Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

I caught up with legendary international relations scholar Joseph Nye at the The Aspen Security Forum. This conference was a target rich environment for snagging great guests for the podcast and I have some excellent episodes coming up, including a conversation with the most recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the Ukranian Human Rights Lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk and Kenya's National Security Advi...

Since the start of the war, Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. These kidnappings have been well documented by Ukrainian authorities and civil society groups. Last March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children's affairs commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the "unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine...

NATO held a Major summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11th and 12th. Top on the agenda, of course, was Ukraine including Ukraine's potential future NATO membership. Another key issue on the agenda was Sweden. Last year, both Sweden and Finland asked to join NATO. Finland is in, but Turkey had been blocking Sweden's membership. That abruptly changed in Vilnius, paving the way for all Nordic countr...

The international shipping industry is a major greenhouse gas emitter, accounting for about three percent of all greenhouse gas emitted last year. For reference, this is roughly equivalent to the total annual emissions of Germany.  Because these emissions occur on international waters, the shipping industry was purposefully left out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Instead, a UN agency called...

Taiwan will hold presidential elections in January 2024. Needless to say, these elections will have extremely consequential geopolitical implications. The two main candidates have differing views of Taiwan's relationship with China. Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the current Vice President and represents the stronger pro-independence faction of Taiwanese politics. His ma...

Less developed countries rightly lament the lack of access to funding for sustainable development that donor countries routinely promise, but rarely deliver. To remedy, dozens of Presidents, Prime Ministers and high-level officials met in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact to rethink the "global financial architecture" to support developing economies grow in a climate compliant w...

Amed Khan has been described as a "direct action philanthropist." He goes to the frontlines of humanitarian crises on his own and uses his personal wealth and networks to deliver whatever the communities say they need. For the past two years, Amed Khan has been in Ukraine near the frontlines of fighting in places like Bakhmut. When we spoke he had just returned from Kherson, which experienced cata...

Over the decades, Senegal has earned a reputation as a reliably stable democracy in West Africa. But recent events have put that reputation to test.   Over the last month, Senegal has been rocked by widespread protests against the government of President Macky Sall. These protests were sparked by the arrest and conviction of a prominent opposition party leader, Ousmane Sanko. The government respon...

Back in 2017, the Trump administration announced that the United States would formally leave UNESCO, the UN's education, science and cultural organization. When the Biden administration came to office it promised to reverse course and rejoin UNESCO.  On June 12 this year it announced a plan to do just that.  Joining me to discuss America's complicated relationship with UNESCO and explain why the B...

Since fighting broke out in Sudan on April 15th this year, more than million people have been displaced internally and internationally. Many of the borders across which Sudanese have fled are not functional borders -- that is, there is no process to register or screen people who are entering a country. According to my guest today, non-functional porous borders are exacerbating an aleady dire human...

On May 14th, Thailand held general elections. The results were a shock to the Thai political system.   Since a 2014 coup, the military leaders have dominated Thai politics. A main opposition party has challenged military rule, but has been genereally thwarted at every turn.  However, this year a third party emerged victorious: and their vision for the country represents a radically progressive shi...

On June 7th, the Professional Golf Association announced a merger with a Saudi backed rival golf league known as LIV Golf. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which is controlled by Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, backed this deal. The chairman of the Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund will serve as the chairman of this new yet-to-be named golf league.  In other words, Saudi Arabia just bo...

In the early hours of Tuesday, June 6th a major Dam on the Dnipro river in Russian occupied Ukraine suffered catastrophic damage. Floodwaters are now rushing downstream and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing. The path of these destructive floodwaters roughly follows the frontlines between Russian and Ukrainian forces in Southern Ukraine and this breach comes just as Ukraine's much anticip...

The second leading cause of death from infectious disease around the world is Tuberculosis, following COVID. 10 million people globally develop TB each year, and in 2021 1.6 million died from Tuberculosis.  So why is a disease that is preventable and curable still inflicting such a major toll on the health and welfare of so many people and what can be done to reduce the burden of TB around the wor...

In 1993, governments around the world agreed to a landmark arms control treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention. It prohibits countries from building chemical weapons, using chemical weapons and requires countries to destroy whatever stockpiles of chemical weapons they may have.  The way treaties like this work is that governments come together every few years for what are known as "Review Confere...

On Wednesday May 17th, Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso invoked a constitutional provision known as muerte cruzada, or "mutual death." The move dissolves the parliament and enables Lasso to rule by decree for six months when new elections are held. This political upheaval comes at a time of surging violence in Ecuador, driven largely by gang violence related to cocaine trafficking. Joining me t...

The study and analysis of Great Power Competition is all the vogue in international relations and foreign policy circles. And understandably so: the rise of China, the actions of Russia and America's approach to geopolitics are indeed setting the conditions in which some big global shifts are playing out. But that does not mean one should ignore the role that small states are playing in internatio...

The year is 2026, and China has just launched an invasion of Taiwan. What happens next was the subject of a comprehensive non-classified War Game simulation lead by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Our guest, Mark Cancian, is a retired Marine Colonel and senior advisor at CSIS and one of the lead conveners of this War Game.  We kick off discussing how the War Game was designed b...

Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counter-offensive to reclaim territory captured by Russia. And if Ukraine is successful on the battlefield, Russia may float a ceasefire proposal, that more likely than not would be disingenuous and merely an attempt to stall for time.  These are some of the conclusions of a recent Red Team exercise conducted by the Public International Law & Policy Group (PI...

This is a a special crossover episode featuring Global Dispatches host Mark Leon Goldberg taking questions from veteran journalist Ray Suarez, from the On Shifting Ground podcast. They discuss trends in international reporting and why humanitarian journalism is a vital part of the media ecosystem. Regular Global Dispatches listeners will get a unique understanding of how the show is put together e...

Before COVID more and more children around the world were receiving their routine vaccinations on time and in full. But COVID severely interrupted that progress. Now, we are seeing lagging indicators of interrupted childhood vaccinations in the form of outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria.  To reverse this trend a number of global health entities have joined forces...

On May 11th a pandemic-era policy, known as Title 42, will expire. This was a Trump administration policy which used public health concerns as a pretext expel migrants from the United States before they could claim asylum under US and international law. Title 42 has continued under the Biden administration but is set to expire. American officials are bracing for a massive increase in the number of...

Turkey holds elections on May 14th. For the first time in twenty years, President Erdogan is facing a serious challenge at the ballot box. The opposition has unified behind candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a 74 year old career politician whose low-key demeanor is a stark contrast to President Erdogan's bombastic charisma. As my guest today Dr. Lisel Hintz explains, Turkey's struggling economy and the...

In the ten year history of this podcast, it is rare to have episodes on the same topic in back to back weeks. But the unfolding crisis in Sudan is such an important topic that it demands attention.  Last week, I spoke with civil society activist Hala al Karib, who was trapped in her house in Khartoum as fighting erupted. She very  much offered an informed local perspective on what was happening ar...

On March 29th, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia and charged with espionage. The charges are spurious, but the intentions are clear: Evan Gershkovich is now a hostage in Russia and his release will require a delicate diplomatic balancing act.  My guest today Dr. Dani Gilbert is an academic who studies what she calls "Hostage Diplomacy." She is the Edelson Fellow...