Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Sharon Weinberger is the author of the new book The Imagineers of War:The Untold Story of DARPA.   DARPA, for the un-initiated, stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and it is the branch of the Pentagon that is famous for developing some far-out-there technologies, some of which were total flops but others that have become central to not only modern warfare, but also daily life....

We are nearly six months into the year and already 9 journalists have been killed in 2017, including 4 in Mexico alone. That figure comes from reporters without borders and is part of a larger data set that my guest Sabine Carey is collecting on the murders of journalists around the world.  Sabine is a political scientist at Mannheim University in Germany, and co-author with Anita Gohdes of a new...

Jill Filipovic is author of the new book The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. She is a Nairobi based journalist, but we caught up while she was on book tour in her hometown of Seattle.    Jill is someone I've known both online and in real life for many years. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and regular contributor to the Guardian among many other publications....

As I'm typing, the White House is busy doing damage control over revelations that Donald Trump revealed sensitive information to the Russians when he met wth the Russian ambassador and foreign minister the day after he fired the FBI director. But at the same time, the White House is also preparing for Trump's first foreign trip as president. The first stop is Saudi Arabia, followed by Israel and t...

Dr. James Walsh of MIT is a nuclear security security expert and one of the few Americans who have travelled to both Iran and North Korea for talks on nuclear issues. To this day, Jim meets frequently with North Korean officials to discuss nuclear issues. I spoke with Jim the day that Moon Jae-In was elected as president of South Korea, potentially setting up a very different dynamic for nuclear d...

By now, of course, you are well aware that Emmanuel Macron won a stunning election victory in France, besting by huge margins the far right candidate Marine Le Pen. But if you are like me, you probably did not know too much about Macron -- who he is, where he came from, and how he emerged from the political wilderness to become one of the most intriguing personalities in politics today.    On the...

Lisa Palmer is author of the new book Hot Hungry Planet: The Fight to Stop a Global Food Crisis in the Face of Climate Change. As the title suggests, the book examines the intersection of climate change, population growth and the politics of food all -- of which we discuss in this episode.  Lisa is a journalist who writes for both popular and academic outlets. She's been covering climate change an...

Millions of people in Yemen are facing a potential famine. The country was already the poorest in the region and for the last several years has been beset by a civil conflict stoked by key regional players. And now, one of the lifelines into the country, the Port of Hoedeida, could be beset by intense fighting.    On the line with me to discuss the conflict in Yemen and why despite the availabilit...

The internationally acclaimed and award-winning photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale has a spread in the latest issue of National Geographic magazine from his collection of photos documenting the conflict in the Central African Republic. His work in CAR is a good demonstration of how Marcus puts his significant talents to work in the service of human rights around the world. We kick off with an extend...

When I reached Ahmad Shuja in Kabul the country was still reeling from the deadliest single Taliban attack since the start of the insurgency nearly 15 years ago. Some 160 young soldiers--mostly recruits-- were massacred in a brazen assault on a base in the northern part of the country. That attack came after the United States dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever used in combat on what was rep...

Laurie Adams is president of the NGO Women for Women International which works with women survivors of war. She has had a long career in the NGO sector and as an activist, including many years with Oxfam in various parts of Africa and the NGO ActionAidInternational.   Laurie also had a career as an activist initially inspired by the anti-apartheid movement and we have a really thoughtful conversat...

Venezuela is at yet another crisis point.  The government of Nicolas Maduro is facing steep opposition from the very people that swept Maduro's predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez to power nearly 20 years ago. But after years of sharp economic decline it appears that the "revolution's" hold on power is a tenuous as ever.    On the line to explain what is going on in Venezuela is Francisco Toro, edi...

Linda Thomas-Greenfield grew up the oldest of eight children in a small segregated town outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They were poor. Her father was not literate. Despite these circumstances, she became one of America's top diplomats, having just left her post a few weeks ago as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.  Amb Thomas-Greenfield speaks candidly about the kinds of rac...

Micah Zenko has researched whether or not limited airstrikes -- like the kind Donald Trump ordered on Syria last week -- actually achieve their stated political and military objectives.     His book Between Threats and War: US Discrete Military Operations in the Post Cold-War World examined some 36 airstrikes and finds that they very rarely do what they are intended to do. We discuss why that is--...

Xi Jinping is headed to Mar-a-Lago for his first big meeting with Donald Trump. The US-China relationship is arguably the most consequential bi-lateral relationship in the world so naturally this trip is garnering a lot of attention. But what is actually on the agenda? And how might US-China relations shift in the coming years under President Trump? I put these questions and more to Susan Jakes wh...

Despite wide attention to the global refugee and migrant crisis, there has been little research of one key group that facilitates the movement of migrants: the smugglers themselves.  In brand new book published by Oxford University Press authors Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano offer an in-depth look at the individuals who make the movement of migrants possible. The book Migrant Refugee Smuggler Sa...

--Go Premium! Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! --- James Goldgeier is the dean of the school for international service at American University. He's spent a career trying to bridge the gap between academic research and policy makers and he currently runs a program at American University appropriately called Bridging the Gap thats seeks to do just that. Jim is also a Russia exp...

---Go Premium! Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! --- Over the past several months, North Korea has engaged in a series of provocative nuclear and missile tests. It conducted nuclear tests in January and then September of last year along with several ballistic missile tests. And in 2017 alone there have been no less than 5 missile launches, most recently on March 6, when North...

---Go Premium! Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! ---   Elizabeth Arsenault is a professor at Georgetown University out with the new book  How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture . The book examines how the Bush administration shattered a widely held consensus against using torture and what that means for the current debate about inte...

---Go Premium! Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! --- Julie Smith is Senior Fellow and Director of the Strategy and Statecraft Program at the Center for a New American Security. recently left her post as a top national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. She takes me inside some of the key events, decisions and frustrations from her time in that senior policy making r...

---Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! --- Jeremy Konyndyk recently left his post as the top US global humanitarian relief official. Jeremy lead the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID during much of Obama's second term and we discuss how the US responded to some key disasters, including the ebola outbreak.  Jeremy's been working in this field since the Balkans crises...

---Support the Show! Unlock Bonus Episodes! Earn Rewards! --- You may have seen news reports that the White House wants to substantially increase defense spending, and to offset those increases slash discretionary spending elsewhere. In particular the White House has signaled that foreign aid spending will be sharply reduced.  Foreign aid is one of those issues that is pretty widely mis-understood...

I've started to roll out special bonus episodes for premium subscribers. I'm calling these "Background Briefings." Through interviews with experts, we will provide you with the context you need to understand key ideas, debates, dilemmas and institutions shaping foreign policy and world affairs today. Think of these as "explainers." And you, the listener, get to assign me a topic to explore.   I've...

The United Nations did some extremely rare in February: agencies declared that a famine was ongoing in parts of South Sudan. More than 100,000 people are affected by this famine and childhood mortality rates are already surging there. On the line with me to discuss why this famine declaration was made, what is means on the ground for the people affected by it and the humanitarian agencies trying t...

Diplomacy runs in her family. Sheba Crocker and her father Chester Crocker are the first parent-child combination to have both served as assistant secretaries of state. Crocker-the-elder was a noted Africa specialist who served in the Regan administration, and Sheba describes his how influence and the influence of her mother's family, who were Jews who fled eastern Europe to Zimbabwe, had a profou...