The World Unpacked

Where is Turkey heading? Last month president Erdogan narrowly won a referendum to give his presidency sweeping new powers. What does this portend for Turkey's relationship with the region and the rest of the world? And how far is he planning to go to entrench the pier of the AKP in his pursuit of Islamic nationalism at home? Tom Carver discussed Turkey's trajectory with Carnegie Europe's Sinan Ülgen and the director of Carnegie’s Europe Program, Erik Brattberg. Sinan Ülgen is the author of Governing Cyberspace: A Road Map for Transatlantic Leadership (Carnegie Europe, 2016), Handbook of EU Negotiations (Bilgi University Press, 2005), and The European Transformation of Modern Turkey with Kemal Derviş (Centre for European Policy Studies, 2004). He has served in the Turkish Foreign Service in several capacities: in Ankara on the United Nations desk; in Brussels at the Turkish Permanent Delegation to the European Union; and at the Turkish embassy in Tripoli. (More on Ülgen - http://carnegieeurope.eu/experts/?fa=547) Erik Brattberg is director of the Europe Program and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He joined Carnegie from the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, where he was the director for special projects and a senior fellow. (More on Brattberg - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1342)

Millions of people in the developing world encounter corruption every day, in the form of bribes they have to pay to go about their daily lives. But there’s an insidious form of corruption that permeates entire structures, including governments, which is often hidden in apparently legitimate activity. Carnegie Senior Fellow Sarah Chayes has been researching this form of corruption for the better part of a decade. She argues that in corrupt countries, kleptocratic networks involve not only government officials, but private industries and established criminal networks. In her recent report, When Corruption is the Operating System: The Case of Honduras, Sarah examines how the kleptocratic system functions in a case study on that country. Sarah joins Tom and Zephyr Teachout, author of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, and a democratic candidate in the New York gubernatorial race, for a discussion on corruption and power. Sarah Chayes is internationally recognized for her innovative thinking on corruption and its implications. Her work explores how severe corruption can help prompt such crises as terrorism, revolutions and their violent aftermaths, and environmental degradation. (More on Chayes - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/712) Zephyr Teachout is an associate professor of law at Fordham University. (More on Teachout -https://www.fordham.edu/info/23186/zephyr_teachout)

As the recent horrific bombings show, there are no easy solutions in Afghanistan. The conflict is the United States’ longest-running war, and despite the billions of dollars that have been spent in foreign support since 9/11, the Taliban continues to pose a major security threat. The White House is in the midst of a review of its Afghanistan policy and will decide later this year whether to increase the number of US troops in the country. Carnegie expert Ashley Tellis has analyzed the issue for many years, and discusses the choices facing the White House with Tom Carver. Ashley Tellis served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He also served on the U.S. National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (RAND, 2001) and co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (RAND, 2000). Tellis holds the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs.​ (More on Tellis - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/198)

On May 19, Iran elected a new president. Centrist incumbent Hassan Rouhani won by a comfortable margin in a high-turnout election, defeating hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi. With the dust settled, what does the outcome mean for Iran's young population, for the region, and for the United States? Carnegie’s Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour discusses the election result and what it means with Tom Carver. Karim Sadjadpour, a leading researcher on Iran, has conducted dozens of interviews with senior Iranian officials and hundreds with Iranian intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students, activists, and youth, among others. He contributes regularly to publications such as the Economist, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune,and Foreign Policy. (More on Sadjadpour - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/340)

18 million people are estimated to work for the Indian national government, and that number doesn’t include India’s regional and state governments. Yet, compared to the size of the Indian population—1.3 billion—it’s not very large. The biggest challenge for the Indian state is not its size, but its inefficiency. While the last three decades have seen dramatic transformations in the country’s economy and the private sector, the state has failed to modernize at the same rate. Tom Carver talks the authors of a new book titled, Rethinking Public Institutions in India, Carnegie Senior Fellow Milan Vaishnav, Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, about the massive challenges India faces and the state’s ability to adapt. Milan Vaishnav is the author of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics (Yale University Press and HarperCollins India, 2017). His work has also been published in scholarly journals such as India Review, India Policy Forum, and Latin American Research Review. He is a regular contributor to several Indian publications. (More on Vaishnav - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/714) Devesh Kapur is the director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, and a professor of political science and Madan Lal Sobti professor for the study of contemporary India at the University of Pennsylvania. (More on Kapur - https://casi.sas.upenn.edu/about/people/devesh) Pratap Bhanu Mehta is the president and chief executive of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi and a contributing editor at the Indian Express. (More on Mehta - http://www.cprindia.org/people/pratap-bhanu-mehta)

Europe’s relationship with its eastern frontier is at a turning point. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and the ensuing crisis in Ukraine, has forced the EU to reevaluate its relationship with its eastern neighbors. The heady, post Cold War optimism of a single free Europe has confronted cold, hard reality. Carnegie Senior Fellow Richard Youngs joins Tom Carver for a conversation about his new book, Europe’s Eastern Crisis: The Geopolitics of Asymmetry, to discuss how reality is threatening the fundamental principles of the European order. Richard Youngs has authored eleven books. His most recent works are Europe’s Eastern Crisis: The Geopolitics of Asymmetry (Cambridge University Press, 2017), The Puzzle of Non-Western Democracy (Carnegie, 2015), and Europe in the New Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2014). He has held positions in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as an EU Marie Curie fellow. (More on Youngs - http://carnegieeurope.eu/experts/?fa=828)

The French presidential elections have captured attention around the world as the populist firebrand Marine Le Pen faces off with political newcomer Emmanuel Macron. As the final round of voting approaches, Tom Carver is joined by Erik Brattberg, director of Carnegie’s DC-based Europe Program, and Pierre Vimont, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels to discuss the rising frustration with “politics as usual” in France that has led to such a riveting contest. In this episode, recorded shortly after France’s first round of voting, Brattberg, Vimont, and Carver discuss the echoes of the 2016 U.S. election, the future of Euroscepticism, and analyze future of France under each prospective president.​ Erik Brattberg is director of the Europe Program and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He joined Carnegie from the McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University, where he was the director for special projects and a senior fellow. Brattberg was previously the 2014 Ron Asmus Policy Entrepreneur Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and visiting Fulbright fellow at Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS. (More on Brattberg - http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/1342) Pierre Vimont is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe. In June 2015, Vimont was appointed personal envoy of the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to lead preparations for the Valletta Conference between EU and African countries, to tackle the causes of illegal migration and combat human smuggling and trafficking. During his thirty-eight-year diplomatic career with the French foreign service, he served as ambassador to the United States from 2007 to 2010, ambassador to the European Union from 1999 to 2002, and chief of staff to three former French foreign ministers. He holds the title, Ambassador of France, a dignity bestowed for life to only a few French career diplomats.​ (More on Vimont - http://carnegieeurope.eu/experts/1041)

As tension grows on the Korean peninsula, dissension simmers over the future of the Iran Deal, and conflict brews on the India-Pakistan border, the global nuclear landscape is more complicated than ever. In a special edition of the Carnegie Podcast, Toby Dalton of Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program hosts a recap of Carnegie’s recent 2017 International Nuclear Policy Conference. Listen in as nuclear experts and world leaders debate the future of the Iran Deal, the Trump administration’s nuclear posture, the future of North Korean proliferation, and prospects for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Toby Dalton is co-director of Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program. An expert on nonproliferation and nuclear energy, his work addresses regional security challenges and the evolution of the global nuclear order. From 2002 to 2010, Dalton served in a variety of high-level positions at the U.S. Department of Energy, including senior policy adviser to the Office of Nonproliferation and International Security. (More about the 2017 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference: http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/21/2017-carnegie-international-nuclear-policy-conference-event-5209)

Egypt is going through an unprecedented period in its history. In the space of a few years, the most populous country in the Arab world witnessed huge street demonstrations, the overthrow of longtime president Hosni Mubarak, the election of the Muslim Brotherhood, a military coup, and the arrival on the scene of General Sisi, Egypt’s current ruler. Sisi’s presidency has been marked by the mass detention of activists and a crackdown on civil society. Carnegie Senior Associate Amr Hamzawy spoke to Tom Carver about the new forms of activism that are starting to emerge in the country and the regional and security pressures Sisi is facing. Amr Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the Egyptian independent newspaper Shorouk. (More on Hamzawy: http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/237)

In the current political environment, developing any kind of effective strategy toward Russia is fraught with difficulty. A two-year, bipartisan task force convened by Carnegie Endowment and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, has recommended that instead of fueling unrealistic expectations of a breakthrough, the Trump administration should seek incremental progress on specific topics, based on a set of guiding principles. In the latest Carnegie podcast, two of the authors of the report, Carnegie's Andrew S. Weiss and Eugene Rumer, share their thoughts on how to manage the relationship and what some of those guiding principles should be. Andrew S. Weiss is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment and oversees research in Washington and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia. Weiss previously served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council staff, as a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a policy assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.​ Eugene Rumer is a senior fellow and director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program. Prior to joining Carnegie, Rumer was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to 2014. He has also served on the National Security Council staff and at the State Department, taught at Georgetown University and the George Washington University, and published widely.