Global Dispatches -- Conversations On Foreign Policy And World Affairs

These are perilous moments in the conflict in Ukraine. In response to the Ukrainian military's stunning gains in recent weeks, Putin is escalating. He has enacted a military mobilization within Russia and is once again threatening the use of nuclear weapons.  How seriously should we take these nuclear threats? In what scenarios and circumstances might Putin actually use a nuclear weapon. And how should the Biden administration and NATO respond if, indeed, Putin goes nuclear? We put these questions and more to Jon Wolfsthal a longtime nuclear policy professional and aid to then Vice President Joe Biden who currently serves as senior advisor to Global Zero and as a board member for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

On October 2nd, Brazilians headed to the polls for the first round of national elections. At the top of the ticket were two very familiar names in Brazilian politics: incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known best simply as Lula.  These two men are starkly different kinds of politicians. Bolsonaro is very much a right wing populist, often compared in style to Donald Trump. Lula is former union leader who served as Brazil's president from 2003 to 2010 and later served 580 days in prison before his conviction was annulled.  After the first round of presidential ballots were cast, Lula won 48.4% of the vote and Bolsonaro, 42.2%. Since no candidate won over 50%, the election will go to a run-off on October 30. This election is deeply consequential for the future of democracy in Brazil and also carries important international implications, which we discuss with today's guest, Matthew Taylor, professor of international studies at the School of International Service at

Before Russia invaded Ukraine the United States and its European allies signaled strongly that they would impose crushing sanctions if Russia, indeed, invaded. Russia invaded anyway. The threat of sanctions were not a deterrent.  After surprisingly heavy sanctions were imposed, Russia did not moderate its behavior and cease its attack. Just the opposite. The imposition of sanctions were not, therefore what is known in International Relations speak, a means of compellence. So what have the sanctions accomplished? And why might these sanctions and countermeasures by Russia be leading to a war of economic attrition between Russia and the West? To answer these questions, we are joined by Bruce Jentleson, a professor of political science at Duke University former senior state department official, and author of the new book  Sanctions: What Everyone Needs to Know.

There are over 100 health emergencies in Africa each year -- including outbreaks of infectious and deadly diseases like Yellow Fever, meningitis, and ebola. And it is sometimes the case that diseases endemic only in parts of Africa, like MonkeyPox, can spread globally precisely because of limited local capacity to contain an outbreak.  A new African Regional Strategy for Health Security and Emergencies commits African countries to concrete steps to strengthen disease surveillance, response and preparedness.  In this episode, we speak with Dr. Abdou Salam Gaye, WHO Regional Emergency Director for Africa to discuss this new African health security plan and Africa's role in global pandemic preparedness and response.  

China first tested a nuclear weapon in 1964. And since then, Chinese authorites have been content with a relatively small nuclear arsenal. That was, until very recently. There is now mounting evidence that China is substantially expanding its nuclear capabilities.  In this episode, we speak with Tong Zhao, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Visiting Researcher at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, to explain what is driving Chinese nuclear strategy. We kick off with a brief history of China's nuclear weapons program before having an in depth discussion about the intentions and motivations behind China's expanding nuclear arsenal. We also discuss what steps China's main rival, the United States, could take to assuage at least some of the concerns driving Chinese nuclear strategy.

One of the key events during UN High Level Week in the New York is a major fundraiser for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, hosted by President Biden. This is the topic of our first segment with Francoise Vanni, the Global Fund's Director of External Relations and Communications. Our second segment features an interview with Susan Ruffo, Senior Advisor for Oceans and Climate at the United Nations Foundation who discusses a meeting of foreign ministers and civil society leaders focused on the clean energy transition.  This episode also leads off with a discussion about a unique meeting of the Security Council about war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Today's episode was recorded on Wednesday, September 21 and under normal circumstances the President of the United States, as host of the UN, would have addressed the General Assembly yesterday. But because of the Queen’s funeral in London at the start of the week, the United States traded speaking slots with Senegal. Meaning today was the day of President Biden’s much anticipated address to the General Assembly.  Shortly after President Biden’s speech concluded, we spoke with Richard Gowan, the UN Director of the International Crisis Group and Anjali Dayal professor of International Relations at Fordham University and Senior Scholar in residence at the US Institute of Peace.  We kick off discussing highlights from Biden’s address before turning to other key speeches and events driving the diplomatic agenda at UNGA this week. Next, we speak with Kate Dodson, Vice President for Global Health at the United Nations Foundation. She had just come from a key meeting on Pandemic preparedness and response, which we d

A key focus of events at the United Nations and around New York this week is on food security and food access. On Tuesday, world leaders held a major Food Security Summit to combat soaring food prices and food insecurity around the world. This is the topic of our first segment today, featuring Rob Vos, director for Markets, Trade and Institutions at the International Food Policy Research Institute.   In the second segment, I speak with the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations at the UN Refugee Agency, Raouf Mazou about how refugee issues are being addressed at UNGA this year. 

The annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly is always a key moment on the diplomatic calendar. Hundreds of world leaders head to New York to address the General Assembly and participate in various meetings and events around the city.  Each day this week, we will bring you the key highlights from the 77th United Nations General Assembly. Today's epsode kicks off with an UNGA77 curtain raiser featuring Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation. She discusses the key storylines, events, moments and speeches that will drive the diplomatic agendaduring UN Week.  Next we hear from Thaís Queiroz, Youth Representative for the World Organization of the Scout Movement and United Nations Foundation Next Generation Fellow. She participated in the Transforming Eduction Summit convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres-- a major meeting of heads of state and civil society leaders focused on improving education access and outcomes.  

Energy prices are soaring in Europe, driven largely by the uncertainty surrounding Russian gas exports. Making matters worse was an announcement in early September that Russia would not re-open its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which is a major supplier of gas to Europe.  As winter looms, European governments are scrambling to devise policies to minimize the impact of rising energy costs to both their economies and individual consumers. Putin is very deliberately using gas and energy exports as a way to hit back at Europe and break Europeans' steadfast support for Ukraine. Needless to say, Europe's ability to manage this crisis could have a significant impact on European countries approach to the conflict in Ukraine.  In this episode, we are joined by Ben Cahill, Senior Fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. We discuss Europe's energy crisis, the EU's response thus far, and the political impact of rising energy costs in Europe, a

United Nations officials issued fresh warnings that parts of Somalia are on the verge of famine. Half the country is in need of food assistance and if present trends continue famine could hit Somalia by October. In this episode, we are joined by Tjada McKenna, CEO of Mercy Corps, a large international humanitarian organization with operations in Somalia. She recently visited the country to witness this unfolding crisis first hand. We kick off discussing what she saw on her trip, before having a broader conversation about the causes and consequences of this food crisis. We also discuss what can be done to avert a full blown famine from taking hold in Somalia in the near future.     

In lay July, the military Junta in Myanmar carried out its first executions in decades. Four activists were killed, including very prominant pro-democracy leaders. The military carried out these executions despite widespread international and regional pressure.  These executions come a year and a half after the February 1 2021 coup that ended Myanmar's experiment in democracy. The military has imprisoned much of the civilian political leadership of the country, including the country's de-facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.  The February Coup was met by widespread civil disobedience and, eventually armed resistance. Today, Myanmar is in the midst of a multi-pronged civil war in which the military is fighting various armed groups organized along ethnic lines of Myanmars many minority ethnic groups; as well as militias backed by the toppled civilian leadership.  In this episode, we are joined by Gregory Poling, who directs the Southeast Asia Program and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for

On August 16, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. This legislation is a $750 billion dollar health, tax and climate bill. Indeed, the inflation Reduction act is the single most significant climate legislation ever passed in the United States. So what impact will this legislation have internationally,  Including in ongoing international climate diplomacy? In this episode, we are joined by Casey Katims, executive director of the US Climate Alliance,  a coalition of US Governors representing states that account for over half the US Population. We kick off by discussing several of the key climate related provisioning included in the Inflation Reduction Act. We then discuss how this new legislation may impact diplomacy, including at a key international climate summit, known as COP27, which is being held in Egypt in November. We also discuss the unique roll that US states can play on climate related issues--something that was underscored recently when California announced that it would be p

In this episode, we are joined by Zuhra Bahman, the Afghanistan country director for the peacebuilding NGO Search for Common Ground. She is based in Kabul.  A year ago, when the Taliban captured Kabul and became the de-facto authorities, Zuhra Bahman happened to be out of the country on a previously scheduled business trip. Yet when she and I spoke for the podcast last September she told me that she was determined to return home and get back to work. And when she and I last spoke for the podcast, back in March, she had finally made it back to Kabul.  In our conversation, Zuhra Bahman reflects on her life and work in Afghanistan as a female civil society leader one year on from the Taliban's takeover of the country. Contrary to what people might think, she is still able to do her work and lead her team. And in our conversation she argues that the most effective way to preserve the space still open for civil society, including those that support women and marginalized communities is regular engagement with the

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.