Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

I'm joined by one of my favorite fellow podcasters and Substackers, Kaiser Kuo, host of the long-running  Sinica Podcast , for a wide-ranging conversation on China, Venezuela, and America's shifting role in the world. We start by unpacking how trade ties between Venezuela and China have produced a deeply imbalanced relationship between Caracas and Beijing, before turning to Beijing's reaction to T...

The Security Council convened an emergency meeting on Monday in response to American military operations in Venezuela that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife— forcing dozens of countries to publicly respond to one of the most audacious U.S. actions in recent memory. Anjali and Mark break down what unfolded in the chamber: which countries issued the strongest condemnations, which were more restra...

In a stunning U.S. military operation carried out in the early hours of Saturday, January 3rd, American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. As of Saturday afternoon Eastern Time, the two were en route to New York, where they are expected to face criminal charges tied to a U.S. indictment issued roughly five years ago. The operation follows months of escalating confron...

In 2022, countries agreed to negotiate an international treaty to end plastics pollution. They gave themselves a two-year deadline to finalize the treaty text — and needless to say, that deadline has not been met. The conventional wisdom is that these treaty negotiations are hopelessly gridlocked, with some countries pushing for a wide-ranging agreement while others insist on something far more na...

Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them. Global Challenges Foundation's 2026 Global Catastrophic Risks report outlines five of the biggest risks facing humanity today, including ecological collapse, the topic of this episode. Yo...

Your very own  To Save Us From Hell  co-host Anjali Dayal briefed the United Nations Security Council on Monday! She was paired with former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a special meeting of the Council dedicated to examining the role of the Secretary-General and the process for selecting Antonio Guterres's successor. Anjali gives co-host Mark Leon Goldberg a behind-the-scenes account of wh...

In 1998, 120 countries came together to adopt the Rome Statute, creating what would become the International Criminal Court. Four years later, that treaty entered into force, and the ICC officially opened its doors as a permanent court tasked with prosecuting individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Now, looking around the world today, it's clear the ICC has not put an end to...

2025 was a year of global protests. More than 70 countries across every region of the world experienced anti-government demonstrations. Some of these movements — such as those in Nepal and Madagascar — led to the toppling of governments; others emerged in countries with little history of protest, like Tanzania. Many were youth-led, with Gen Z protesters drawing inspiration from one another across...

Over the course of Syria's fourteen-year civil war, around one million people went missing, presumably killed. Among them was the father of my guest today, Maryam Kamalmaz. Maryam's father was an American psychotherapist who traveled to Syria on a humanitarian mission when he was detained and disappeared by the Assad regime. She campaigned for his release, but eventually learned that he had died i...

On December 4, the entire United Nations Security Council made an unprecedented trip to Syria. It is hard to overstate what a significant turning point this represents — both for the Security Council and the United Nations as a whole. For thirteen long years, the civil war in Syria was the largest and most brutal conflict in the world, and one that stymied the United Nations by exposing massive ge...

The Halifax International Security Forum always includes a sizable and bi-partisan group of United States Senators who were suddenly put on the spot: Did they think Ukraine should accept this ultimatum? By Saturday afternoon, several senators issued a joint statement condemning this plan. Then something extraordinary happened. A couple hours after this joint statement was released, an even larger...

When Damascus was liberated in December of last year and Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, thousands of the regime's political prisoners were released from jail. Around the region, Syrians who had fled the country began returning home. It was a joyous occasion for so many who had lived as refugees in neighboring countries — including in Lebanon, which had hosted more Syrian refugees than any other c...

Kabul is running out of water. If present trends continue, the capital of Afghanistan could run completely dry by 2030. There are several reasons for this. The first is climate change: there is less snowmelt to feed the city's aquifers. The second is aging infrastructure: pipelines are decrepit or, in some cases, non-existent. The third is management: in a city reeling from water shortages, people...

U Thant was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations. He assumed the role following the death of Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash in the Congo in 1961, and soon became one of the most consequential players in international affairs for over a decade. Thant's contributions to some of the key global challenges of the era were widely celebrated at the time but have sin...

My interview guest today, Axel Marschik, is a veteran Austrian diplomat who has thought extensively about how the General Assembly can play a more robust role in peace and security when the Security Council fails to do so. In a paper that was widely discussed around the UN, Ambassador Marschik proposed that the General Assembly craft pre-authorized sanctions that would be automatically triggered i...

On October 29, Tanzania held national presidential elections — and  lo and behold , incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan "won" with a staggering 98% of the vote. Everyone knew what was going on. The election was a sham from the start: her main rival is sitting in prison awaiting a treason trial, and the election commission that certified her landslide is stacked with loyalists. Election hijinks...

2025 marks 50 years of the Biological Weapons Convention. Back in 1975, the treaty entered into force, and by banning biological weapons worldwide, it became the first global treaty to prohibit a particular weapon of war. The Biological Weapons Convention is widely adopted — 189 States Parties have pledged to never develop, produce, stockpile, or use biological weapons. And thankfully, these weapo...

About a year and a half ago, I published an episode of  Global Dispatches  titled " A Genocidal Massacre Is Looming in Darfur. " At the time, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had conquered nearly all of Darfur, in western Sudan, except for its largest city, El Fasher. The RSF was laying siege to the city in preparation for an assault, and everything we knew about how this group operates sugge...

Cameroonians went to the polls earlier this month in national elections, and on October 27th, a constitutional commission packed with loyalists confirmed that 92-year-old incumbent Paul Biya had won an eighth consecutive term in office. If he serves out his term, Biya will be 99 years old.  After 43 years in office, Cameroonians are used to the electoral shenanigans that have kept Biya in power. B...

North Korea has been extremely repressive for a very long time. But over the last several years, the crackdowns have gotten worse. New reporting from The Economist shows how the regime is clamping down on South Korean cultural influences, strengthening its border to prevent escape, and sharply curtailing what were already limited free markets. My guest today, Patrick Foulis, calls this the "North...

The Security Council is deep into negotiations around authorizing an international stabilization force for Gaza.  But even if the Council approves such a mission, will it actually deploy? In this episode of To Save Us From Hell,  Mark and Anjali share their doubts. Also up: the Trump administration blew up a global deal to put a price on carbon in international shipping — a move that would have pu...

Rhetoric and actions from the Trump administration suggest that the United States is seeking to forcibly oust Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela Is the U.S. really going to attempt regime change in Venezuela, and what would that even look like? Joining me from Caracas is Phil Gunson, Senior Analyst for the Andes Region at the International Crisis Group. We kick off discussing the mood in Carac...

A ceasefire is holding in Gaza. Aid is beginning to flow. The remaining Israeli hostages have been released, as have nearly 2,000 Palestinians from Israeli detention. This has been a truly remarkable day in the Middle East. But can this positive momentum be sustained? I recorded this conversation with Matt Duss of the Center for International Policy just moments after Donald Trump met with an impr...

UNGA is over. But its legacy lives on. We recorded this episode as news broke of a potential ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and so we look back at UNGA80 to trace the ways in which the world's largest diplomatic gathering may have provided some key momentum for a breakthrough on Gaza. Mark and Anjali also go deep on a new Gang Suppression Force that the Security Council just authorized for Ha...

On September 16th, Morocco became the 60th country to ratify the High Seas Treaty, triggering a countdown to January, when the treaty will officially enter into force. The High Seas Treaty establishes a kind of "rules of the road" for international waters that lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single country—particularly around conservation and the preservation of ocean biodiversity. At the core...