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"Sometimes you gotta walkaway," That is how Donald Trump described the failure of he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to come to an agreement during their summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. So now that this meeting has ended in failure what comes next for nuclear diplomacy with North Korea? On the line with me to discuss the events in Hanoi and talk through possible scenarios for future engagement with North Korea is Kelsey Davenport, the director of non-proliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. We kick off discussing why this summit ended without any agreement. We also go over the events leading up to this Hanoi meeting, including the first summit between these two men in Singapore eight months ago. We then have a longer conversation about what the next iteration of diplomacy between the United States and North Korea may look like. This conversation does a good job both explaining what happened in Hanoi and setting the context for understanding what may come next between the US and North Korea. Support the show on Patreon and become a premium subscriber!
Tensions are rapidly escalating between India and Pakistan, following a suicide bombing in India controlled Kashmir that killed scores of Indian security forces. In retaliation, India bombed what it called a terrorist camp inside Pakistani territory.
The situation is still unfolding--as I'm recording this there is word that an Indian Air Force pilot has been captured after his plane was shot down over Pakistan.
On the line to discuss this ongoing crisis, and explain why Kashmir has become such a flash point between India and Pakistan is Michael Kugelman, senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson Center. We kick off discussing the events leading up to this escalation of hostilities before having a longer conversation about the history of Kashmir and India-Pakistani relations.
One thing I particularly found helpful in this conversation was Michael's description of the domestic political logic in India and Pakistan that propels conflict over Kashmir. Needless to say, India and Pakistan have gone to war with each other--the last time was in 1971. But now, they both have nuclear weapons so any hot crisis like the one unfolding now has the potential to descend into the worst-case scenario.
Energy Poverty conventionally refers to the lack of household electricity. Over 1 billion people live without reliable sources of electricity -- but a new group seeks to change how we think about energy poverty.
My guest today, Todd Moss is the founder and executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a new think tank. The Energy for Growth Hub seeks large scale solutions to end the kind of energy poverty that can stifle industrial and commercial development in the developing world.
We kick off talking about energy poverty--specifically why the traditional definition of that term may be an inadequate understanding of the problem. We then have a lengthy discussion about the link between big scale energy solutions, global development and climate change.
As I am recording this, the United States is deep into negotiations with the Taliban over some sort of political arrangement that would enable the Taliban's entrance into Afghan politics while the US drew down its troop levels. The specifics of these negotiations are opaque--not much is known about what is on the table.
What we do know is that there are precisely zero Afghan women at the table. And what we also know, thanks to research done in part by my guest today Anna Tonelli, is that the exclusion of women from peace negotiations is a predictor of failure for peace negotiations. When women are excluded from peace talks, those peace talks are less likely to result in any durable success. Anna Tonelli is the inclusive peace and security senior policy advisor wth Oxfam International. In this conversation we discuss some of the research that links the success of peace talks to the inclusion of women. We discuss examples from around the world, but kick off discussion the situation in Afghanistan.We have known for years that vaccinations, including routine childhood vaccinations for diseases like measles, mumps and rubella prevent children from dying on a fairly massive scale. We also know that as a health intervention, most vaccines and vaccination programs are relatively inexpensive.
What was not well known, at least until recently, was the relationship between vaccine preventable illness and poverty. Dr. Angela Chang lead a ground breaking study that shows how vaccines can be an effective tool to prevent individuals in the developing world from slipping down the income latter and into extreme poverty. Dr. Angela Chang is a post doctoral fellow at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The study was published in the journal Health Affairs while she was a doctoral candidate at Harvard School of Public Health. It examines the relationship between what is known as "medical impoverishment" and vaccinations. We kick off the conversation discussing what we mean by medical impoverishment before having a longer conversation about her findings.Thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets in anti-government protests that quickly turned violent. Several people have been killed and a great amount of property has been damaged in these protests.
Haiti, of course, is no stranger to political crisis. But this crisis feels different, according to veteran reporter Jacqueline Charles.
Jacqueline Charles is the Haiti Caribbean reporter for the Miami Herald and in this conversation she explains the origins of this new protest movement and how it may play out over the coming weeks.
As she explains, these protests began, in part, over allegations of corruption surrounding a Hugo Chavez-era Venezuelan oil subsidy program, known as Petro Carbibe. But what began as an anti-corruption protest movement has morphed into something much broader that now threatens to bring down the government of President Jovenel Moise.
This crisis in Haiti has potential to unleash great instability in a very fragile country, which could have big international implications. This conversation does a very good job of giving you the background and context you need to understand events as they unfold.
The riddle of how to avoid the so-called "resource curse" has bedeviled a generation of policy makers, economists and academics. Resource curse refers to the negative consequences that befall a country when it discovers a valuable natural resource, like oil. Often times the discovery of oil does not propel a country's economic development, and can even set a country back. My guest today is engaging in ground-breaking research that suggests some ways that a government may avoid the resource curse. Sam Hickey is a professor of the politics and development at the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester . And in this capacity he is engaged in some long term research into how governments in Africa are approaching their oil sectors.This includes a fascinating study comparing how democratic Ghana and authoritarian Uganda have approached their relatively recent oil discoveries. Responsible resource extraction is a key element in the development of many countries around the world and I found this conversation an extremely enlightening explanation about what academic research says about what works--and what does not -- in avoiding the resource curse. We kick off with an extended discussion of the curse, before discussing his research.
This episode is part of a content partnership between the podcast and the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester. Experts from the Global Development Institute discuss their research and also the pressing news of the day as it relates to global inequalities and development. If you'd like to learn more about the Global Development Institute you can go to GDI.Manchester.ac.uk or click on the add on globaldispatchespodcast.com
About a decade ago, Simon Moss co-founded Global Citizen with a few friends in Australia. It has since grown into a behemoth of global advocacy on issues related to ending extreme poverty around the world.
I've known Simon for years and have watched Global Citizen evolve over the years. So, I thought it might be useful and interesting to learn from him how an advocacy group like Global Citizen is adapting to broader geopolitical shifts. How does a group focused on ended extreme poverty respond to China's increasing influence in the global development space? How does it adapt to the withdrawal of the United States from its traditional role as a champion of global health and anti-poverty programs? I put these questions and more to Simon Moss in this enlightening and lively conversation about the future of global advocacy on issues related to sustainable development and fighting extreme poverty.
We kick off discussing the origin story of Global Citizen before having a longer conversation about new trends in global advocacy work.
Global Citizen is probably best known for its annual music festival in Central Park in New York that takes place during UN week, bringing together music stars, NGO leaders and government officials on stage in an effort to catalyze action on key global issues like polio eradication or girls education. Simon Moss explains the pros and cons of using a major event like a rock concert to leverage concrete policy outcomes.
If you have 25 minutes and want to learn where international advocacy is headed in the Trump era, have a listen.
Zimbabwe was rocked by protests in mid-January in the most significant public display of dissatisfaction with the government of Emerson Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa you will remember deposed longtime Zimbawe ruler Robert Mugabe in a coup in November 2017 -- an this past summer he further ensconced himself in power through an election in which he was declared the winner. The proximate cause of these protests were a sudden increase in the price of fuel. The government's response was exceedingly violent and repressive. Thousands of people are now languishing in jail. On the line with me to explain what caused these protests and why the once promising reign of Mnangagwa is now looking more and more like a facsimile of the Mugabe era is Mako Muzenda. Mako Muzenda is a freelance journalist from Zimbabwe. --and I have had the pleasure of editing her contributions to UN Dispatch. She is currently finishing her post graduate work at university in South Africa, which is where I caught up with her for this episode. We kick off discussing the fuel tax hike that lead to these protests before having a longer conversation about the ups and downs of the Mnangagwa era in Zimbabwe.
My guest today, Dr. Sharifullah Dorani is the author of the new book America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making from Bush to Obama to Trump' as the title suggests, the book examines the history of US involvement in Afghanistan from 2001 through the first two years of the Trump presidency. And in this conversation we discuss what both what has stayed the same and what has distinguished the Trump administrations approach to Afghanistan from his predecessors. We recorded this conversation just a few weeks after Trump, via Tweet, suggested a precipitous withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, which is of course America's longest war. So we do discuss what role American troops are currently playing in Afghanistan and what some of the debates about troop levels have been. We also discuss the ongoing diplomatic efforts led by Trump's envoy to Afghanistan, former US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad.
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