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Monica Juma is the National Security Advisor to Kenyan President William Ruto. Kenya is a stable democracy in a tough neighborhood. There is an ongoing Islamist insurgency across the border in Somalia, and nearby Sudan is in the midst of a spiraling civil war. On top of this all, the Horn of Africa is experiencing the worst drought in 40 years. I asked Monica Juma about each of these challenges, starting with how climate change is impacting Kenya's national security. Today's episode was recorded live at the Aspen Security Forum. It is the last of three interviews I conducted on site in the middle of July, the others including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk and International Relations scholar Joseph Nye. https://www.globaldispatches.org/
Oleksandra Matviichuk is a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. She is a human rights lawyer who leads the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian human rights organization.
Oleksandra Matviichuk has been systematically documenting Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity since 2014, when Russia first annexed parts of Ukraine. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, her work has intensified and includes advocating for ways to bring perpetrators to justice. We kick off discussing her work prior to the 2014 annexations and 2022 Russian invasion and then have a powerful conversation about reconciling her values as a human rights lawyer and the desperate need for a swift Ukrainian military victory against Russia.
I caught up with Oleksandra Matviichuk at the Aspen Security Forum, where we recorded our conversation live.
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I caught up with legendary international relations scholar Joseph Nye at the The Aspen Security Forum. This conference was a target rich environment for snagging great guests for the podcast and I have some excellent episodes coming up, including a conversation with the most recent Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the Ukranian Human Rights Lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk and Kenya's National Security Advisor Monica Juma.
I speak with Joseph Nye, best known for coming up with the concept of "Soft Power" about the sources of Chinese soft power today and how that factors into geopolitical competition with the United States. We also discuss what opportunities might be harnessed to avoid a new Cold War between the United States and China.
Since the start of the war, Russia has abducted tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. These kidnappings have been well documented by Ukrainian authorities and civil society groups. Last March, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and his children's affairs commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova for the "unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation."
What happens after these children have been abducted is revealed in a new documentary by my guest today Isobel Yeung, senior correspondent for Vice News. She reported from both Ukraine and Russia to uncover a system of re-purposed summer camps and foster families who have assumed guardianship over abducted Ukrainian children. She interviews the ringleader of it all-- the alleged war criminal Maria Lvova-Belova.
NATO held a Major summit in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 11th and 12th. Top on the agenda, of course, was Ukraine including Ukraine's potential future NATO membership. Another key issue on the agenda was Sweden. Last year, both Sweden and Finland asked to join NATO. Finland is in, but Turkey had been blocking Sweden's membership. That abruptly changed in Vilnius, paving the way for all Nordic countries to become NATO members.
Joining me to discuss what happened at this meeting, and what the Vilnius summit suggests about the future of NATO is Jim Goldgeier a professor of International Relations at American University and a longtime scholar of NATO and transatlantic affairs. We kick off discussing the debate around Ukraine's potential membership before discussing many of the other issues on the agenda in Lithuania, and what meeting means for NATOs future and the war in Ukraine.
The international shipping industry is a major greenhouse gas emitter, accounting for about three percent of all greenhouse gas emitted last year. For reference, this is roughly equivalent to the total annual emissions of Germany.
Because these emissions occur on international waters, the shipping industry was purposefully left out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Instead, a UN agency called the International Maritime Organization is the forum for multilateral diplomacy to curb emissions in international shipping. In early July members of the IMO met in London for negotiations.
Joining me to discuss why this meeting was so significant to international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions is Susan Ruffo, Senior Director and Senior Advisor for Ocean and Climate at United Nations Foundation. We kick off discussing the impact of international shipping on climate change and then have an extended conversation about what happened at this meeting of the International Maritime Organization, which includes a new target for emission reduction and progress towards enacting a levy on carbon emissions from shipping.
Taiwan will hold presidential elections in January 2024. Needless to say, these elections will have extremely consequential geopolitical implications. The two main candidates have differing views of Taiwan's relationship with China. Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the current Vice President and represents the stronger pro-independence faction of Taiwanese politics. His main rival, Hou Yu-ih of the Kuomingtang (KMT) supports closer relations between Taipei and Beijing. And this year there is a surprising third party candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP), who is is shaking up what is conventionally a two party presidential contest.
Joining me for an in-depth conversation about Taiwanese politics and these upcoming elections is Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution where he is the program manager of the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. We kick off discussing the political history of Taiwan following the Chinese civil war and then have an in-depth conversation about each of the candidates' positions on the key issue of cross straight relations.
Less developed countries rightly lament the lack of access to funding for sustainable development that donor countries routinely promise, but rarely deliver. To remedy, dozens of Presidents, Prime Ministers and high-level officials met in Paris for the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact to rethink the "global financial architecture" to support developing economies grow in a climate compliant way. This summit was intended to kickstart momentum toward new funding opportunities for sustainable development, including enacting reforms at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
This was a big moment for the sustainable development community and joining me to explain what happened is Clemence Landers, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. We kick off discussing why such a meeting was necessary in the first place, including a trifecta of crises that is driving economic distress in less developed countries today. We then discuss the outcomes of the meeting, and what it means for global development and climate change debates going forward.
Amed Khan has been described as a "direct action philanthropist." He goes to the frontlines of humanitarian crises on his own and uses his personal wealth and networks to deliver whatever the communities say they need. For the past two years, Amed Khan has been in Ukraine near the frontlines of fighting in places like Bakhmut. When we spoke he had just returned from Kherson, which experienced catastrophic flooding following the sabotage of a major dam upstream.
We kick off discussing how he got into this line of work in general, and to Ukraine in particular. As he explains he has a long history in Ukraine, but more recently worked with Ukrainian special forces to help rescue Afghans as Kabul fell to the Taliban. This was just months before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
We discuss why "frontlines philanthropy" is a unique approach to humanitarianism, the advantages and limitations of which we discuss at length.
Over the decades, Senegal has earned a reputation as a reliably stable democracy in West Africa. But recent events have put that reputation to test. Over the last month, Senegal has been rocked by widespread protests against the government of President Macky Sall. These protests were sparked by the arrest and conviction of a prominent opposition party leader, Ousmane Sanko. The government response to these protests has been brutal. More than a dozen people have been killed, many by live ammunition fired into crowds of protesters.
Joining me to discuss recent events in Senegal is Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy director within the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. We discuss what lead to these protests and what Human Rights Watch uncovered about the government's deadly response. We then have a broader discussion about what is driving democratic backsliding in Senegal
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