Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Greetings from the World Government Summit in Dubai! This one of those big international conferences (think: World Economic Forum in Davos) that is hosted by the government of the United Arab Emirates. It focuses on ways that governments can better serve their people and operate in the service of sustainable development. There's heavy UN participation (the Secretary General is giving an address.)...

Crimes against humanity are ongoing in Burma and they are being committed by the state against the Rohingya people. This is a minority community in Burma that has historically faced intense discrimination, but there was some degree of hope that as the country transitioned to a democracy the situation of this community would improve. Alas, we are now nearly a year into the leadership of Nobel Peace...

Dr. Larry Brilliant starred in a 1960s film that was a total flop. The movie was called Medicine Ball Caravan and it was a sort of documentary that followed Larry and a bunch of other hippies as they followed the touring busses of acts like the Grateful Dead.   But despite the commercial failure of this film I would posit that it lead, though somewhat indirectly, to the global eradication of small...

By now,  you are well aware of President Trump's sweeping ban on migrants from seven Muslim majority countries; the indefinite suspension of refugees from Syria and the suspension of all refugee resettlement into the United States for at least four months. The executive order is, of course, the subject of intense debate and discussion here in the United States, but I wanted to get a sense of how t...

Princeton Lyman was a long serving US Diplomat who has become one of the leading experts on African politics and policy. He most recently served as President Obama's special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan from 2011 to 2013; but before that had an extensive career in the foreign service that included stints as US Ambassador to Nigeria and to South Africa during the negotiations that lead to the end...

O n his third day on office President Trump signed a memorandum re-instating what is known as the "Global Gag Rule" or sometimes alternatively as the "Mexico City Policy." This is a policy that Republican Presidents enact and Democratic presidents lift when they come to office. Simply put the rule places restrictions on NGOs that receive US government assistance about what they can say about abort...

In many ways Ambassador Khalilzad was the ideal person with whom to speak at the dawn of the next republican administration. He served in senior positions in the Bush white house, including as ambassador to his native Afghanistan and Iraq and was also someone on the shortlist for Secretary of State as Donald Trump assembled his cabinet. We kick off discussing what to expect from Trump's foreign po...

The Two State Solution--the idea that a sovereign, secure and independent Palestine can co-exist with a sovereign secure and independent jewish state of Israel is arguably as far from being realized now than at anytime in the past twenty five years. With the election of Donald Trump, the unrelenting expansion of Israeli settlements and political incertitude in Palestine it appears we soon may be s...

Karen Greenberg has spent the last 15 years studying the intersection of national security, terrorism and civil liberties. She's currently the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School.   She's authored several books on the subject including most recently Rogue Justice: the Making of the Security State. In 2009 she wrote the critically acclaimed Least Worst Place: Guantanam...

This is a special episode of the podcast sponsored by the Master of Arts in Social Innovation program at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. This is a brand new program that seeks original thinkers who are looking to make a lasting impact in the world to join the inaugural class. On the line with me to discuss the program, including the curriculum, the faculty...

Turkey is in crisis. A number of terrorist attacks in recent weeks has rattled Turkish society, there is a persistent and ongoing crackdown on civil society, and President Erdogan is engineering constitutional changes to further consolidate power.  On the line with me to discuss recent events in Turkey and offer some deeper context into the political situation and the future of US-Turkey relations...

Maria Stephan is a pioneering academic and public intellectual who studies authoritarian regimes and how they fall. She's the co-author with Erica Chenoweth of the groundbreaking and award winning book  Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict which was a first-of-its kind study that offered empirical evidence that non-violent resistance is more effective than conflic...

On the line with me to preview the big stories, ideas, trends and crises and provocations that will set the agenda at the United Nations and beyond is Richard Gowen. He's a fellow with the European Council on Foreign Affairs and a regular guest of this very podcast. We have a lively conversation about Trump's relationship with the UN, the new incoming secretary general and more.    We recorded thi...

Russia has successfully influenced the election here in the United States in its favor. It's side is winning the war in Syria. Crimea looks like it will remain in Russia for the foreseeable future and the NATO alliance may become weakened when Donald Trump takes office.  This is pretty much springtime for Putin in Moscow. But what are Russia's grander ambitions? Why did they hack the US election?...

Amy Costello is a veteran reporter who now hosts the excellent Tiny Spark podcast that investigates what goes right and what goes wrong in philanthropy, including global philanthropy and the NGO sector. At the very end of our conversation Amy reveals she started this podcast in part as a response to a story she reported that was wildly popular, but she later learned rested on a false premise.  Amy...

President Elect Donald Trump has assembled a team of generals to fill key posts in his national security team. Former Army General Mike Flynn is his National Security Advisor, Marine General John Kelly has been tapped to serve as homeland security chief and of course recently retired marine general ames Mattis has been nominated as Secretary of Defense.    Top military brass have served in civilia...

Cameron Munter was the US Ambassador to Pakistan when US Special forces conducted the midnight raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. He watched the raid live and hours later was dealing with the diplomatic fallout.     Munter had a career in both academia and the diplomatic corps, serving in a wide variety of posts. He's now the president of the East West Institute. And this is arguably the first podc...

There are some frightening warning signs that a genocide may erupt in South Sudan. The country has been at war with itself for the better of three years, ever since a political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his Vice Preisident Riek Machar turned into an armed conflict between those two men. The conflict took on ugly sectarian dimensions--these men hail from different ethnic groups--and...

Mark Tokola is the vice president of the Korea Economic Institute of America. He's a long serving American diplomat with postings around the world and we discuss a few of them in this episode, including his first posting to Turkey where his main job was helping Americans sent to prison on drug trafficking charges. He also compares his work in the Balkans in the 1990s to Iraq after the fall of Sadd...

Donald Trump's foreign policy and national security team is still taking shape. He has appointed Nikki Haley as his UN ambassador and Mike Flynn as his National Security Advisor. But at the time of recording, he has not picked a Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense.    So how are you best able to interpret and understand the implications of those selections to American foreign policy? Thankf...

--- Support the podcast and join our premium subscribers club! --->  https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches     President elect Donald Trump will nominate Nikki Haley to be his Ambassador to the United Nations. She is a rising star in Republican politics and currently serves as the governor of South Carolina. She was sharp critic of Trump during the primaries, yet he has picked her to represent...

--- Support the podcast! Join the premium subscribers club ! --- Tali Nates has a personal connection to Schindler's List. On it was the name of her father and uncle, whom Oskar Schindler saved from a Nazi extermination camp.  She is now the director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center in South Africa and we have a fascinating conversation about how the lessons of the Holocaust are a...

--- Support the podcast and join our premium subscribers club ! --- As Americans headed to the polls on election day, diplomats from around the world headed to Marrakech, Morocco for the first big global climate summit since the Paris Agreement last year. This was to be an important inflection point in the global effort to combat climate change. Just a week earlier the Paris Agreement officially e...

--- Support the podcast and join our premium subscribers club ! --- Maina Kiai has some profound insights into how governments abrogate the rights of people to freely assemble. He is a Kenyan human rights lawyer and activist who currently serves as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. His career was born in opposition to an oppress...

--- Click here to go to the Patreon Page to earn rewards and support the show!  ---    I'll get straight to the point. These are uncertain times. They are confusing times. We are entering the Trump era of American foreign policy. What does that mean for the world? For the ideals we care about? For the entire liberal international world order?  I don't know. But I am going to make a pledge to you r...