Deep Dish on Global Affairs

Warming ties between Baghdad and Iran and souring ties between Washington and both raise the question: Did Iran come out as the real winner of the Iraq war? Ryan Crocker, who served as the US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon, joins Deep Dish to discuss. 

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's long-dominant political party lost elections in Ankara and Istanbul last week. At the same time, a dispute between Washington and Ankara over Turkey buying a Russian missile system has hurt ties between the NATO allies. Steven A. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations and Mustafa Akyol of the Cato Institute join Deep Dish to explain.

President Trump has signed an executive order to formally recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Ambassador Dennis Ross, who led the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for 12 years and served in senior political positions under Presidents Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama, joined this week's Deep Dish podcast to explain what this means.

The world is in for a shock. Global population is expected to peak and then decline this century, reshaping everything from economic growth and immigration to government spending. Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson, authors of the provocative new book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline , join the Council's Brian Hanson and Dina Smeltz to discuss why it's happening and how nations...

Comic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who has no political experience but has played the Ukrainian president on TV, is leading in the polls ahead of Ukraine's presidential election on March 31. Last weekend marked five years since Russia annexed Crimea, and fighting in eastern Ukraine, which has killed thousands, continues. Steven Pifer, former US ambassador to Ukraine, joins Deep Dish to explain what's...

In recent months, Somalia has seen a surge of airstrikes by the US military as part of an intensifying campaign against al Shabaab, an extremist group affiliated with al Qaeda. Bronwyn Bruton of the Atlantic Council and Paul D. Williams of George Washington University join  Deep Dish  this week to explain what the United States is doing in Somalia and why al Shabaab is a target.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces corruption charges ahead of Israel's election and the subsequent rollout of President Trump's Mideast peace plan. Douglas J. Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration, and Aaron David Miller, a twenty-year analyst, negotiator, and adviser on Middle Eastern issues at the Department of State, join Deep Dish this w...

Bad blood between India and Pakistan goes back decades, but tensions have escalated in recent days after a suicide bomber from a Pakistan-based militant group killed Indian paramilitary troops in Kashmir. Former US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter and Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution explain what you need to know about the ongoing crisis between two nuclear powers on this week's Deep...

The 91st Academy Awards take place on Sunday in Los Angeles, but international markets, led by China, have eclipsed the domestic market in importance for the US movie industry, rewriting the rules about what kinds of films get made. On this week's Deep Dish podcast, Lynda Obst, producer of  Sleepless in Seattle, Contact, Interstellar,  and  How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days , and Orville Schell of the...

For thirteen straight weeks, demonstrators in high-visibility vests have taken to the streets in Paris and in cities around France. Government buildings have been attacked, shops looted, and cars set ablaze. On this week's Deep Dish podcast, Sophie Pedder of  The Economist and Benjamin Haddad of the Atlantic Council explain what the political demonstrations mean for French President Emmanuel Macro...

The chief of naval operations recently visited the Council and spoke with Deep Dish host Brain Hanson about China's growing global ambitions and Russia's troublesome actions in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Richardson also explained what the US Navy needs now to retain its supremacy in the years ahead.

Venezuela has two claimants to power: Juan Guaidó and Nicolás Maduro. Western countries back Guaidó, Putin and China favor Maduro, and the people of Venezuela are looking for a way out of their country's rolling economic disaster. Latin America expert Peter Schechter and veteran diplomate Cécile Shea join this week's Deep Dish to discuss.

China announced its economic growth had slowed to its lowest annual rate since 1990. At the same time, Beijing and Washington remain locked in a trade war that shows no sign of resolution. Global economics expert Phil Levy joins this week's Deep Dish podcast to explain what's going on, and how lessons from the US shutdown might help explain what will happen next.

As the Trump administration prepares to withdraw from Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and Tamara Cofman Wittes, former deputy assistant secretary of state for near East Affairs, join this week's Deep Dish  podcast to dissect the withdrawal's implications for US-Syria policy. 

A president's ability to enact their vision is not absolute. It is constrained by international laws and by the willingness of allies and partners to go along with what the White House wants. On this week's  Deep Dish , Harold Hongju Koh, former Legal Adviser at the US State Department, joins Council President Ivo Daalder and Brian Hanson to discuss Koh's new book The Trump Administration and Inte...

The massive Marriott records breach was the latest in a series of economic espionage cases attributed to China. Top cybersecurity experts Lesley Carhart and Adam Segal join this week's Deep Dish podcast to discuss the evolving tactical and policy challenges involved in managing international cyber space.

The war in Yemen has created one of the greatest unseen humanitarian tragedies in the world. It finally drew public attention after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which triggered a debate about US involvement in the war. As peace talks begin in Sweden, Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen joins this week's Deep Dish podcast. 

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a "frozen conflict," but Russia recently seized three Ukrainian naval vessels near the Kerch Strait to the Black Sea. In this week's Deep Dish podcast, US Navy Commander Tony Chavez joins Council President Ivo Daalder, former US ambassador to NATO, to discuss the geopolitical importance of this maritime dispute.

Sitting Conservative Member of Parliament Rory Stewart joined this week's Deep Dish podcast, along with Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post and guest host Phil Levy, to weigh the pros and cons of voting for Theresa May's Brexit deal. Now that EU leaders have accepted the deal, it's up to Parliament to decide what happens next.

US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been a resounding failure, argues Stephen M. Walt in his new book "The Hell of Good Intentions." What's worse, the failure is our fault, a direct result of America's chosen grand strategy of liberal hegemony, he says. But Walt has an alternative, as he explains in this week's Deep Dish podcast.

For the first time ever, the European Union rejected a proposed budget from a member state: Italy. A deadlock has ensued, threatening a "doom loop" that could consume Italy's economy, the eurozone, and perhaps even the global economy. Former International Monetary Fund official Isabelle Mateos y Lago and Adam Tooze, economic historian and author of Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed...

Council President Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, discuss their new book "The Empty Throne: America's Abdication of Global Leadership"—a revealing look at President Trump's foreign policy and its implications for the rules-based international order. 

Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil's presidency with a far-right populism that drew comparisons to President Donald Trump. But Brazil and Latin America don't fit neatly into the Western populism narrative, says Peter Schechter, host of the Altamar podcast and 20-year veteran of Latin American politics.

Two big shocks are hitting the Chinese economy at once. The first shock is within China—slowing growth, increasing debt, an aging population, and an underdeveloped consumer base. The second shock is with the United States as tensions rise and a trade war looms. Angela Lee, professor of Marketing at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, Paul Schickler, a former president of DuPont Pioneer, a...

Within hours of President Trump's announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal, Iran's foreign minister was on a plane, first to China and then to Russia. This often overlooked but important geopolitical trio, Iran, Russia, and China, is the subject of a new book by Dina Esfandiary and Ariane Tabatabai.