The Global Agora

Did the probability of Russia attacking Norway decrease? Karsten Friis , a Senior Research Fellow from The Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, thinks it does, but there are also a few buts. So we have discussed what is the biggest concern of Norway regarding Russia, also taking into account that Finland and Sweden are, hopefully, on their way to NATO. He explained how Norway is helping U...

In December, The Society for the German Language named Zeitenwende the word of the year for 2022 . But one year after the Russian large-scale invasion of Ukraine started, does the Zeitenwende also have a real political meaning? What is the role of Chancellor Olaf Scholz in this epochal tectonic shift as he described it by himself?  talked to Alexander Clarkson who is a Lecturer in German, European...

It's one year from the beginning of the Russian large-scale invasion of Ukraine. "Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he can bully Ukrainians. But he only makes us angrier." This is what Iuliia Mendel said to me in our podcast debate. She is the former press secretary of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, from June 2019 until July 2021, author of the book The Fight of Our...

Could Russia try to stage a coup in Moldova? How probable is it? Is Moldova's government ready for such a scenario? And what about the problem of Transnistria? About the current developments in Moldova, I talked to Denis Cenusa . He is an associate expert at The Eastern Europe Studies Centre (EESC) in Vilnius. Listen to our conversation. And if you enjoy what I do, please support me on Ko-fi!...

We are all following Rob Lee on Twitter , aren't we? I'm not sure when he sleeps but his feed is all the time full of interesting information, analysis, and videos related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With all of this, I'm really happy that Rob joined my podcast. No introduction is needed, but he is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, and...

Finland and Sweden are still out of NATO despite the agreement from the Alliance summit in June in Madrid. Is Turkey playing a divide-and-conquer game as it seems Ankara is all the time moving the goalposts? Is Russian happy about it? And what about Hungary? I talked to Toni Alaranta , Senior Research Fellow in the European Union Research Programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs...

How is the Russian invasion against Ukraine shaping Japan's security views? What are Tokyo's main concerns? China, North Korea, Russia? I talked to John Nilsson-Wright , University Associate Professor in Modern Japanese Politics and International Relations at Cambridge University and Korea Foundation Korea Fellow and Senior Research Fellow for Northeast Asia with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chat...

Wilder Alejandro Sanchez is an analyst of defense, trade and geopolitical issues in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Western Hemisphere and the President of Second Floor Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, DC. As his expertise stretched from the post-Soviet space to Latin America, I picked Alex's brain and we talked about how the mentioned regions reacted to the Russian war again...

The first round of the presidential election in Czechia takes place on 13 and 14 January. There are three clear favorites for the run-off. Ex-Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, former rector of Mendel University in Brno Danuše Nerudová, and former Chair of the NATO Military Committee Petr Pavel. I talked to Seán Hanley , an Associate Professor in Comparative Central and East European Politics at th...

Russian President Vladimir Putin achieved less than nothing. This is how Tom Nichols assesses the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Tom is a staff writer at The Atlantic and Professor Emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he taught for 25 years. So is Putin the biggest loser of 2022? Are we witnessing Cold War 2.0? Read not just the latest Tom's book ...

Maria Avdeeva is Ukrainian disinformation and security expert from Kharkiv. From the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion she is trying to document what is going on. I talked to Maria jusť before the big aggression  and also a few times in the past months . And while the situation is complicated, I'm glad that we had a chance to reconnect. The war is raging but it's also a bit of a C...

Every comparison is a problematic one, but it is also interesting to educationally speculate. I talked to  Rory Truex , an Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses on Chinese politics and authoritarian systems. We also discussed one very hypothetical question. Would Xi Jinping attack Ukraine if he would ru...

The Russians themselves must conclude that the war against Ukraine was a mistake, a disaster. That's why they have to lose otherwise there will be another war. This is how Anne Applebaum sees the invasion. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Anne's latest book is Th...

What kind of weapons does Ukraine need to keep the momentum on the battlefield? What is the prospect of some negotiations with Russia? Will and should Ukraine continue to strike targets inside Russia? About this and much more, I talked to Toms Rostoks , an Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Latvia and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Security and Strategic Resea...

The current protests in China against the zero covid policy will be squashed. This is what I think, but more importantly, this is also what Lawrence C. Reardon thinks. Because he definitely knows China. Chris, as I know him, is a Professor of Political Science at New Hampshire University and a research associate at Harvard University's Fairbank Center. But while he suggests that dem...

Does the football World Cup in Qatar deserve so much criticism? Is it somewhat illegitimate? And what about the beer for fans? I talked to Arash Azizi , a scholar and the PhD candidate in history at New York University (NYU). He researches the history of socialist and Islamist movements in Iran and the Arab world.  But we didn't discuss just Qatar and football. We also debated how he sees the...

Jennifer Mercieca was right. She is Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University and an author of the book Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump . We recorded this podcast one day before Donald Trump's presidential announcement and Jennifer was pretty sure, as you can listen, how this ends up. We discussed what's next for Trump, a...

Julian Ringhof is a policy fellow with the European Power program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on the implications of digital and emerging technologies for international affairs. He just published an article titled The age of ego-politics: Elon Musk and the power of the tech giants . With that in mind, I thought that it would be interesting to interv...

Professor Seth Cotlar is a historian at Willamette University in Oregon so as we talked about American politics, his answer contains many historical references. It only helps to better understand what's going on in the US. The midterm elections take place on November 8 and President Joe Biden said that democracy will be on the ballot. Is this a bit of a political exaggeration o...

Imagine that you are in a wargame simulation and you play Russia. This is what happened to Alexander Bollfrass . He is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - ETH Zurich. I talked to him after he participated in such a wargame. What were its main conclusions? Did the players blow off the world with nuclear weapons? Listen to...

As Russia is conducting essentially terrorist attacks targeting Ukrainian cities with drones, I spoke to Mauro Gilli . He is a Senior Researcher in Military Technology and International Security at the Center for Security Studies of ETH-Zurich. We talked about drones and other military systems and about how both sides used them on the battlefield. Do you want to know what is the big...

Is Xi Jinping fully in control? ,,99,5 percent," said Kerry Brown to me when I asked him if we can be 100 percent sure that Xi gets a third term as general secretary at China's Communist Party Congress that starts on October 16th. He is a Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute at King's College, London. So what does Xi's reign mean? Could the...

In September, I visited South Korea for the first time and I also had the opportunity to see the demilitarized zone. Just before my visit, I talked to Sung-Yoon Lee , Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at Tufts University. Our discussion was focused more on North Korea and the regime in Pyongyang. So what can we expect from Kim Jong-un and from his sister...

The far-right party the Brothers of Italy led by Giorgia Meloni just won the early election with 26 percent of votes. The alliance of the Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini's Lega and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia will establish the government that will be further to the right as any Italian government after the Benito Mussolini's era. Yes, the fascist era. Is...

The election just took place in Sweden and the result is that the country will be run by the rightist government. The Social Democrats led by PM Magdalena Andersson von over 30% of the votes but it's not enough to govern due to the fact that the far-right Sweden Democrats are the second-strongest party, gaining 20,5% of the votes in their best-ever election performanc...