and writes the "Diplomatic" newsletter on Substack We kick off discussing the state of the JCPOA as Biden inherited it in 2021 before discussing how nuclear diplomacy with Iran in the past two years has unfolded, leading to this latest crisis over the removal of IAEA monitoring cameras.