Deep Dish on Global Affairs

Mexico heads to the polls on Sunday, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador is largely expected to claim presidential victory. NPR's International Correspondent in Mexico City, Carrie Kahn, explains how this election is Mexico's anti-establishment statement and why President Trump may not be relevant to the campaign.

Until Wednesday, family separations were part of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" response to illegal immigration. The Bipartisan Policy Center's Theresa Brown breaks down how we got there, why migrants risk so much to enter the United States, and what else can be done to deal with migrant flows. 

Following their historic meeting on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for "complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula. But they offered few specifics. To break down what happened, how we got here, and what all this means, Asia experts Katrin Katz and Karl Friedhoff join Brian Hanson on this week's Deep Dish podcast.

Fake news, cyber-attacks, election tampering, and expanding its territory are some of the ways Russia continues to antagonize the West. Former president of the Brookings Institution, diplomat, and journalist Strobe Talbott joins this week's Deep Dish podcast to share his view of Russia based on extensive personal experience.

Spain's Congress will hold a vote of no-confidence at the end of this week. If it is successful it will bring down the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. What are the implications of this vote on the state of Spain's domestic politics today? How does Spain view its role in NATO and other transatlantic agreements? Spanish Ambassador to the United States, Pedro Morenés, joins Brian Hanson t...

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro handily won reelection, but the international community rejected his election as a sham, and the United States responded with new sanctions. To explain what happened and what's next, Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan economist and a policy advisor to leading opposition candidate Henri Falcón, joins this week's Deep Dish with Brian Hanson.

After weeks of popular protest, Armenia's Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan was replaced by opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan. Former Foreign Minister of Armenia and Member of Parliament, Vartan Oskanian, along with Salpi Ghazarian, director of the University of Southern California's Institute of Armenian Studies, joined Deep Dish to give their eyewitness accounts of the "Velvet Revolution" and explai...

President Trump's "Maximum pressure" campaign could be working, or Kim Jong-un's playbook could be running the show. After an historic South-North summit, The Wall Street Journal's bureau chief in Seoul, South Korea, Jonathan Cheng, joins the Council's Karl Friedhoff to examine the drivers and developments leading up to President Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un. 

Iran's leaders may fear regime collapse enough to consider renegotiating the nuclear deal, but President Trump could walk away anyway. Expert Iran watchers Saeid Golkar and Ilan Goldenberg explore the ramifications of ending the Iran deal on this week's Deep Dish.

While China bolsters its military strength in the South China Sea, the US Navy is expanding its capability to enforce maritime norms across the region. "The US Navy will not be deterred," says Vice Admiral Andrew Lewis, as he dives into the Navy's latest steps to challenge its near-peer rivals.

The United States, United Kingdom, and France launched coordinated air strikes against Syria's military on Saturday. To analyze the fallout, Council President Ivo Daalder and Greg Jaffe, national security reporter from The Washington Post , join this week's Deep Dish podcast.

National Security Council alums from both sides of the aisle sit down to look at what responsibilities and challenges President Trump's new National Security Advisor will face on the job. A National Security Adviser trying to implement the President's agenda might be tempted to run around any bureaucracy slowing down the President's impulses. With no congressional or public oversight, John Bolton...

What can the president do in trade wars, and what restraints exist? This episode originally aired in 2017 but has become newly relevant as China and the US go tit for tat in opening trade skirmishes. Listen again to learn what powers the president has in true trade wars. Featuring Phil Levy and Gary Clyde Hufbauer.

Deep Dish often takes a strategic or policy-oriented view toward conflicts around the world. In this episode, we pause to consider the real human lives impacted by the headlines we read. Becky Carroll, who is in direct contact with people on the ground in Eastern Ghouta, co-founded the #StandWithAleppo social media campaign in 2016 and serves on the Ambassador Board for MedGlobal. Dr. Wendy Pearlm...

Social media, the internet of things, and the dark web are the latest battlegrounds in a new era of asymmetrical warfare. Premier cyberterrorism expert Gabriel Weimann joins Deep Dish to discuss how terrorists and bad actors use cyber networks to recruit members, spread propaganda, and cause physical harm. 

Ambassador Barbara Stephenson, president of the American Foreign Service Association, joins Deep Dish to give voice to the members of the US Foreign Service. She talks State Department cuts, political appointees, military partners, and how members of the US Foreign Service cope with the challenge of forming and implementing US foreign policy.

President Donald Trump has accepted North Korea's invitation for direct talks with Kim Jong-un. North Korea expert Karl Friedhoff and national security expert Commander Thomas Bodine discuss what brought us here, what China, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States want out of these talks, and what to watch for next. 

After five months of uncertainty, Germany has formed a new government. Meanwhile in Italy, right-wing populists triumphed electorally but left no clear path toward a governing coalition. Italian expert Nathalie Tocci and German expert Constanze Stelzenmüller analyze the results and what it could mean for stability in Europe.

Stav Shaffir, the youngest-ever woman elected to Israel's parliament, joins Deep Dish to discuss corruption charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as her own Labor party's failure to pull ahead in polling, despite what she says is a broad base of support for its progressive agenda. 

Each year, international security and defense chiefs meet at the Munich Security Conference for intense debate about global security challenges. The Washington Post's Josh Rogin and Julie Smith from Foreign Policy and the Center for a New American Security help us understand what happened, and, more importantly, what didn't happen at this year's premier security summit.

NATO Ambassador Ivo Daalder and POLITICO's Susan Glasser react to the Pentagon's new nuclear posture review, the rumored "bloody nose" strategy for deterring North Korea, mismatches between the State Department and the White House, Russia's upcoming election, and the destabilization of US institutions. 

The United States faces a new era of great power conflict, according to the Trump administration's new National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. Naval Commander Thomas Bodine joins this week's podcast to help make sense of the strategic shift away from terrorism and toward peer on peer state competition. 

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting of economic and political elites opened Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland. As the vanguard of globalization met, senior economist Phil Levy joined this week's Deep Dish podcast for a tour of hot spots in the global economy.

The Trump administration will not renew the temporary protected status of more than 200,000 El Salvadorian nationals living in the United States. This episode of Deep Dish features Latin America experts from the Atlantic Council and Migration Policy Institute talk about the impact of this decision from the lenses of social policy, economics, and diplomacy. Guests:  Jason Marczak,  director of the...

What began as Iranian protests about high food prices and inflation has turned into the largest anti-government outcry in nearly a decade. Iran experts Saeid Golkar and Nicola Pedde join guest host Stephen Anderson to unpack what this uprising could mean for the Islamic Republic.