The Cosmopolicast

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com Judith Levy is a dear friend of mine who lives in Israel. Years ago, I wrote about our friendship in a book review, which you can read here : I met Judith Wrubel in 1991 at Oxford University, where we were both graduate students in international relations. We became friends walking back to Balliol College ea...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com The symposium with Vladislav was a fantastic. But the video that resulted was, again, way longer than anyone could reasonably be expected to watch. It was longer, I think, than I can even upload. I’d been trying for 24 hours to upload an edited version, without success. The system only relented when I cut it...

Here’s the promised conversation with Shay. It’s grim. For those of you who don’t listen to podcasts, a transcript is below. Updates * US withdrawing troops from key Middle East bases as precaution, American official says * Iranians arrive in Turkey through border gate as crackdown persists. The US issues a warning for citizens to evacuate Iran as protests intensify, with many Iranians seeking ref...

For a change—a big change—Donald Trump has said something that has me standing and applauding: I pray to God he means it. The Iranian people have yearned to hear those words for so very long. All hell is breaking loose in Iran as a result—so he’d better damned well mean it. Earlier today , Amit Segal wrote: … regimes fall because of guns and the people who hold them. In Iran, there’s more than one...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She now lives in Brussels and writes, on Substack, about foreign influence operations : I’ve spent the last several years screaming from the rooftops about the corrosive effects of foreign infl...

August 1968 The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain, Among its desperate and slain, The Ogre stalks with hands on hips, While drivel gushes from his lips. —WH Auden Belgium has suddenly gone wobbly about seizing Russia’s frozen assets, spooked by the thought of Russian lawyers. Pokrovst...

(Note: This is not Critical Conditions with Dan Perry. I just can’t figure out how to get rid of that logo.) Recently, I had an exchange with our subscriber Josh Rosenberg—who on Substack goes by the name Josh of Arc, and writes at Sic Semper Tyrannis —about the use of violence in resisting authoritarianism. You’ll remember his essay, Force and Freedom: Contemplating the Unthinkable , in which he...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com Chris Alexander, whose Substack I recommend with the highest enthusiasm , joined the Canadian foreign service in 1991. He spent six years at the Canadian embassy in Moscow: He was the deputy head of mission during the first three years of Putin’s presidency. He’s also the former Canadian Minister of Citizens...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com This is not, actually, an episode of Critical Conditions. It’s a regular Cosmopolicast. But I haven’t yet figured out how to separate the two. In this episode, former Canadian diplomat Chris Alexander and I discuss Russia’s post-Soviet trajectory, the rise of Vladimir Putin, and the West’s repeated misjudgme...

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency session today (it’s now Sunday in Paris) to discuss the Israeli security cabinet’s approval of a plan to seize Gaza City. The hostages’ families have called for a general strike over the decision. I spoke to Vivian Bercovici and Judith Deborah Levy to ask how they feel about this. In short: not good. It’s a long podcast—we had a lot to talk about—so I...

I recorded this podcast with Vladislav Davidzon on Zoom on Wednesday. I thought we’d covered some interesting ground. But when I listened to it, I was horrified to discover that something was seriously wrong with the audio. Vlad’s voice was mostly fine, but mine was often inaudible. I don’t know why. I record conversations on Zoom several times a week, and this has never happened before. I spent y...

While I’m at it, here’s the conversation you missed with Sergei Cristo . He’s the hero of the podcast Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring , in which he offered evidence of a spy ring operating at the heart of the British establishment. I apologize for how long it took me to put this up. My computer wasn’t able to handle a file this big, so I couldn’t get it down from the cloud. Every time I tried,...

For those of you who missed it, here’s the conversation we had on Sunday with Vivek and Raja Muneeb. Here’s an AI summary of the conversation—it’s remarkably accurate: Pakistan’s Nuclear Threat and Implications The meeting involved a discussion about the potential threat of Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the implications of their use. The participants discussed the possibility of Pakistan using nu...

🎟️🎭🎼➪☛☞ BUY IT HERE ☚☜⇦🎼🎭🎟️ You’ve heard, I’m sure, of my famous but highly elusive brother, Mischa Berlinski. He’s the author of FIELDWORK—a finalist for the National Book Award— and PEACEKEEPING. His writing has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing. He got a Whiting Writers’ Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Addison M. Metcalf Award. He’s the bi...

I invited Bob Holley on the podcast to discuss the article he recently published here, Fracturing the Security Map , warning that the return of Donald Trump, coupled with Ukraine’s defeat, could spark a stampede to redraw the world’s nuclear security arrangements. Discussed in the podcast This is the remarkably prescient article by John Measheimer I mentioned: The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Dete...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com My friend Ariel Cohen joined us today from Netanya, where he’s celebrating the holidays. A political analyst, Ariel focuses on Russia, Eurasia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and energy policy. Obviously, we had a lot to talk about. We spoke about a question that’s maddening me: Why can’t the people who ma...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com “ There are smart pollsters, insightful pollsters, accurate pollsters … but few are all three. Christine Quirk is. She makes people who hire her look smarter than we really are. ”— Christy Quirk is a more cosmopolitan globalist than most. I met her in Istanbul about twenty years ago, where I discovered she h...

Vladislav Davidzon joins us to discuss his latest article in Tablet. Ukraine defies the US to launch a showy offensive into Russia : Observing Israel’s moves in the Middle East, Kyiv gambles on an American power vacuum: … What changed in July is that the Ukrainians, like other embattled US allies, were faced with a new opportunity in Washington: The cognitively impaired president had been forced o...

UPDATE : Some of you didn’t care for the sound effects, so here’s a version without them: Since I have a philosopher in the family, I thought you might enjoy hearing a conversation with my father about what it means that we’ve built machines that can think and what we might learn from them about what it means to be human. We discuss the way Large Language Models have altered our understanding of n...

Russia has been hard at work kicking the United States out of Africa. It’s all but chased out France, too. But anyone who imagines Russia to be a kinder, gentler superpower is out of his mind. The investigative journalist Philip Obaji has been following the activities of the Wagner group in Africa for years. He recently spent the months investigating human rights abuses by Russian paramilitaries i...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claireberlinski.substack.com Claire Berlinski and Judith Levy discuss the escalating tensions in northern Israel with Hezbollah, recent incursions, and the devastating impact of ongoing conflict. They explore the strategic and military implications for Israel, the psychological toll on citizens, and the political maneuvers of Israeli le...

Here’s an AI summary of the podcast: Join Clare Berlinski and Judith Levy in this episode of The Elephant Cage as they discuss the Biden administration's inability to understand deterrence and escalation dominance. They provide updates on the Hamas deal, analyze the current geopolitical landscape, and critique the American foreign policy approach towards Russia and Iran. The discussion also covers...

Show notes: Who wants a two-state solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians . This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit claireberlinski.substack.com/subscribe

Show notes Detectives urgently investigating what led to man’s fatal sword rampage. Truly impressive scenes from Tbilisi : Over 100,000 people are protesting against the Russia-inspired foreign agents bill in the capital, with protests also occurring in other cities. Georgians are rallying to defend their country from becoming a Russian satellite state: John adds: “Think we are on the verge of som...

Show notes Found on the sidewalk, destined for the dump: After my weekend’s ministrations: My brother thinks I could make a lucrative side gig out of writing a newsletter about finding junk in the streets of Paris and restoring it. He thinks more people would subscribe to that than they would to the Cosmopolitan Globalist. I don’t think I have the time to write two full-time Substacks—especially s...