The Global Agora

Oleksandra Matviichuk is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and head of the Center for Civil Liberties. Her organization was awarded the  Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 . But, unfortunately, we talked about the war, about the Russian full-scale invasion that has already been ongoing for two years. "This is wishful thinking that Putin will stop. Putin openly talked about his goal in numerous interview...

How can Europe react to Donald Trump's threats to NATO? There is a realistic scenario that the populist Republican can win the US presidential elections in November. What would it mean to NATO when Trump suggested that he would encourage Moscow to attack allies that are, as he said this, not paying bills? I talked to  Edward Hunter Christie , a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute o...

Are we inching towards a big regional war in the Middle East? "What we see today is that two major unresolved issues are starting to interact with each other and could cause quite serious problems. One is, of course, the unresolved position of Iran. And the second problem is, of course, the unresolved issue of Palestine." This is what Erwin van Vee n sees when he looks at the Middle East...

Bille August is a Danish film and TV director and screenwriter. His movie Pelle the Conqueror won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Movie in 1988. He visited Bratislava for the festival of Scandinavian movies - SCANDI which introduced his movie The Kiss to the Slovak audience. And by chance, I've got an opportunity to interview him. So we talked about films, movie stars, actors, Indiana Jone...

Almost there. Sweden is now waiting only for a green light from Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán to become a member of NATO. But what will Stockholm bring to the Alliance? And how to prepare NATO and the EU for a potential war with Russia? According to Johan Norberg , a Senior Military Analyst from the Swedish Defense Research Agency ( FOI ), the West needs to continue its support for Ukraine and it has...

Does Hungary's PM Viktor Orbán want to take over the European Council? Charles Michel, the current President of the European Council, wants to run in June's EU elections, so there is a possibility that Orbán can replace him as Hungary starts its Presidency of the Council of the EU on July 1st. So what could be Orban's plan and how to deal with his regime? I talked to  Daniel Hegedüs ....

The countdown to the US presidential elections starts with the party primaries. There is a clear favorite on the Republican side, but can Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis threaten Donald Trump's position? And if Trump is the nominee, what does it tell us about how the current Republican party perceives democracy? I talked to J. Miles Coleman who is the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the...

⁠Franz-Stefan Gady ⁠ is the founder and chief executive officer of Gady Consulting and a military analyst. From the beginning of the Russian aggression, he has frequently visited Ukraine and if you are regularly listening to my podcast The Global Agora, you know that I interviewed him a couple of times in the past. So I am glad Franz joined me for another episode in the series of our debates. We d...

Tomohisa Takei is a retired Japanese admiral who served as the 32nd Chief of Staff of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force from 2014 to 2016. I had a chance to talk to him as he visited Bratislava in December. He explained how his country would react to China's attack against Taiwan, how to prevent it, and how is the Indo-Pacific region affected by the Russian war against Ukraine. And would J...

Taylor Swift was named Person of the Year 2023 by Time. Does she deserve this? What makes her so special? Her skill as a musician? Her phenomenal commercial success? Does she already have a place among the best artists in the history of pop music? And can Taylor Swift run for the US President? I talked to Toby Koenigsberg , an Associate Professor of Jazz Piano and Chair of Popular Music at the Uni...

There is support in the US for Ukraine but the Republicans have decided that Americans are more concerned about the cost and the Biden administration, I must say, has been terrible in explaining why Ukraine is important. This is what Steffen Schmidt also known as Dr. Politics told me when we discussed upcoming Republican presidential primaries and also the foreign policy effects on presidential el...

Daniele Albertazzi is a Professor of Politics and Co-Director of the Centre for Britain and Europe at the University of Surrey. He is focusing on right-wing populism, Italian politics, political communication, and party organization. He reacted to one of my tweets and it led to our podcast discussion. We talked about the foreign and domestic policies of Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a...

Is Vladimir Putin's regime surprisingly too resilient and does Donald Trump represent a clear and present danger to American democracy? I raised such questions with Michael Chertoff who was the second US Secretary of Homeland Security from 2005 to 2009. He just attended the ITAPA conference in Bratislava. We also discussed Ukraine-West relations and whether he plans to endorse somebody in the...

Martin Edwards is a Professor in the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, where he teaches classes on International Organizations. So I asked him if we need the UN, if there is a case for suspending Russia from the UN as it wages a war against Ukraine, and what it can and can not do about the Gaza conflict. We also talked about the veto the P5 countries are usi...

What can a war do to the artist? I talked to the Ukrainian director Alisa Kovalenko about fighting Russians and making movies. She recently visited Slovakia and at the movie festival Jeden Svet - One World she presented her documentary We Will Not Fade Away which follows the lives of five teenagers from Donbas. Why does she say that she believes in victory but she is a realist? And what had Alisa...

Mick Ryan is a military strategist and retired Australian Army major general. He believes that the slow delivery of the Western weapon systems to Ukraine is one of the reasons why the Russians were able to build strong defensive lines. We discussed the successes and failures of Ukraine's counteroffensive, why he thinks that Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi in...

On October 29th, an angry mob tried to hunt for Jews at Makhachkala’s Uytash International Airport, and the local authorities were caught off guard. How much does the events in Dagestan reflect the antisemitism of the Russian society? Are we going to witness similar incidents? I talked to  Harold Chambers , an expert on the North Caucasus and a doctoral candidate at Indiana University. And from Da...

If you haven't read this already, I would like to recommend a report from The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) titled:  Greyzone Lawfare: Russia and the Voyages of the SPARTA IV . It shows how certain Russian vessels appear to continue regularly transiting the Bosporus with military materiel, in breach of international law. I talked to one of the co-authors of the report. Giangiuseppe Pi...

Can the Republicans govern and do they care about it? They have a majority in the House of Representatives, but at this moment they are unable to elect the Speaker of the House. The candidacy of Jim Jordan just bit the dust despite the endorsement from Donald Trump. But should somebody like Jordan be seriously considered to become the House Speaker? The congressman from Ohio is known for supportin...

How much is Haiti a functioning state in the situation where 300 gangs are active across the state and the government cannot enforce its authority in quite a few areas? Not to mention the widespread problem of kidnappings. All of this is happening as Haiti remains the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Can it be at least partly reversed by the expected UN-backed Kenya's...

After  Slovakia , in Central Europe, all eyes are on Poland. Poles vote in parliamentary elections on October 15th. The winner will be either the populist-conservative political alliance United Right led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law and Justice party (PiS) or the center-right Civic Coalition that was formed around the Civic Platform of Donald Tusk. I went through those scenarios with  Vít Dostá...

How can Europe build a new security architecture? Can it wait until the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House? Should the West abandon all self-imposed red-lines when helping Ukraine? And does German Chancellor Olaf Scholz regret that he started to talk about Zeitenwende? At the GLOBSEC  event in Bratislava, I talked to  Ulrich Schneckener , Professor of International Relations &...

Slovak early elections will take place on September 30. It seems the winner will be either the left-wing populist Smer of former Prime Minister Robert Fico or liberal Progressive Slovakia. What does it mean for the country internally and externally? Can Slovakia become the next Hungary and the Trojan horse of Russia in the EU and NATO? I talked to Slovak political scientist Pavol Baboš from the De...

Is Russia dangerously close to NATO? The drone incident in Romania shows it won't be wise to underestimate the situation. "Russia is escalating and testing NATO," Iulia-Sabina Joja thinks. She is a Senior Fellow and Director of Middle East Institute's Black Sea Program and she teaches European security as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and George Washington Univers...

Andrew Lebovich is a Research Fellow with Clingendael's Conflict Research Unit and also a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). When the coup in Niger happened at the end of July, he was doing research in this West African country. So I was really happy when he said yes to my request for an interview. I asked him also a question that is probably a...