The Rachman Review

Gideon talks to Thai opposition leader Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit and John Reed, the FT’s Bangkok bureau chief, about the student protests that have challenged Thailand’s traditional power structures by demanding constitutional change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A country that enjoyed decades of economc growth and stability now risks being torn apart by ethnic divisions. Gideon discusses what’s behind the outbreak of violence with Gabriel Negatu, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, and David Pilling, the FT’s Africa editor. Clips: Reuters, Live Aid Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gideon discusses the international ambitions, and problems, of the French president with Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde. Are Emmanuel Macron’s views on European integration and strategic independence winning out? Clips: Reuters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, served as US ambassador to Nato during the Obama years. He joins Gideon Rachman to talk about how Joe Biden may seek to rebuild the US’s broken alliances and project a new image to the world.  Clips: CBS 60 Minutes; Reuters. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Americans woke on November 4 to find that the result of their presidential election remained unclear. President Donald Trump’s statements about the integrity of the vote and his plan to dispute the final result at the Supreme Court signalled that the US could face days or weeks of political uncertainty. In this special early edition episode, Gideon talks to Jeremy Shapiro, a former US st...

The columnist has written about life in Trump’s Washington for The New Yorker magazine for almost four years. As voters head to the polls to elect the next US president, Gideon Rachman talks to Glasser about what to expect on November 3 — and after, if there is not a decisive victor and the election ends up in the courts. Review clips: C-SPAN, CNN, Reuters Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy fo...

Western nations have tended to regard the recent history of Myanmar, formerly Burma, as a struggle between democracy and dictatorship. But the country’s colonial past and climate change have also played a key role in its complex problems, Burmese historian Thant Myint-U tells Gideon Rachman. Clips: Reuters Thant’s book, The Hidden History of Burma, is published by Atlantic. Hosted on Acast. See ac...

Gideon Rachman talks to historian Margaret MacMillan about her study of warfare through the ages and why she fears that, while the manner in which we wage war has changed, our propensity to stumble into conflict remains the same. Clips: Reuters Margaret MacMillan’s book  War: How Conflict Shaped Us  is published by Random House   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

Philip Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is a long-time Washington insider who worked on Middle East policy for the Obama administration and is now an informal adviser to the Biden campaign. In this episode, Gideon Rachman talks to him about the US presidential election and American policy in the Middle East — the subject of his new book, Losing the Long Game . After dec...

China’s authorities have started to celebrate the country’s role in the second world war after long regarding it as a subject best forgotten. Gideon talks to the historian Rana Mitter about what’s behind this revised outlook on such a tormented period in the country’s history.  Rana Mitter’s book China’s Good War is published by Harvard University Press. Clips: Reuters and ‘The Eigh...

When Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known as Amlo, took office in late 2018 he promised a fourth political transformation of the country. Gideon Rachman talks to Jude Webber, the FT’s Mexico and Central America correspondent, about how Amlo’s plans to end 'neoliberalism' and fight corruption are faring during the coronavirus pandemic.     Review clips: Reuters, PBS News Hosted on...

From the poisoning of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and pressure to cancel the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, to the refugee catastrophe in Greece and headaches over Brexit, Germany has no shortage of foreign policy crises to deal with. Gideon Rachman discusses how best to handle them with Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee and a long-sh...

Israel’s new deal to normalise diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates comes without any concessions on the Palestinian peace process. Gideon Rachman talks to Anshel Pfeffer, author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu , about whether this agreement is a political triumph for the Israeli prime minister. They also discuss the lingering questions it leaves about las...

What are the biggest threats to the future of human existence on the planet? Not nuclear war or climate change as some might think, but man-made pathogens and thinking machines, the Australian philosopher Toby Ord tells Gideon Rachman. He talks about how he reached this conclusion and what can be done to avert disaster. Clips: Reuters Toby Ord’s book, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future...

Rumours about the US presidential election abound: is voting by mail secure, can Donald Trump postpone it, will the United States Postal Service be able to deliver ballots in time. Gideon Rachman sorts through what is fact and what is fiction in a discussion with Judith Kelley, Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and Edward Luce, the FT’s US national editor.   Revi...

Gideon Rachman discusses how America’s tech war on China has affected Beijing’s long-held plan to assert its economic and military strength on the global stage with Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute of SOAS at London University. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Lebanese have survived civil war, decades of rolling blackouts and even managed the influx of 1.5m Syrian refugees, about a quarter of the country's population. But the explosion in Beirut's port in early August that killed scores of people, left hundreds of thousands homeless and cost billions in property damage, have prompted a more intense reckoning about the decades of corruption and misma...

Gideon Rachman talks to academic and writer Sinan Ulgen about Turkey’s foreign policy under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focusing on the controversial decision to turn Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum back into a mosque and the rationale behind Turkish military interventions in Syria and Libya. Clips: Reuters and Anadolu Agency Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many countries agreed that the best way to stem the pandemic was to shut down movement, but the US took a different path than its peers in handling the economic fallout. Instead of being kept on payrolls through furlough schemes, millions of Americans have had to seek jobless benefits. Rana Foroohar, the FT’s global business columnist, is standing in for Gideon Rachman this week. She talks with Wi...

Donald Trump’s “America First” policy represented a marked shift in how the US engaged with its allies. Now Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden is focusing his campaign in part on restoring US leadership on the world stage through strategic alliances. Gideon Rachman is joined by Schwarzman Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Mira Rapp-Hooper, who is author o...

Gideon Rachman talks to FT journalist Michael Peel about the use of false and misleading narratives by world leaders in democracies and dictatorships alike, and how the pandemic may have exposed the limits of doing politics "according to the world as you spin it".   Michael’s book The Fabulists is published by Oneworld. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Now in power until 2036 after a recent constitutional change, Vladimir Putin is nevertheless facing a difficult future as the Russian economy stagnates and popular unrest grows. Gideon Rachman and Catherine Belton, author and former FT journalist, discuss how the president and a coterie of close aides took over the wealth of the country on the pretext of reasserting Russia's role on the world...

In recent weeks people across the world have joined Black Lives Matter protests in response to the police killing of George Floyd in the US. Some activists are uniting under country-specific banners calling for racial equality. Gideon Rachman hosts a panel about the international BLM movement, featuring Dele Olojede, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from Nigeria, Divya Cherian, a professor of s...

Brazil this week became the second country after the US to register more than 50,000 deaths from Covid-19. President Bolsonaro’s mis-handling of the pandemic has led to calls for his impeachment and even fears of a military coup. Gideon Rachman discusses what happens next with Oliver Stuenkel, professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. Sign up to our coronavirus briefing at www.ft.co...

India is facing two crises: coronavirus and China. Despite one of the toughest lockdowns in the world, the country has not been able to bring the pandemic under control. Hospitals in New Delhi are overwhelmed. Now a long-standing border dispute with China has turned deadly, with multiple Indian casualties reported. Gideon Rachman talks to Pratap Bhanu Mehta of Ashoka University about how the Modi...