Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

"Nobody wins in trade wars," said António Guterres as he left a UN Security Council meeting this week. But it's clear there's at least one big loser: American diplomacy. This week, Anjali and Mark break down how the Trump tariffs are rippling through the UN — and how they're complicating diplomacy on issues that have nothing to do with trade. We also speculate on who Trump might tap as his next en...

Heather Hurlburt is a former chief of staff in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative during the Biden Administration and now a fellow at Chatham House. She is also someone I've routinely turned to over the years for insights into broader geopolitical trends. In our conversation today, we dig into the real geopolitical fallout from Donald Trump's escalating trade war — and how the global bala...

A few months ago, the Canadian Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, was cruising toward a  massive  victory in the upcoming Canadian elections, with most polls showing him holding a 20-point lead over his Liberal Party opponent. But what a difference an American election makes! Since Trump's musings about annexing Canada and his sweeping trade war against the country, polls have shifted de...

On March 28th, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar—the strongest to hit the region in a century. The epicenter was in the Sagaing region, near Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city, in the northwest of the country. Sagaing is also the epicenter of Myanmar's civil war and the humanitarian crisis caused by the brutal conflict that has raged for the past four years. In other words, this earth...

Effectively and efficiently responding to humanitarian crises is one of the things the United Nations and its partners in the NGO community do best. Over the years, they have gotten very good at saving lives. This system is now under unprecedented strain due to the Trump administration's decision to freeze foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development. These cuts are bein...

The UN Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration are two entities now squarely in the crosshairs of their once-strongest backer. Both agencies rely heavily on American funding—but with that funding now cut, they're laying off staff by the thousands. In this episode of our UN-focused podast, To Save Us From Hell, Anjali Dayal and Mark Leon Goldberg discuss the impact of these...

Trump is serious about his intention to seize the Panama Canal. He discussed it in his inauguration address and has dispatched Marco Rubio to Panama to put a plan in motion. But what do Panamanians think about this? My interview guest is Ed Price, a political economist at New York University and a columnist for the  Financial Times . We begin by discussing the general mood on the streets of Panama...

Imagine a world in which companies could secretly export toxic waste and dump it in unsuspecting communities. Until the 1992 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, there were no rules governing the international movement of toxic waste. Today, this convention ensures that such waste cannot be sent to unsuspecting recipients, particularly...

South Sudan is the world's youngest country—and it has been troubled from the start. After decades of struggle, the country broke free from Sudan in 2011, gaining independence with the support of the United States, Europe, and most Western powers. But soon after independence, the turmoil began. Political rivalries intensified, as did competition over oil resources. Meanwhile, vain political leader...

The Trump administration has turned the United Nations into a battleground in its war on gender equality. At the Commission on the Status of Women this week, the U.S. sought to block references to gender equality…in a conference dedicated to that very cause! Meanwhile, at the Security Council, the U.S. refused to join a statement condemning the Taliban's treatment of women, signaling a broader ret...

Water is indispensable - and also irreplaceable. There are no substitutes for its most crucial uses. Yet rising demands, mounting environmental pressures, and unsustainable management practices increasingly strain global water systems. Many major rivers and groundwater aquifers have reached or surpassed the limits of their renewable supplies.  Where countries and communities rely on the same resou...

When a man-made or natural disaster strikes, aid agencies must turn to donors, hat in hand, to fundraise for the response. This includes UN agencies like the World Food Programme and UNICEF, as well as international NGOs like the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children. Over the years, the UN has established a mechanism to consolidate these appeals through the Office for the Coordinat...

On Monday February 24, the General Assembly convened for a long-scheduled vote marking the third anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In a stunning shift, the United States abandoned its European allies and abruptly sided with Russia in an attempt to block any condemnation of Russia's aggression and any affirmation of Ukrainian sovereignty. This vote sent shockwaves through the halls of th...

The Mine Ban Treaty is one of the most successful humanitarian disarmament agreements in modern history. Also known as the Ottawa Treaty, it emerged in the 1990s in response to the devastating impact of landmines on civilians worldwide. At the time, millions of these hidden explosives were scattered across conflict zones, continuing to kill and maim long after wars had ended. A coalition of activi...

There are a small number of people to whom I owe my career, and one of them is Ted Turner. In 1998, he famously pledged a billion dollars to support UN causes, leading to the creation of the United Nations Foundation. The UN Foundation, in turn, was one of my key backers early in my career when I launched the first blog about the UN, UN Dispatch . There's a new six-part documentary on MAX about Te...

The Trump administration's fight against DEI has come for the United Nations. In this episode of  To Save Us From Hell , Anjali Dayal and Mark Leon Goldberg discuss what we are seeing unfold at the UN in terms of Trump's push against inclusion and gender equity. These moves are  already disrupting the regular order of business at the UN, and we explore what this portends for the organization movin...

The foreign aid freeze, destruction of USAID, and withdrawal from the World Health Organization have severely undermined America's ability to fight infectious diseases at home and abroad. With outbreaks of the deadly Marburg and Ebola viruses underway in East Africa and a fast-mutating bird flu spreading across the world, these moves by the Trump administration have left Americans highly vulnerabl...

On February 12rd, Donald Trump held lengthty calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to advance a vague peace plan for Ukraine. But can a peace deal actually come together in a way that upholds Ukraine's determination to exist as an independent state, free from Russia's yoke? And does Russia have any incentive to relent, given its slow but steady progress on the battlefield against war-w...

On January 26, a Rwanda-backed militia known as M23 captured the city of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, massive city of two million people and a major regional trading hub. While M23 had been active in the region for quite some time, this move marked a  significant  escalation in the ongoing conflict. To escalate things further, the group also vowed to march to Kinshasa, DRC...

Today's episode is a crossover with Robert Wright's Nonzero Podcast. I have followed Bob's work for years—he is a thoughtful commentator, author, and podcaster. He asked me to come on his show to discuss how the new Trump administration may approach the United Nations and what impact Trump's policies may have on international cooperation and global governance more broadly. This is a long episode i...

On Day One, Donald Trump froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid. On Day Eight, the State Department issued a stop-work order for USAID. This is causing massive ripple effects around the world. USAID staff and contractors are being laid off in droves. HIV patients in several African countries are being turned away from clinics where they had long received crucial medicines. Humanitarian and development...

For the past two decades, Sri Lankan politics has been dominated by the Rajapaksa family, with two brothers more or less alternating between serving as president and prime minister from 2005 to 2022. Their regime was marked by corruption and sustained through appeals to ethnic nationalism among the majority Sinhalese Buddhist population, including by deliberately inciting sentiment against minorit...

In this special live recording of To Save Us From Hell , our sister podcast about the UN, co-host Anjali Dayal and I discuss the highlights (and lowlights) from the confirmation hearing for Donald Trump's pick as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise Stefanik, a member of Congress from New York and a staunch Donald Trump loyalist, did not display the hardcore MAGA vibes one might expect dur...

At long last, a ceasefire agreement has been reached in Gaza. The agreement, finalized in the closing days of the Biden administration, calls for the phased release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. It also includes provisions for the redeployment of Israeli troops within Gaza and a surge of humanitarian aid to the Strip. Joi...

Misinformation is rampant in conflict and war, and the extent to which people believe misinformation can often influence the trajectory of these conflicts. But when is misinformation actually believed, and when is it not? My guest today, Daniel Silverman, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Carnegie Mellon and the author of a groundbreaking new study on misinformation and war. His bo...