Archives for January 2018

What You Need to Know about Trump’s Dangerous New Nuclear Weapons Policy

You’ve may of the Doomsday Clock. This is a rubric created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the dawn of the nuclear age to demonstrate how close humanity is to nuclear annihilation. Midnight symbolizes doomsday — and the closer the clock moves to midnight, the closer we are to nuclear war.

Well, on January 25th, the scientists behind the nuclear clock moved it a tic closer — to two minutes before midnight. This is the closest the clock has been to the doomsday scenario since 1953. They cited the impetuousness of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un as their rational. But adding to the growing concern over the possible use of nuclear weapons is also a new nuclear weapons policy that is being rolled out by the Trump administration.

The world caught a glimpse of what this policy might be when a draft of a document called the Nuclear Posture Review was leaked to the press.  The nuclear posture review is a document that tends to be released in the early stages of an administration to set its over all nuclear weapons policy. And here, you will probably not be surprised to learn that Trump’s nuclear policy review is likely to deviate from his predecessors in important ways.

On the line with me to discuss the Trump administration’s emerging approach to nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence and other key nuclear policy issues is Tom Countryman. He was a career diplomat who served for decades in various postings at the State Department and around the world. He most recently served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation until the very early days of the Trump administration. He is now the chair of the board of the Arms Control Association.

Countryman does a very good job explaining what is the same–and what is so different about Donald Trump’s approach to the bomb. And in so doing, I think he offers some important insights into how some of the underlying logic of nuclear policy planners might rest on some faulty assumptions.

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A Crisis in Cameroon is Forcing English Speakers to Flee in Alarming Numbers

Over 10,000 people have fled from English speaking regions of Cameroon to neighboring Nigeria in recent weeks. They are escaping an ongoing crackdown by Cameroonian security forces against a movement that is demanding greater autonomy for English speaking regions from the French dominated central government.

In Cameroon, the struggle for more equal political rights and power by English speaking regions is a longstanding issue. It’s commonly known as “the Anglophone problem.” Over the past couple of years an Anglophone protest movement has gained increased strength and visibility. And over the past several months the government response to this movement has become increasingly violent and draconian. Meanwhile, some fringe splinter groups have decided to take up arms against the government.

This potentially brewing conflict is an off-the-radar crisis that does not attract a great deal of attention, but has both significant regional and global implications.

On the line with me to explain what is going on in Cameroon and why we should be paying attention to these developments is Yonatan L. Morse, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. He explains how this crisis is rooted in Cameroon’s unique post-colonial history and why these long simmering tensions are now boiling over

This is a great conversation–and I was happy to be able to shine a spotlight on this important, but perhaps overlooked issue.

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Mexican Towns Are Taking Security Into Their Own Hands

Tancintaro, Mexico claims to be the “avocado capital” of the world, selling one million dollars worth of the fruit per day. But what makes Tancitaro truly interesting is that the orchards — and the town itself — is under the protection of a militia funded by the avocado growers.

In a fascinating piece in the New York Times, Amanda Taub, Max Fisher and Dalia Martinez use the towns of Tancitaro, Neva and Monterrey to demonstrate a trend in Mexico: cities are effectively seceding from the state. As they write in their piece, “These are acts of desperation, revealing the degree to which Mexico’s police and politicians are seen as part of the threat.”

In this conversation Amanda Taub describes what her reporting from Mexico reveals about state fragility and the enduring presence of what can best be described as warlordism.

We discuss these three case studies in detail–and each are totally fascinating on their own. But what distinguishes this piece is the way in which it draws on social science literature to help explain this ongoing trend–which is present not only in Mexico but in other parts of the world as well.

This combination of original reporting backed by academic research is what you can expect regularly from the most excellent Interpreter column in the New York Times, which is written by Amanda Taub and Max Fisher.

If you have 30 minutes and want to learn how localities in Mexico are dealing with rampant insecurity and the weakness of the state, have a listen.[spp-ctabuttons]

A School in India is Trying to Disrupt the Caste System

Shanti Bhavan is a school in the Tamil Nadu state of southern India that serves children from the Dalit community. These are the some of the poorest children in the country. Systemic inequality has kept many members of this community in extreme poverty. (The Dalits were sometimes referred to as the “untouchables” in India’s now-illegal caste system.)

Shanti Bhavan seeks to break that cycle by offering high quality education and other life skills to its students. And for its successes to that end it has begun to earn a great deal of attention. Last year a documentary on Netflix, called Daughters of Destiny, profiled young girls at the school and offered some insights into Shanti Bhavan’s unique strategy for breaking cycles of poverty.

The school was founded in 1997 by the Indian-American businessman Abraham George. His son,  Ajit George, is the director of operations and joins me on the podcast to discuss how his father decided to start the school and how this school fits into a broader theory of change to upend the caste system and extreme poverty it engenders.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn about one unique strategy to end extreme poverty, have a listen.

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Episode 178: Lidia Bastianich

Lidia Bastianich is a chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, TV personality, entrepreneur and for the purposes of this conversation, most importantly a refugee.

She was born on the Istrian Penninsula to an ethnic Italian family. This is a region on the Adriatic Sea, in modern day Croatia. Following World War Two it was ceded from Italy to the control of Yugoslavia, which was under the communist rule of Marshal Tito.  As Lidia explains, policies that Tito enacted lead to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Italians, including her family.  Historians now refer to this as the Istrian exodus.

I include all this historic background because we kick off discussing a new philanthropic initiative in which Lidia is engaged that seeks to raise both funding and awareness for the education of refugee children.

The initiative is called Adopt-A-Future, and it was launched by the United Nations Association of the United States and USA for UNHCR, for which Lidia is a celebrity ambassador.. Lidia is asking people around the country to hold dinner parties which will serve as fundraisers for the cause of educating refugee children. Lidia is asking people around the country to hold dinner parties which will serve as fundraisers for the cause of educating refugee children.

In our conversation, we discuss at length Lidia’s refugee experience, which includes living for a time in a converted World War Two concentration camp in Italy before coming to the United States as a resettled refugee. Lidia offers some interesting insights on the salience of culinary traditions to immigration and the refugee experience.

This is a powerful and lively conversation about a lesser known side of a world renowned chef.

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Episode 177: Robert Malley

Robert Malley is the new president and CEO of the International Crisis Group.

The International Crisis Group provides the public and policymakers with analysis of conflicts and potential ways out of conflict around the world. As regular listeners probably know, it is one of my go-to resources for understanding crises and conflicts around the world and analysts from the Crisis Group are frequently guests on the this show.

(In fact —  and I did not realize this when I reached out to Malley for the interview —  but I’ve now had every single president of the International Crisis Group as a guests on this show, including Gareth Evans, Louise Arbour and Rob’s immediate predecessor Jean-Marie Guehenno.)

We kick off discussing some of the priorities he’ll emphasize as the group’s new president and also some of the major conflicts and crises he’s monitoring as we enter the new year.

We then discuss his unique upbringing. As Rob describes it, his father was a Jewish Egyptian Arab nationalist who became a public intellectual and advocated on behalf of colonized people around the world.  He describes how that background will help to inform his work as head of the Crisis Group.

Rob served in the National Security Council staff of both the Clinton administration and the Obama administration. His last post in the White House was as the so-called ISIL Czar, coordinating policy against the Islamic State.

This is a fascinating conversation with a person who has been at the center of some key foreign policy debates in the last decade.

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What Big Data Can Teach Us About Terrorism

At the very end of last year I had the opportunity to moderate a panel at the United States Institute of Peace that served as the launch of a new report called the Global Terrorism Index. 

This is a one-of-its kind quantitative examination of the impact of terrorism around the world. It includes a look at the number of terrorism deaths, the geographic distribution of terrorist attacks (including the countries and regions where terrorism is on the increase or decrease) and importantly, it puts all this data into a broader historic context in which you are able to compare the data year-by-year.

The Global Terrorism Index is researched, compiled and published by the global think tank the Institute for Economics and Peace.

On the line with me to discuss the 2017 Global Terrorism Index, and explain what big data can tell us about terrorism around the world is Daniel Hyslop, research director at the Institute for Economics and Peace.

In the conversation we also reference another flagship report from the Institute called the Positive Peace Report, which takes a quantitative approach to measuring  attitudes, institutions and structures that “create and sustain peaceful societies.”

Both the Global Terrorism Index and the Positive Peace Report are some cutting edge research in global affairs.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn what long-term data can teach us about terrorism, have a listen.

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Episode 176: Daniel Webb

Since 2013, the government of Australia has enforced a policy of sending any refugee or migrant who arrives who arrives by boat to detention centers in Papua New Guinea or the remote island nation of Nauru. They do so without exception.

Daniel Webb is an Australian lawyer who is fighting that policy.

He is the Director of Legal Advocacy at Australia’s Human Rights Law Center and he represents asylum seekers who are stranded indefinitely in Nauru and in Papua New Guinea.

In 2016 Daniel Webb helped lead a campaign called Let Them Stay, which petitioned the government to allow a few hundred of these asylum seekers who were transported to Australia for medical treatment to remain in the country.

For his work on behalf of these asylum seekers Daniel received the 2017 Global Pluralism Award. The award, “celebrates the extraordinary achievements of organizations, individuals and governments who are tackling the challenge of living peacefully and productively with diversity.”  He was one of three finalists.

The award was conferred by the Global Pluralism Center, which is a partnership between the Government of Canada and the Aga Khan, the religious leader, philanthropist and head of the NGO, the Aga Khan Development Network. The Aga Khan and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada were on hand to present this award at a ceremony in Ottawa in November.  I was in the audience, and after seeing his acceptance speech and learning more about his work I knew I had to get him on the show.

This is a powerful conversation that shines a light on a profoundly unjust and ongoing situation.

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