The Global Agora

,,The war in Ukraine is entering a critical phase. Winter is coming and it will be hard. Hard for the Ukrainian people and armed forces who are fighting for their freedom, and hard for those of us who support them," NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently wrote for The Financial Times . But what is NATO doing more than six months into Russia's war against Ukraine? Should the Alliance be...

This podcast was recorded two days before Queen Elizabeth II. passed away, that's why it's not mentioned. The death of the Monarch might have real political consequences for the United Kingdom, but it doesn't change the fact that a new Conservative PM Liz Truss will face many challenges. Is she up to the job? Is Boris Johnson already plotting a comeback? I talked to Steven Fielding , a Profes...

The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was born on March 2, 1931 and passed away on August 30. There is very little doubt that he changed the world and contributed to the end of the Cold War, though he also faced a lot of criticism. Where is Gorbachev's place in history? How important was he? What were his successes and failures? I talked to Bradley Woodworth , an Associate Professor of Histor...

You gotta fight for your right to party! The famous Beastie Boys song might become a new political slogan of Finland's Social Democrat PM Sanna Marin . After the video of her partying was leaked, she faced criticism, she took a drug test and apologized. But is this episode even newsworthy? If Marin is a party girl, so what? Is she facing double standards from critics? Woul...

The Taliban took over Kabul one year ago, on August 15th. It had a huge geopolitical significance but I have to admit there is another reason why it's so easy for me to remember it. The fact is that August 15th is my birthday. About what happened in Afghanistan in one year, I talked to Vanda Felbab-Brown . She is a Senior Fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology i...

To quote Margaret Thatcher: Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. So how powerful is Russia whose leaders like to brag about it? I talked to Nicholas Cull , a Professor of Public Diplomacy and Communication at the University of Southern California. We discussed Russian narratives related to the war against Ukraine and what Moscow i...

The Italian government of PM SuperMario Draghi collapsed. The early election will take place on September 25th. How might the voting be affected by Russian aggression against Ukraine? How pro-Putin are Italian parties and the public? Will Italy turn to Russia after the early election? And what to expect from the far-right leader Giorgia Meloni and her party Brothers of Italy wh...

Happy Birthday to Arnold Schwarzenegger ! Born on July 20, 1947, in Austrian Thal, he is 75 years young. The star of The Terminator, Predator, BTW, probably my favorite Arnolds's movie, Conan the Barbarian, Red Heat, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Twins or True Lies, and the former Republican Governor of California has never been far from the spotlight. How was he able to achieve w...

Complex or complicated? What is the legacy of murdered Japan's ex-PM Shinzo Abe? Was he a nationalist who globalized Japan? The killing of the longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister on July 8th shocked the country and the world. How will Mr. Abe be remembered? I talked to  Joshua Walker , President, and CEO of Japan Society in New York who had a chance to interact with th...

How much should we be surprised by the scale and quickness of the demonstrations in Sri Lanka? What has led to such turmoil? I talked to Ashok Swain . He is a Professor and Head of the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at the Uppsala University. We have also discussed what's next for Sri Lanka's powerful Rajapaksas' family and if the Russian war against Ukraine contributed&n...

"If the current amount of support from the West to Ukraine was present in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea, we could have avoided a lot of people being killed. But I'm glad that Ukraine is receiving support, and hopefully, there will be more support and long-term support." This is what Anton Barbashin said to me during our debate. He is an editorial director of Riddle , which is a website a...

Ben Hodges is a former commanding general, United States Army Europe. He believes Ukraine can win the war Russia started on February 24th. Why does he believe this? How should the West help Ukraine? Should it send troops? "I would say right now we have the best strategic advantage over Russia we have had in the last 70 years," General Hodges told me. What does he mean by this and why doe...

Do the conservative Justices at the Supreme Court impose their religious beliefs on America? The Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs Wade verdict that was the law of the land for almost 50 years. Prior to this decision, I talked to Diana Carlin . She is a Professor Emerita of Communication at Saint Louis University. We had a debate about how the Supreme Court works, past precedents, culture wars,...

Toni Alaranta is a Senior Research Fellow in the European Union Research Programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs ( FIIA ). His areas of expertise include Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies, in particular Turkey’s relations with the EU, the US and Russia. According to him, Ankara has the maximalist and the minimalist position toward the Finnish and Swedish NATO bid. We also...

We have started our conversation talking about Germany and about what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is doing or not doing regarding Ukraine. But, and perhaps inevitably, we have moved our discussion to what is going on in America and what might happen. And the question is: Does Russian President Vladimir Putin only need to survive until Donald Trump will be back in the White House? At the annual G...

Would Russia be willing to use nuclear weapons? And what about the West, especially the US? I talked to Alexander Bollfrass , a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies ( CSS ) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - ETH Zurich. Why does he think that it seems that Russia makes a whole class of nuclear weapons exclusively for television? We also discuss if the risk of a nuclear...

As CNN pointed out , it's the third time in recent months that American President Joe Biden has said the US would protect Taiwan from a Chinese attack, only to have the White House walk back those remarks. Over a few decades, the US has intentionally maintained a position characterized as strategic ambiguity when asked whether it would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of an attack by China. B...

On May 14th, 18-year-old Payton Gendron killed 10 people and wounded three; 11 of the 13 shot were Black residents and the attack took place in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Buffalo. The far-right terrorist wrote a manifesto connected to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory and according to CNN just before the attack, he invited people to the chatroom at the messaging social...

Should we call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal? And what are the consequences of using such terminology? Are we witnessing genocide in Ukraine and does Putin talk about Ukrainians in genocidal terms? About this but also about much more, I talked to Paola Gaeta . She is a Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. Thi...

As many other journalists can attest, Maria Avdeeva is doing an excellent and brave job informing the world about what is going on in Kharkiv and Ukraine. I talked to her just before the Russian invasion, shortly after , and now again. Maria is a Research Director at the European Expert Association where she focuses on international security and combating hybrid threats and disinformations. "...

Emmanuel Macron won the French presidential election as he received 58.5 percent of the vote in the run-off round against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen who was supported by 41.5 percent of voters. It was a hard-fought victory but the French president cannot sleep on laurels as the legislative election is swiftly approaching. What's Macron's vision for the next five years? Does he want to be th...

How healthy or unhealthy is Russian President Vladimir Putin? Why is the Kremlin bragging about the nuclear arsenal? What led to Bucha and the other massacres by Russian soldiers in Ukraine? And does Putin think everything is fine and how delusional is he? About this and much more, I talked to Andrei Soldatov , a Russian investigative journalist, co-founder, and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog o...

"Germany lost its compass and is going through a soul searching." This is how Jörg Forbrig , a Senior Fellow from the German Marshall Fund and director for Central and Eastern Europe, assess Berlin's reaction to the Russian war against Ukraine. But he also emphasizes that there are things Germans got right and those should be acknowledged. So is Russia's war against Ukraine also Germany's fault an...

What if the only limit Hungary's PM Viktor Orban has after the election is his own imagination? Orban's far-right populist Fidesz just clearly won the election that took place on March 3rd. The Prime Minister's party will have a constitutional majority in the next Hungarian parliament. Fidesz won 135 mandates in the parliament that has 199 seats. The united opposition lost badly, they only have 56...

Does war in Ukraine make Russian President Vladimir Putin nervous? "If there is anything human in him, he should be nervous." This is how a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations Kadri Liik answered my question. We talked about why she thinks that this war looks like Putin's crusade, about the peace negotiations, and the role of Roman Abramovich, and if she is surprised...