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Belarus is sometimes referred to as Europe's last dictatorship. Since 1994 it has been ruled by just one man -- Alexander Lukashenko, and he has ruled the country with an iron fist.
In early August Belarusians went to the polls for presidential elections in which Lukashenko was declared the winner by a wide margin. Belarusians, however, did not accept the results and took to the streets in record numbers. Government forces cracked down hard and the main opposition candidate was apparently detained and then removed from the country.
Belarus is bordered on one side by Russia and the other by the European Union. The fate of Lukashenko is of profound importance to Russia and Europe -- and increasingly the United States.
On the line to provide some context for understanding these recent events in Belarus is Stephen Nix. He is the regional director for Eurasia at the International Republican Institute and a longtime policy hand focusing on former Soviet Republics
China is the world's largest consumer of coal, though in recent years the government has sought to reduce the country's reliance on coal for energy. This includes transitioning away from coal for home heating.
In 2014, the government launched what is known as the household heating energy transition program. This program sought to replace household coal heating units with electricity, natural gas, or cleaner burning coal. Like many Chinese infrastructure projects it was a massive undertaking. It was also directed by the government, top down, and mandatory for homes that used dirty burning coal.
My guest today, Lunyu Xie is Associate Professor at the School of Applied Economics, Renmin University of China. She conducted a unique cost-benefit study of this program that analyzed both the effectiveness of the household heating energy transition program. Dirty burning coal from home heating units is a major pollutant, particularly in northern China that both causes significant harm to individual health and also contributes to climate change. What makes Lunyu Xie's study so significant is that she uses data from household surveys to see how this major government program benefits end users--or not.
Today's episode is part of series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.
The story of a leaky oil tanker stranded off the coast of Yemen is, in part, the story of the country's civil war. There are about a million gallons of oil stored in this tanker, which has not been operational since 2015. That is when Yemen's civil war escalated into an international conflict pitting Houthi rebels who overthrew the government against an international coalition lead by Saudi Arabia.
Since then, the condition of this old oil tanker has deteriorated and is threatening to cause what would be the world's worst-ever oil spill, causing immense environmental, economic and humanitarian damage throughout the Red Sea. The Houthi rebels control access to this tanker and so far, they have not permitted UN experts or an international team to inspect the tanker, nor take steps to safely remove the oil from it.
On the line to discuss is Gerry Simpson, Associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. He has been following the situation with the tanker closely and We kick off discussing the history of this tanker before having a broader conversation about the possible damage that a leak may inflict and its broader relationship to the conflict in Yemen.
The situation with the tanker is something that has been on the radar of the UN Security Council, and even US Congress. The damage from an oil spill would be at a scale that is hard to comprehend.
It's a crisis waiting to happen and so far there has been very little progress in securing the tanker.
Mali is in the midst of its worst political crisis in years. Since June, protesters have gathered in the streets of the capital city of Bamako demanding the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. On top of this, a conflict in the northern part of the country, to which the UN has deployed a large peacekeeping mission, is continuing to drive instability throughout the country.
My guest, Dr. Amadou Bocoum, is the Mali Director for the NGO Search for Common Ground and I caught up with him from Bamako, the capital city which is in the South.
In our conversation, Amadou Bocoum describes how these protests were sparked by a court decision to annul the results of parliamentary elections. But as he explains, the discontent that is driving these protests runs much deeper.
This is a useful conversation about a crisis that is very much unfolding at the present time -- and is one that is of profound regional and international significance.
Today's episode is supported in part from a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to showcase African voices in peace and security issues.
Billions of dollars are spent each year on foreign aid and global development. In the past, the exact amount of aid that is being spent, where is it is being spent, by whom it is being spent--and to what end is the aid serving has been very difficult for outsiders to parse. But that has been changing in recent years. Aid agencies in government and multi-lateral institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations are becoming increasingly transparent -- not least because they have been spurred to do so by my guest today, Gary Forster.
He is the executive director of Publish What You Fund -- the global campaign for aid and development transparency. The organization publishes an annual index of 47 aid agencies from the public sector and private philanthropy which assess how open each entity is in regards to its operations.
In our conversation, Gary Forster explains why transparency in aid is so important and identifies some of entities that rank highest and lowest on the aid transparency index. The data compiled by Publish What You Fund also offers a very good birds-eye view of aid and development spending, so we also discuss some of the broad trends that he has seen in recent years among donors. This includes the impact of COVID-19 on foreign aid and development assistance.
Rais Bhuiyan has an absolutely incredible and very moving story. In the days after the September 11th attacks in the United States, Bhuiyan -- an immigrant to the US from Bangladesh -- was working behind the counter at a gas station in Texas when he was shot in the face by a white supremacist who was on a killing spree and looking for foreigners to murder.
After surviving the attack, Bhuiyan embarked on an improbable journey of peace and reconciliation, seeking to prevent his attacker from the death penalty.
He is the founder of the NGO World Without Hate and this episode was recorded in 2014.
As the Coronavirus Pandemic tore through the world this spring, it resulted in sharply lower demand for oil, driving down prices. Added to this, Russia and Saudi Arabia got into an oil price war that brought the price of oil to near historic low levels. Needless to say, the low price of oil has deeply impacted countries in the region who rely on oil wealth. This includes not only oil-rich gulf countries, but also governments and other groups that rely on aid derived from oil largesse. My guest today, Mohammed Soliman is a Non-Resident Scholar with the Middle East Institute and a member of the McLarty Associates MENA Practice. We kick off discussing how wealthy Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar used their oil wealth in the wake of the Arab Spring to shore up domestic stability and pursue their regional foreign policy goals. We then have an extended conversation about the ways in which COVID-19 and slumping oil prices are shaking up the foundations of the geopolitics of the Middle East. This episode was recorded as a live taping of the podcast, produced in partnership with Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, YPFP. https://www.undispatch.com/
Since the Kosovo War of 1999, the status of Kosovo as a country independent of Serbia has not been resolved. Many countries, including the United States and most of Europe, recognize Kosovo as an independent country. But others do not--including Russia, which has blocked Kosovo's aspirations to join the United Nations.
This has been the status quo for many years. But in recent months there has been some renewed momentum in diplomacy intended to find an agreement that would satisfy both Serbia and Kosovo and lead to Kosovo's formal independence.
To that end, on June 24th, The president of Kosovo set off for Washington, D.C. for high level talks at the White House. But mid-air, the flight turned around when a special court unsealed an indictment against him for war crimes committed decades ago during the war.
This indictment is the latest wrinkle in the long effort to secure an international agreement over Kosovo's status. Another key issue is ongoing protests in Serbia and that country's ongoing democratic backsliding.
On the line with me to explain the significance of these recent events in the Balkans is Jasmin Mujanović . He is a limited term professor of political science and policy studies at Elon University and host of the Sarejevo calling podcast.
We kick off with discussing the Kosovo-Serbia talks and then have a conversation about the implications of rising authoritarianism in Serbia
Chile is one of the most air polluted countries in the world. This is partly a matter of geography -- many cities are in valleys that trap pollution. But it is also the consequence of how many Chileans heat their homes. Wood burning home heat stoves are very common in much of Chile, and these stoves burn dirty and emit harmful pollution. My guest today, Carlos Chavez, is professor of economics at the School of Business and Economics at Universdad de Talca in Central Chile. His research has focused on the use of wood burning heating stoves in chile and government policies that could reduce the prevalence of wood burning stoves and improve air quality. In our conversation we discuss why so many people in Chile heat their homes this way and how he was able to create a research project that suggests some effective policy remedies. Chile is a higher income country, yet the way that many households create energy by burning wood is something far more common in poorer countries -- it is generally not associated with countries at Chile's level of wealth. This makes Chile an interesting case study that I am glad to bring you today. This episode is part of a series of episodes that showcase the research and work of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative. SETI is an interdisciplinary global collaborative that aims to foster research on energy access and energy transitions in low and middle-income countries. Currently, SETI is housed at Duke University, where it is led by Professors Subhrendu Pattanayak and Marc Jeuland. To learn more about SETI, follow them on Twitter @SETIenergy.
In recent years, as China has become more powerful on the world stage, the Chinese Communist Party has sought to erode Hong Kong's political independence. In fact, on June 30th, the Chinese government passed a so-called National Security Law that criminalized free speech and political activity in Hong Kong.
Additionally, last year at this time there were massive peaceful protests against a law that Beijing sought to impose on Hong Kong that would permit the extradition of people from Hong Kong to China. In the year since, police and pro-Beijing authorities have cracked down on protests. And now, with this fully new law, people are being arrested for the signs they are waving. "This law," says my guest Victoria Tin-Bor Hui, "means the One China, Two Systems model is dead."
Victoria Tin-Bor Hui is an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame. We discuss the content of the new National Security Law before having a broader conversation about its political and social implications of this new era for Hong Kong.
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