Conversations about Foreign Policy and World Affairs
Asad Hussein was born in a refugee camp in Kenya after his parents fled conflict in neighboring Somalia. He was raised in extreme poverty and was effectively stateless, yet despite the odds he became the first person from his refugee camp admitted to an Ivy League school.
His family’s incredible story is told in the new book Beyond the Sand and Sea: One Family’s Quest for a Country to Call Home by journalist Ty McCormick, who is a senior editor with Foreign Affairs.
Globalization was always presumed to have a flattening effect; power in a globalized world would be more diffuse and less centralized. A groundbreaking idea, called “Weaponized Interdependence,” flips that idea on its head and demonstrates how governments have exploited economic integration to pursue their foreign policy goals and compel foreign adversaries.
Guest: Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts and co-editor of the new book The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence
Health systems in Brazil are collapsing. Hospitals are running out of beds and oxygen as COVID cases in that country are soaring. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has long downplayed the severity of COVID and now deaths are spiking in South America’s largest country.
Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s rival, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is poised for a comeback in elections next year after a stunning court decision.
Guest: Leticia Casado, a journalist and stringer for the New York Times who is based in Brasilia.
Several American allies have pledged to pursue an explicitely feminist foreign policy. But what does this mean in practice?
In today’s episode, we explore what a feminist foreign policy would mean for the United States and how a feminist foreign policy is one that necessarily must also embrace multilateralism.
Guest: Devon Cone, Senior advocate for women and girls at Refugees International.
In early November, a civil war broke out in the Tigray region in Ethiopia. The conflict pitted the federal government and its allies against the regional government of Tigray, known as the TPLF.
Since then the fighting has gotten worse and the humanitarian impact for people living in Tigray has been catastrophic.
Guest: William Davison, a senior analyst for Ethiopia for International Crisis Group discusses how and why this conflict started, and where it may be headed next.
On February 24 the very first shipments of a COVID-19 vaccine from COVAX arrived in Ghana. COVAX is the international cooperative effort around the development and distribution safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines. Ghana became the first country to receive COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX when 600,000 doses landed at the airport in Accra.
On hand to receive these doses was an old friend of mine, Owusu Akoto. He is the founder and CEO of a Ghanian cold chain logistics company called Freezelink.
It was an historic day for COVAX, a hopeful day for Ghana and an exciting moment for my friend who started this company just a couple years ago as a social enterprise to combat food waste in Ghana. He explains the sometimes unheralded role that cold chain technologies and logistics play in a country’s economic and social development.
