The Foreign Affairs Interview - Foreign Affairs Magazine

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Bonus: India as It Is Mar 20, 2024

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India has enormous momentum. Its population has surpassed China’s, making it the most populous country in the world. Its economy is expected to become the world’s third largest in the next few years. And, as much as any country, it seems positioned to take today’s geopolitical tensions and turn them to its advantage.

The country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is expected to win a third term in office this spring, cementing his own political dominance. But that has come with a dark side—an assault on civil rights and democracy, which some warn will ultimately hinder India.

To address Modi’s third term and India’s future more broadly, Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelanmoderated a panel including Alyssa Ayres, Ashley J. Tellis, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And Mehta is Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Netanyahu’s Israel Feb 29, 2024

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A year ago, protests began to rock Israel. For months, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the country’s Supreme Court. Then came Hamas’s attack on October 7, and everything changed.

“The war has caught Israel at perhaps its most divided moment in history,” writes Aluf Benn in a new piece for Foreign Affairs. Benn, the editor of Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, argues that Netanyahu worked to divide Israeli society with policies that put the country on track for disaster.

He spoke to Foreign Affairs Executive Editor Justin Vogt on February 27.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The Deepening Disconnect Over Gaza Feb 16, 2024

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Four months after Hamas’s October 7 attack, the war in Gaza continues with little reason to think that Israel is particularly close to achieving its declared goals. Meanwhile, the Middle East is on the precipice of a full-scale regional war—and it may be that that war has already begun.

Dahlia Scheindlin is a pollster, a policy fellow at Century International, and a columnist at Haaretz. She is the author of the new book, The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University.

We discuss the domestic political landscape inside Israel, the risks of further escalation in the region, and whether there is a better path forward.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Is Anyone Still Afraid of the United States? Feb 08, 2024

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Last fall, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates took to the pages of Foreign Affairs to issue a warning: with America facing the most dangerous geopolitical landscape in decades, dysfunction in Washington threatened to turn that danger into disaster.

Today, Russia and China are testing the international order. Iranian proxies are attacking U.S. forces on a daily basis. And, as Gates writes, “at the very moment that events demand a strong and coherent response, America cannot provide one.”

Gates worries that such dysfunction at home could prompt America’s foes to make risky bets—with catastrophic consequences for both the country and the world.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

The Dangers of Defeatism for Ukraine Jan 25, 2024

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Ukraine may be facing the toughest chapter of its war since the first days of Russia’s invasion. The frontlines have changed little over the past year. And, in November, Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, used the word “stalemate” to describe the situation on the battlefield. In the West, the political tides may be shifting—especially in the United States, where Republicans in Congress are holding up new aid, and Donald Trump, running for reelection, has said he’ll end the war in 24 hours if he returns to the White House.

Since the war began, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has been tirelessly and eloquently making a case for Ukrainian victory, both on the world stage and in the pages of Foreign Affairs. In a January 23 conversation with Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, he discussed why the West should not give up on Ukraine, and the country’s prospects of victory in the months and years ahead.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Putin’s Fragile Compact With the Russian People Jan 11, 2024

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There’s a growing sense that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a pretty good position heading into 2024. Certainly that’s what Putin wants the rest of the world to think—that he can outlast Ukraine and its supporters in the West. Yet the situation looks more complicated on the ground in Russia.

And there are few people better positioned to make sense of that reality than Andrei Kolesnikov. Kolesnikov, a journalist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been in Moscow since the war began. Over the last two years, he’s written a series of deeply illuminating pieces for Foreign Affairs. In December 2022, the Kremlin listed Kolesnikov as a foreign agent.

Kolesnikov spoke with Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Hugh Eakin on January 8 about Putin’s hold on power and how Russians view their leader and his disastrous war.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Bonus: How the War in Gaza Is Reshaping the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Dec 21, 2023

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Hamas’s attack on October 7 shocked the world and upended the status quo in the Middle East. As Israel’s war in Gaza continues, the two-state solution seems more out of reach than ever. And yet, close observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict understand that for there to ever be peace, a political solution must go hand in hand with any military strategy.

At a Foreign Affairs live event on December 14, Lisa Anderson, Salam Fayyad, and Amos Yadlin joined Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan to explore these issues and more.

Anderson is the James T. Shotwell professor of international relations emerita at Columbia University and was the president of The American University in Cairo from 2011 to 2015. Fayyad served as the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority from 2007 to 2013. Yadlin is a retired major general in the Israeli Air Force and served as head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate from 2006 to 2010.

Together, they discussed Israeli strategy, whether Hamas can actually be destroyed, and whether there is any hope for a return to a peace process. This is an edited version of their conversation.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

America’s Dangerous Pessimism Dec 14, 2023

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Most Americans think their country is in decline. So do their leaders. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump have embraced foreign policies premised on the notion that the global order no longer serves American interests.

But these pessimistic assumptions are wrong, Fareed Zakaria argues in a new essay for Foreign Affairs. Moreover, they are leading the country to embrace strategies that will harm much of the world—and the United States most of all. Zakaria is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and the author of The Post-American World.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Bonus: Who Killed the Chinese Economy? Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

There is no doubt that China’s economy is struggling. After Chinese President Xi Jinping ended the country’s zero-COVID policy a year ago, most economists expected growth to surge—but that never really happened, and deeper problems became apparent. So what are the exact causes of China’s stagnation?

The economists Adam Posen, Zongyuan Zoe Liu, and Michael Pettis each have different answers. China’s future—and the future of the United States’ policy toward China—hinges on which of their answers is the right one.

Foreign Affairs Executive Editor Justin Vogt spoke with them at a November 14 discussion co-hosted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, of which Posen is president. Liu is the Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Pettis is a senior fellow at the Carnegie China Center and professor of finance at Peking University.

How Will Artificial Intelligence Transform the Military? Nov 30, 2023

Show notes

From killer robots to smarter logistics, artificial intelligence promises to change the way the U.S. military fights and develops weapons. As this new technology comes online, the opportunities are coming into focus—but so are the dangers.

In a new piece for Foreign Affairs, Michèle Flournoy argues the U.S. military has no choice but to move forward with AI and to do so quickly. Flournoy served as the Pentagon’s policy chief during the Obama administration and today is a co-founder and managing partner at the consulting company WestExec Advisors.

Deputy Editor Kate Brannen talked to her about how the U.S. Defense Department will need to change the way it does business if it wants to integrate AI safely and responsibly.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

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