Foreign Exchanges: the Podcast: Recent Episodes
Derek Davison
Foreign Exchanges is a newsletter and podcast that helps you stay on top of important stories happening around the world. Derek Davison interviews scholars, journalists, and other experts to make sense of international affairs and US foreign policy.
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Stories from Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Spain, Peru, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
SAVE THE DATE: If you’re able, please catch my new, (hopefully) monthly livestream series with Elizabeth Urban starting Tuesday at 8 PM eastern at Substack!
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Stories from Iran, Ukraine, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Mali, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Cambodia, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Libya, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Vietnam, Serbia, and elsewhere
GiveDirectly is raising money to provide relief to those who have been affected by the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela earlier this week. If you are able to contribute please consider doing so!
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, South Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Somalia, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Albania, Peru, and elsewhere
GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!
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Stories from Lebanon, Mali, Bolivia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cuba, and elsewhere
GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!
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Stories from Iran, Senegal, Ukraine, and elsewhere
GiveDirectly is raising funds to help families affected by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. If you’re able to contribute, please do so!
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Stories from Iran, Mali, Honduras, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Thailand, Cuba, and elsewhere
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The Sahelian juntas have separated themselves from much of the Western establishment, with one glaring exception. A different story is playing out in civilian-ruled Senegal.
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Stories from Iran, Ethiopia, Romania, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Mali, Germany, and elsewhere
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Stories from the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Mali, Bulgaria, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Japan, Mexico, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Bulgaria, Argentina, and elsewhere
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Stories from Lebanon, Afghanistan, Italy, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Burkina Faso, Haiti, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Cameroon, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, China, Ecuador, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Nigeria, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Mozambique, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Niger, Ukraine, Haiti, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Nepal, Ethiopia, and elsewhere
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Day 2 of Donald Trump's war of choice
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Stories from Iran, Ukraine, Mexico, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Afghanistan, Mexico, and elsewhere
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Stories from Ethiopia, Ukraine, Peru, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Vanuatu, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, India, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Japan, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iraq, Sudan, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Saudi Arabia, the Central African Republic, Canada, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Cambodia, Canada, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Portugal, Greenland, and elsewhere
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Stories from China, Somalia, Russia, and elsewhere
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Donald Trump’s Attack on Venezuela and Latin America
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Stories from Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Myanmar, Somalia, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Thailand, Australia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Thailand, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Thailand, Mali, Honduras, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mexico, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Guinea-Bissau, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Yemen, Sudan, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, China, Nigeria, and elsewhere
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Donald Trump is threatening to invade Nigeria on dubious claims of a genocide against the country's Christian community. Here's why the Christian Right has woven this narrative.
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Stories from North Korea, Nigeria, the Netherlands, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Nigeria, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Malaysia, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ukraine, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Madagascar, and elsewhere
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Review of Lower Than The Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity, by Diarmaid MacCulloch
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Afghanistan, Madagascar, and elsewhere
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Stories from Somalia, France, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Japan, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Somalia, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Donald Trump's quest to acquire Greenland has a precedent in US Cold War history. We should consider it a cautionary tale.
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Stories from Nepal, Libya, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Qatar, Nepal, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Thailand, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela, and elsewhere
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Stories from Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, China, Ivory Coast, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Thailand, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Thailand, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Mali, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Japan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Hello Foreign Exchanges fans and welcome to another entry in our podcast series! Today I’m very pleased to welcome to the show Dr. Ada Palmer, Associate Professor of Early Modern European History and the College at the University of Chicago. We’ll be discussing her latest book, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation on the Renaissance and some of its more interesting character, but also about the formation of historical narrative and the challenge in overcoming it when new evidence complicates the picture, how our perceptions of time affect how understanding of history, and why people are so fascinated with the idea of a “Golden Age.” Enjoy!
Many thanks to Jake Aron of American Prestige for producing the show, and as always our music is Cambodian Odyssey by Kevin Macleod (CC by 3.0).
Please pick up Dr. Palmer’s book, available now in hardback, ebook, and audiobook forms, and check out her other work including her sci-fi and fantasy writing at her website! Also, if you haven’t checked out Foreign Exchanges please do that too.
Thanks for listening!
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Burkina Faso, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Myanmar, Romania, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Mali, Spain, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Uganda, Brazil, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, China, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Sudan, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Federal funding cuts and attacks on academic freedom are imperiling area studies programs. It’s important to understand what they are, and aren’t—and what will be lost if they disappear.
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Stories from Iran, China, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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The Gringo Dome and the Palestine-Mexico Border.
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bolivia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Mozambique, Romania, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Myanmar, Bolivia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, India, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Yemen, Pakistan, Germany, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Australia, Romania, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, North Korea, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Iran, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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Stories from Myanmar, South Sudan, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from China, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Turkey, Sudan, Canada, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Yemen, Zambia, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from the Philippines, South Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, South Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from India, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, South Korea, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Germany, and elsewhere
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Stories from Lebanon, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Kosovo, and elsewhere
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Stories from China, Russia, El Salvador, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Panama, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia, and elsewhere
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The Left had little influence on Joe Biden's foreign policy and will have none over the next four years. How can leftists build the capacity to carry a foreign policy message into 2026 and beyond?
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Sudan, Austria, and elsewhere
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Hello Foreign Exchanges fans and welcome to another entry in our very irregular podcast series! This time around I’m delighted to welcome to the show Dr. Eleanor Janega. Dr. Janega is a medieval historian, specializing in sexuality, propaganda, apocalypticism, urbanity, and empire in the late medieval and early modern periods. You may have heard her on one of her popular history podcasts, Gone Medieval and We’re Not So Different (check out their fantastic two part Ibn Battuta program) and her many guest appearances on other shows (like American Prestige, not once but twice), or read her blog, Going Medieval. She is also author of The Middle Ages: A Graphic History and the book we’re talking about in this interview, The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles in Society. We’ll talk about women in medieval literature, whether women are actually inside-out men, and how babies are really made. And we’ll talk a lot about medieval men being weird about women. So very, very weird. We’ll also discuss how life for modern women has, and has not, changed. Enjoy!
Many thanks to Jake Aron of American Prestige for producing the show, and as always our music is Cambodian Odyssey by Kevin Macleod (CC by 3.0).
Please pick up Dr. Janega’s book, available now in hardcover and paperback as well as audiobook. And if you haven’t checked out Foreign Exchanges please do that too:
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, South Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, South Korea, Somalia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Korea, Ghana, and elsewhere
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Stories from Syria, Georgia, France, and elsewhere
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Stories from Lebanon, China, Russia, and elsewhere
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Stories from Sudan, Ukraine, Suriname, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Germany, Haiti, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Russia, Haiti, and elsewhere
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Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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Anti-war politics has a rich historical tradition, one that seems to be in desperate need of revival. New FX contributor Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins begins a monthly series on this critical subject.
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Hello Foreign Exchanges listeners, and welcome back to our periodic podcast series! This time out it’s my privilege to welcome Eckart Frahm, Professor of Assyriology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University, to talk about his book, Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire. We’ll talk about what Assyria was and the place it occupies in the tapestry of great Bronze and Iron Age Near Eastern states, as well as the challenges of studying Assyria and the role the empire plays in the Hebrew Scriptures. Enjoy!
Many thanks to Jake Aron of American Prestige for producing the show, and as always our music is Cambodian Odyssey by Kevin Macleod (CC by 3.0).
Please pick up Professor Frahm’s book, available now in hardcover and paperback as well as audiobook. And if you haven’t checked out Foreign Exchanges please do that too!
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Mexico, contra David Frum and others, is not a failing state because Claudia Sheinbaum and the MORENA-led coalition that backed her won big in Mexico’s latest elections.
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The German government’s repression of pro-Palestinian voices confounds notions that Germany is a democratic success story. But it is entirely consistent with the country’s postwar history.
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To I assume no great surprise, this one is mostly about Iran and Israel.
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Macky Sall's attempt to manipulate Senegal's presidential election shows the allure of a powerful presidential office. Is there a way to de-center the presidency?
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Hello Foreign Exchanges listeners, and welcome back to another of our irregular podcast series! I’m privileged to be joined this time out by by Kenneth Harl, Professor Emeritus of History at Tulane University, to talk about his book, Empires of the Steppes: A History of the Nomadic Tribes Who Shaped Civilization. It is a sweeping study of nomads across Eurasia and throughout history (and pre-history), from the earliest evidence of the Yamnaya culture on the Pontic–Caspian steppe to the Xiongnu in China, the Huns in Europe, the Turks in Central Asia and the Middle East, and the Mongols…everywhere. We talk about Professor Harl’s career, how he approached such an expansive subject, and get into some of the book itself. Enjoy!
Please pick up Professor Harl’s book, available in hardcover now or you can preorder the paperback. If you’re a fan of history courses you can also check out Professor Harl’s many great series for The Teaching Company. And if you haven’t checked out Foreign Exchanges please do that too!
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James Lin outlines some of the implications of last month's election in Taiwan. For more coverage of international affairs, please visit www.foreignexchanges.news and subscribe today!
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The Israeli government has developed many technologies and tactics to manage its control of the Palestinian people. It's found an enthusiastic market for them among governments in Latin America.
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
December 2, 1805: At the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon wins what was arguably his greatest victory against a larger joint Russian-Austrian army. The Allies suffered 36,000 dead/wounded/captured compared with only 9000 for the French. The French victory was so complete that not only did it end the War of the Third Coalition, it allowed Napoleon to create the Confederation of the Rhine among the German states that had become French clients. Emperor Francis II was then forced to dissolve the Holy Roman Empire, which had been in existence continuously since 962 and traced its origins back to Charlemagne’s coronation as “emperor of the Romans” in 800.
December 2, 1942: Enrico Fermi and his team create the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at “Chicago Pile-1,” a rudimentary reactor built under the campus of the University of Chicago. This was the first milestone achievement for the Manhattan Project in its race to build a nuclear bomb before Nazi Germany.
December 3, 1971: The Pakistani military undertakes preemptive airstrikes against several Indian military installations, beginning the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, itself the final phase of the Bangladesh Liberation War. India was preparing to enter the war on Bangladesh’s side anyway, so when I say these strikes were “preemptive” I am not using that term in the phony, George W. Bush “hey they might attack us someday, you never know” sense of the term. The war, to put it mildly, was a complete disaster for the Pakistanis, who were forced to surrender a scant 13 days later and had to give up their claims on “East Pakistan” (Bangladesh) while suffering around a third of their military killed, wounded, or captured. In one of Henry Kissinger’s more notorious acts, the Nixon administration opted to support Pakistan despite evidence of its armed forces committing major atrocities against Bangladeshi civilians.
December 3, 1984: A Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, spews toxic methyl isocyanate gas overnight, resulting in the deaths of between 3800 and 16,000 people and causing injury to at least 558,000 more. Union Carbide maintains that the leak was caused by deliberate sabotage, though Indian courts subsequently found several officials at the plant guilty of negligence. The “Bhopal Disaster” remains one of the worst industrial catastrophes in history and its adverse effects are still being felt by people in that region to the present day.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The Israeli military (IDF) was advancing on the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis on Sunday, with Hamas officials and residents both reporting indications of nearby fighting and the IDF later confirming that it has sent ground forces into southern Gaza. The IDF has been ordering civilians to evacuate the eastern reaches of Khan Younis, and of course it’s posted a helpful interactive map on its website that warns civilians of imminent danger provided those civilians have reliable internet access and haven’t lost their special IDF secret decoder rings. Residents of Khan Younis will likely move further south to Rafah, though that city is also under heavy IDF bombardment so it’s not really safe either. Israeli officials say the IDF struck more than 400 targets over the weekend, and the official Gazan death toll had risen at last check to 15,523. The real death toll may be substantially higher, given the likelihood of bodies that haven’t yet been recovered and the closure of most of the hospitals that were handling casualties.
Elsewhere:
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Aid shipments into Gaza have resumed. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society says that 100 truckloads of aid entered the territory from Egypt on Saturday and I believe the aim was to bring in a similar number of trucks on Sunday though I have not seen any information yet as to whether that was accomplished.
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The Biden administration may be “pressing” Israel and Hamas to resume negotiations, as White House spokes-ghoul John Kirby told NBC on Sunday, but there’s no indication it’s having any success. After the ceasefire collapsed on Friday the Israeli government recalled its Mossad negotiators from Qatar, and for Hamas’s part the Islamist group’s political wing has sworn off any future prisoner swaps “until the war ends.”
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The administration is continuing to send large quantities of ordinance to the IDF, including massive “bunker buster” bombs. So any claim that it’s really pushing the Israeli government to negotiate a ceasefire or even demonstrate greater discernment in its bombardments really doesn’t hold up terribly well.
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Israel Hayom is reporting that “key figures” in the US Congress have been shown the text of a “new initiative” that would condition future US aid to Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen (all of which it identified as “Arab states,” which would be news to the Turks) on the willingness of governments in those four states to enable the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by taking in refugees. That same outlet has also reported (in Hebrew, so here’s a summary from Ryan Grim) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked Minister of Strategic Planning Ron Dermer to put together a plan to “thin the population in Gaza to a minimum,” which if nothing else is an incredible euphemism. The Biden administration has rejected any forced and/or permanent relocation of Gazan civilians, a point that Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated during her visit to the COP28 climate summit in Dubai over the weekend. But it perhaps could be sold on the idea of a “voluntary” (in quotes because in reality it would be anything but) evacuation that is characterized as temporary even if there’s no real intention to ever let the evacuees return.
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The Guardian says its reporting has confirmed the findings of that bombshell +972 Magazine piece from a few days ago, which reported that the IDF has been using an AI system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”) to identify targets under a process that’s been likened to a “mass assassination factory.” The system is producing targets faster than the IDF can attack them, including private homes where the likelihood of civilian casualties is high. Israeli officials are apparently insisting that the AI is programmed to minimize civilian risk, an assertion that cannot be squared with the high number of civilian casualties incurred so far in this conflict.
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Israeli settler mobs attacked two West Bank villages in separate incidents on Saturday, killing at least one Palestinian in one of those attacks. The human rights organization Yesh Din says it’s catalogued some 225 settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, resulting in at least nine deaths.
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On a somewhat related note, one of the people killed in last Thursday’s shooting in East Jerusalem turns out to have been an Israeli civilian who shot and killed the two Hamas attackers and then was mistakenly gunned down by Israeli soldiers. Video footage apparently shows the man disarming, kneeling, and opening his shirt to demonstrate to the soldiers that he was not a threat, but one of them killed him anyway. The incident has raised issues regarding the trigger happiness of Israeli security forces and the wisdom of the Israeli government’s armed vigilante program, which in addition to risking civilian Palestinian deaths also risks more “friendly fire” shootings like this one.
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The Washington Post published a story this weekend about the hasty evacuation of al-Nasr Children’s Hospital in northern Gaza last month. Without going into some of the grislier details, the staff was forced to evacuate by the IDF and left behind four premature infants who likely would not have survived relocation. They say Israeli officials told them the infants would be taken out in Red Cross ambulances but apparently they were left to die and, eventually, decompose. Reporters discovered their remains during the ceasefire. Israeli officials insist that they never ordered al-Nasr’s evacuation and have questioned the veracity of the story, despite video evidence and a recording of a phone call that the IDF itself released in which an Israeli official appears to acknowledge the need to rescue patients from the facility. The Red Cross says it never agreed to assist the evacuation and that conditions in northern Gaza would have made it impossible for its personnel to get to al-Nasr to retrieve the infants.
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I mention the al-Nasr story because it strikes me as especially galling. In general I’m trying not to focus heavily on individual atrocities or allegations of atrocities in compiling these newsletters—there would be no space for anything else otherwise. I hope readers don’t mistake that for apathy about any of these stories, going back to and including the atrocities committed/allegedly committed by Gazan militants on October 7 (I know cases of sexual violence have been receiving heavy coverage of late). I feel my role here is to try to provide an overview and for me that means keeping some distance from specific events. I’m sure I don’t do that consistently but it is my aim.
SYRIA
According to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that Saturday morning Israeli missile attack in the vicinity of Damascus killed at least two of its personnel who were in Syria on an “advisory” mission. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the strikes killed two Syrians who were affiliated with Hezbollah as well as two foreigners, presumably these IRGC members, while wounding five other people.
YEMEN
Houthi rebels in northern Yemen fired a barrage of missiles and drones at ships in the Red Sea on Sunday. The group damaged three commercial ships and also fired at least three drones at the US naval destroyer USS Carney, which shot the projectiles down. There’s no indication of any casualties and two of the vessels reported only minor damage (I’m unsure as to the status of the third). I would not be surprising if the US military were to retaliate against the Houthis in the near future, and there is a genuine risk that this could lead to a full-blown resumption of the Yemen war—though of course that would require Saudi Arabia’s involvement.
IRAQ
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaʿ al-Sudani reportedly told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a phone conversation on Saturday that Baghdad does not appreciate the US military carrying out attacks on Iraqi soil. The US attacked two Iraqi militia-linked targets on November 22 (during this newsletter’s holiday pause), “killing nine pro-Iran fighters” in retaliation for attacks against US personnel according to AFP. Those attacks tapered off during the Gaza ceasefire, but as we know that ceasefire is no longer operative.
On Sunday, US forces carried out a drone strike on a militia target in Iraq’s Kirkuk province, killing at least five people and wounding five more. There was initially no indication as to responsibility (though one didn’t exactly have to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this caper), but the US military later confirmed that it was responsible and characterized the strike as preempting “an imminent threat.”
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Unspecified gunmen attacked a bus in northern Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region late Saturday, killing at least nine people and injuring at least 26 others. The bus driver was among those killed, along with the driver of a truck with which the bus collided. There’s been no claim of responsibility and the main body of the Pakistani Taliban has taken the rare step of denying any involvement.
PHILIPPINES
A bombing targeting a Catholic mass killed at least four people and left several others wounded on the campus of Mindanao State University in the southern Philippine city of Marawi on Sunday. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack via Telegram. The previous day, the Philippine military said its forces killed at least 11 jihadist militants in nearby Maguindanao province in an attack targeting “suspected leaders and armed followers of the Dawla Islamiyah [i.e. ‘Islamic State’] and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters” to borrow the AP’s verbiage. I don’t know whether Sunday’s bombing was planned in advance or was intended as a direct retaliation for Saturday’s incident.
AFRICA
GUINEA-BISSAU
The president of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, characterized Thursday night’s gun battle between elements of the National Guard and his Presidential Palace Battalion as an “attempted coup” in comments to reporters on Saturday. Embaló had been out of the country attending the COP28 summit when the incident took place and said it had delayed his return to Bissau. National Guard commander Victor Tchongo is now in government custody, but Embaló appeared to suggest that there were other coup plotters behind Tchongo and said he would open an investigation into the incident on Monday. The National Guard is part of the Interior Ministry, which AFP says is “dominated” by the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAICG). That party, which won June’s parliamentary election and now controls the government, is opposed to Embaló.
BURKINA FASO
The military governments of Burkina Faso and Niger announced on Saturday that they are both withdrawing from the G5 Sahel regional counterinsurgency force. That group was formed in 2014 with the aim of pooling resources to battle the various jihadist groups that were threatening Sahelian governments. It began deploying joint forces a couple of years later, but as you might already have concluded it’s had minimal impact on the region’s jihadist crisis. Mali’s ruling junta quit last year, so of the original five member states only Mauritania and Chad still remain.
ETHIOPIA
Officials in Ethiopia’s Oromian regional government have accused the rebel Oromo Liberation Army of killing at least 36 civilians in attacks on three villages that took place on November 24 and 27. The OLA apparently hasn’t commented and there’s no confirmation of the government claim, but the alleged attacks took place not long after another round of peace talks between the OLA and Ethiopian government broke down, so it’s conceivable the group decided to lash out in that moment. The OLA was formed as the military wing of the Oromo Liberation Front in the 1970s but broke away from the group’s political leadership when the latter reached a peace accord with the Ethiopian government in 2018. It frequently attacks non-Oromo communities in Oromia, though authorities have only said that the victims of these attacks were Orthodox Christians without reference to ethnicity.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine may have hit a couple of speed bumps over the weekend. For one thing, reports that emerged on Friday suggesting that the Russians had seized the town of Maryinka, southwest of the city of Donetsk, appear to have been a bit premature. Ukrainian forces are reportedly still in control of some parts of the town, including a coking plant, though that may change in relatively short order of course. Elsewhere, the Ukrainian military claimed on Saturday that Russian attacks on the city of Avdiivka had completely ceased for a full day. That too could change in a hurry, and indeed may already have changed by the time you read this, but it suggests the Russians were at least regrouping after spending the previous several days in what seemed like intense fighting to try to take the city.
The Ukrainian government says it’s investigating a claim that Russian soldiers summarily executed two surrendering Ukrainian military personnel. Details are minimal but there’s a video of this alleged incident circulating on social media. Needless to say, intentionally killing surrendering soldiers is a war crime.
FRANCE
A knife-wielding attacker killed one German tourist and wounded two other people near Paris’s Eiffel Tower late Saturday. The attacker is a French national who was on a French government “watch list,” had apparently pledged allegiance to Islamic State, and was also “known for having psychiatric disorders” according to Reuters. He cited the conflict in Gaza, among other triggers, to police after his arrest.
AMERICAS
BRAZIL
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Sunday that he has no intention of bringing Brazil into full membership in the OPEC+ bloc and would stick to “observer” status only, one day after he somewhat incoherently told reporters that he wanted to join the group of major oil producing nations to try to encourage them to stop producing oil. OPEC+ extended a membership offer to Brazil on Thursday, which I gather has raised some eyebrows given Lula’s stated commitment to combating climate change. Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, is continuing to pursue new oil exploration, also despite Lula’s climate change position, though he says his aim is to invest oil profits in non-fossil fuel energy alternatives (and to encourage OPEC+ nations to do likewise). Oil remains the cause of, and solution to, all of humanity’s problems.
VENEZUELA
Venezuelans, or at least the ones who participated, apparently voted overwhelmingly in Sunday’s referendum to support their country’s territorial claim on western Guyana’s Essequibo region. Election officials said that the vote was 95 percent in favor for all of its five clauses—the most contentious of which was a question about whether or not to declare Essequibo a new Venezuelan state and extend citizenship to its residents—though there’s not much insight as to turnout. There’s no indication that the Venezuelan government is planning any imminent steps to try to actualize its claim on Essequibo but the referendum has nevertheless caused some consternation in Guyana and internationally.
UNITED STATES
Finally, HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed offers some welcome reassurance that the worst Middle East “expert” in Washington is still central to the Biden administration’s regional policy:
Four men in Washington shape America’s policy in the Middle East. Three are obvious: President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The fourth is less well-known, despite his huge sway over the other three ― and despite his determination to keep championing policies that many see as fueling bloodshed in Gaza and beyond.
His name is Brett McGurk. He’s the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, and he’s one of the most powerful people in U.S. national security.
McGurk crafts the options that Biden considers on issues from negotiations with Israel to weapon sales for Saudi Arabia. He controls whether global affairs experts within the government ― including more experienced staff at the Pentagon and the State Department ― can have any impact, and he decides which outside voices have access to White House decision-making conversations. His knack for increasing his influence is the envy of other Beltway operators. And he has a clear vision of how he thinks American interests should be advanced, regarding human rights concerns as secondary at best, according to current and former colleagues and close observers.
Indeed, even though McGurk has spent nearly 20 years giving bad advice about the Middle East to a succession of US presidents—and even though his fixation on Saudi-Israeli normalization at Palestinian expense may have helped trigger the October 7 attacks—his influence today appears to be greater than it’s ever been. I’m sure that makes all of us feel a little better.
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TODAY IN HISTORY
November 28, 1814: The Times of London is published via a new steam-powered printing press, making it the first major newspaper so produced. The use of the faster steam press took newspapers from a niche business to a mass market one, in the process boosting efforts to increase literacy.
November 28, 1943: Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin begin the Tehran Conference, the first of three major World War II meetings between the leaders of the UK, US, and USSR. The main outcome of Tehran was that Roosevelt and Stalin managed to get Churchill to commit to an invasion of France, in part to force Germany to pull forces away from their eastern front with the Soviets. They also discussed the eventual partition of Germany and creation of the United Nations.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Hamas and the Israeli government, thanks primarily to Qatari mediation, finally agreed on the terms of a detainee exchange and temporary ceasefire deal last week. The accord, which went into effect on Friday morning, was originally intended to involve the release of some 50 hostages being held by Hamas and other Gazan militant groups and some 150 Palestinians in Israeli custody. Hamas has also been releasing a number of Thai and Filipino nationals under a separate arrangement negotiated by the Qataris. The arrangement was to have been implemented in stages over four days, ending Tuesday morning local time. The process appeared to be faltering on Saturday, as Hamas delayed its hostage release while accusing the Israelis of violating the terms of the agreement, before some additional Qatari diplomacy apparently salvaged things.
The reason I referred above to what the deal “originally” involved is because it’s since been extended. The Israelis and Hamas have agreed to continue the ceasefire and daily detainee releases for at least two more days, though Thursday morning, albeit amid new accusations from both sides about ceasefire violations. I’m not entirely certain about the details but Israeli officials have said they’re expecting Hamas to release at least 10 hostages per day, which at current exchange rates suggests around 30 Palestinians released per day. Efforts are underway to extend this arrangement beyond Thursday morning, though it goes without saying that at some point all the hostages will be released and it’s unclear what will happen then. It’s true that conflicts at rest have a tendency to stay at rest, but Israeli rhetoric has indicated a clear intention to resume pulverizing Gaza once the detainee exchanges are no longer part of the equation.
In other items:
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Some of the freed Israeli hostages have talked to media and describe being treated poorly, which is not surprising. There have been claims of treatment that seems outright cruel though I’m unaware (which to be clear does not mean they haven’t been made) of any claims of physical cruelty (apart from the cruelty of their initial abductions, of course). Several of the hostages seem to indicate that their access to food and water diminished over time but that may be related to deprivations across Gaza caused by the Israeli blockade and the minimal amount of aid that has entered the territory. Palestinians released from Israeli custody, who have been described as “prisoners” though many of them have never been charged with anything under the West Bank’s rigged military justice system, have described harrowing treatment including torture. This is consistent with claims made by Palestinians swept up in Israeli mass arrest operations since the October 7 attacks and subsequently released.
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On the subject of aid, the ceasefire is/was intended in part to facilitate a surge of aid into Gaza and its distribution throughout the territory—including across the heavily battered northern area. That effort does appear to have been successful, though as United Nations officials have said even this temporary surge isn’t enough to meet the need. The Biden administration is sending three military planeloads of humanitarian aid to Egypt this week for distribution into Gaza.
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Over the four days of the initial detainee exchange, under which Israeli authorities released somewhere around 150 Palestinians, they detained 133 Palestinians in the West Bank. Make of that what you will. As Spencer Ackerman noted yesterday, with events in Gaza getting most of the attention the Israeli government and its settler proxies are continuing to kill (including at least two more on Tuesday), arrest, and displace Palestinians in the West Bank at unprecedented rates. Unlike Gaza, where Israeli leaders have at least articulated the barest inkling of a goal (the “destruction of Hamas,” ostensibly), there’s no indication what, if anything, might stop the violence in the West Bank.
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The Biden administration has dispatched CIA Director and de facto Secretary of State William Burns to Qatar to participate, along with Egyptian, Israeli, and Qatari officials, in talks on extending the current “pause” (the administration is still refusing to call it a “ceasefire”). Burns is there mostly so that the administration can claim credit for the ceasefire/exchange deal even though its embrace of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza has left it unable to contribute all that much to this diplomatic process. Actual Secretary of State Antony Blinken is undertaking another European-Middle Eastern tour this week, mostly (from what I can tell) in order to look busy.
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One message the administration is now ostensibly delivering to the Israeli government is that any eventual Israeli military (IDF) incursion into southern Gaza has to be more circumspect than its obliteration of northern Gaza. In particular the administration says it’s insisting that a southern operation must not cause “significant further displacement of persons.” With most of the territory’s population already displaced into the south (where the IDF has continued bombing them), it’s unclear where they would go anyway. And with the IDF already having killed over 15,000 people (probably well over, given that it’s been at least a couple of weeks since Gazan authorities could issue a reliable casualty update), the optics of this situation may finally be testing the administration’s capacity for indulging Israeli war aims.
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Israeli media outlets have gotten hold of leaked emails demonstrating that “a highly respected career military intelligence NCO” in the IDF had warned her superiors over the summer that Hamas fighters were training for what looked like an attack on an Israeli kibbutz. Those warnings were, according to the emails, subsequently corroborated but then dismissed further up the chain of command with arguments that the training was nothing more than a staged demonstration. The emails may increase public anger toward the IDF but seemingly give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu evidence to bolster his claim that any failure to prevent the October 7 attacks rests with Israeli security forces rather than with his government. Perhaps that’s why they were leaked.
YEMEN
Yemen’s Houthi rebels escalated their attacks on Israeli interests when they hijacked the cargo vessel Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea on November 19. That ship is apparently part-owned by an Israeli businessman, though there was no other immediately apparent connection to Israel and none of the 25 people who were on board—and who are now in Houthi custody—are thought to have been Israeli. The USS Mason, a naval destroyer, reportedly prevented the hijacking of another cargo ship in the Red Sea on Sunday, but US officials now believe the would-be hijackers were Somali pirates rather than Houthi fighters. They have not ruled out the possibility of some sort of Houthi connection. Some Israeli shipping now appears to be diverting around Africa to avoid the Red Sea, which needless to say makes for a significantly longer journey.
TURKEY
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had told reporters earlier this month that his Iranian counterpart, Ebrahim Raisi, would visit Ankara on Tuesday. Turkish media reported on the planned summit for more than two weeks, even as late as Monday evening, but Tuesday came and Raisi was, uh, not there. It’s unclear whether this was an intentional snub or a miscommunication, particularly since the Iranian government never mentioned any planned summit. Either way it’s somewhat bizarre.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
The BBC is reporting, based on “leaked briefing documents,” that UAE officials are hoping to use the COP28 climate change summit, which they’re hosting later this week, as a forum for concluding some new oil and natural gas deals. UAE officials haven’t denied the report but they have said their focus is on achieving “meaningful climate action” at the summit—efforts to undermine that action notwithstanding.
SAUDI ARABIA
Another investigative report suggests that the Saudi government is pursuing its own oil-forward agenda, something called the “oil demand sustainability program.” This effort aims to use the kingdom’s massive public investment fund and some of its largest companies to sell developing nations on an array of fossil fuel-heavy technologies, including supersonic aircraft, gas-fueled cars, and oil and natural gas fueled power plants. The initiative is primarily aimed at emerging African economies and, as the name suggests, is intended to sustain oil demand even as developed countries move increasingly toward renewable energy. This is completely incompatible with the kingdom’s stated adherence to the international climate agenda, though if you think the Saudis actually mean what they say when they talk about reducing carbon emissions you’re a far more trusting person than I.
ASIA
MYANMAR
The rebel “Brotherhood Alliance” claimed on Monday that its fighters had seized control of another significant commercial outpost close to the Chinese border in northern Myanmar’s Shan state. In that sense the rebels seem to have picked up right where we left them prior to Thanksgiving, on the advance in Shan and several other provinces across the country. With Myanmar’s ruling junta promising to stem those advances without actually demonstrating any ability to do so, the Chinese military conducted multi-day exercises near the border over the weekend. There’s no indication that Beijing is planning to intervene here but it would need to respond to any instability along the border itself.
PHILIPPINES
The Philippine government and communist New People’s Army rebels announced on Tuesday that they will reopen peace talks, under Norwegian mediation. Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte broke off the last round of talks in 2017 but the basic outlines are still in place for a deal that would see the NPA transition from militant to political movement in return for amnesty for its fighters.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean military finally succeeded in putting a spy satellite in orbit last week, sparking an immediate security crisis along the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The South Korean government announced shortly after the launch that it was suspending part of the intra-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement in order to increase its surveillance capabilities along the border, which Pyongyang took as an invitation to scrap the rest of the deal and begin restoring border guard posts and moving heavy armaments into the border region. The CMA bans “aerial surveillance,” a category that the South Korean government has decided includes satellites as well as sub-orbital aircraft so they’re accusing North Korea of having violated the accord first. North Korean state media reported on Tuesday that the satellite had taken photographs of the White House and the Pentagon, which puts Pyongyang roughly on par with Wikipedia in terms of its new surveillance capabilities.
JAPAN
Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio hosted Vietnamese President Võ Văn Thưởng on Monday, at which time the two agreed to upgrade their bilateral relationship to the level of “comprehensive strategic partnership.” That means strengthening economic as well as military ties, which could pull Vietnam further toward the US axis despite its still-strong relationship with China. Tokyo has in the past helped to support Vietnamese activity in the South China Sea, in waters whose ownership Hanoi disputes with China. The upgrade puts Japan’s relationship with Vietnam on an equal footing with China, India, and the US.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The deputy commander of the Sudanese military, Yassir al-Atta, delivered a speech to the Sudanese General Intelligence Service in Omdurman on Tuesday in which he openly accused the UAE government of supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces group. This is the first time a senior member of the Sudanese military/de facto government has leveled that accusation directly and it charges the UAE with complicity in a growing list of (alleged) RSF atrocities, particularly in the Darfur region. Atta further accused the governments of the Central African Republic, Chad, and Uganda of acting as conduits for UAE-supplied arms.
In response, Emirati officials denied supporting the RSF and insisted that they have “consistently called for de-escalation, a ceasefire, and the initiation of diplomatic dialogue” since the military and RSF went to war with one another back in April. Observers have noted that the RSF is using more sophisticated weaponry, especially drones, than it had at the start of the conflict, but the paramilitaries insist they’ve seized those arms from Sudanese military bases rather than obtaining them from abroad. The Ugandan government also responded to Atta’s charges, similarly rejecting them.
SIERRA LEONE
Sierra Leonean authorities say that unrest in Freetown early Sunday morning was the result of a “failed attempted coup” involving a number of active duty and retired members of the country’s military and police forces. According to Al Jazeera, they’ve arrested “13 military officers and one civilian” and “have published photographs of 32 men and two women…being sought in connection with the unrest.” The alleged coup plotters attacked a military barracks and two prisons in the capital, killing at least 20 people and releasing some 2200 detainees, an unknown number of whom have been recaptured. Authorities imposed a curfew in the city that they’ve since relaxed. Like most failed coups the rationale behind this one remains unclear, though it presumably involved some combination of political and economic resentment. President Julius Maada Bio’s narrow and heavily disputed victory in June’s presidential election may have ratcheted up some of those resentments.
LIBERIA
The official results came out while I was on break, but challenger Joseph Boakai did in fact defeat incumbent George Weah in Liberia’s presidential runoff earlier this month. Weah, to his credit, conceded without incident even before the release of those official numbers.
BURKINA FASO
Some 3000 jihadist fighters attacked the town of Djibo in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, according to Burkinabè state media. Details are very spotty but authorities are claiming that security forces killed at least 400 attackers from the al-Qaeda aligned Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin group, which has kept Djibo blockaded and largely cut off from the rest of the country for more than a year. There’s no definitive word on casualties among security forces or civilians, though the UN says it’s confirmed at least 40 civilians killed and more than 42 wounded.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
A Russian court on Tuesday extended the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich through at least January 30. Russian authorities arrested Gershkovich in March on spying charges that they’ve never fully explained, contending that the details are classified. He will presumably be traded back to the US at some point, but Russian officials have said they won’t discuss a prisoner swap until after Gershkovich stands trial, and they continue to delay that process.
A new report from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and the Levada Center shows that domestic support for Russia’s war in Ukraine has not diminished, even as Russians show increasing weariness for the conflict and for the economic hardships caused by Western sanctions. Indeed, the hardship appears to be hardening attitudes toward negotiations, with a number of focus group subjects expressing the view that Russia has sacrificed too much to give up any of the Ukrainian territory it has seized. I bet more sanctions will solve that problem.
UKRAINE
The Ukrainian military’s commander in Avdiivka, Vitaliy Barabash, told a media outlet on Tuesday that the Russian military has intensified its assault there and is now “attempting to storm the city from all directions.” It’s unclear whether the Russians would be able to use Avdiivka as a staging ground for further offensives, particularly in the short term giving the impending onset of winter, but taking the city would at the very least further secure Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk oblast. Elsewhere, Marianna Budanova, the wife of Ukrainian military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov, has reportedly been hospitalized for heavy metal poisoning and there are indications that a number of officials in the military intelligence service (GUR) have also been poisoned. I’ll leave it to the reader to speculate as to potential suspects.
The Ukrainian government will later this week reportedly unveil a number of changes to its military mobilization system in an effort to reduce the incidence of both draft dodging and of forced conscription. Full details aren’t yet known, but one part of the reform will involve the use of “commercial recruitment companies” to identify potential conscripts who have needed skills (mechanics, for example). These individuals will then somehow be given assurances that they won’t be deployed to the front but will instead be put to work in support roles. Given Ukraine’s need for more front-line soldiers, however, there must be more to it than that.
POLAND
Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday swore in a new government led by incumbent Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a move that has opposition leaders crying foul. Morawiecki has two weeks to form a government that can pass a parliamentary confirmation vote, a task even he acknowledges he’s almost certain to fail given the results of last month’s election. So Duda, who favors Morawiecki’s right wing Law and Justice Party, is simply delaying the opposition’s inevitable takeover for another two weeks. Why, you ask? Well, it seems fairly clear at this point that he’s delaying in order to give Law and Justice more time to appoint party loyalists to important state positions, which could create problems for the government that will presumably take office after this two week period is up.
FINLAND
The Finnish government, which had already closed all but one of its checkpoints along the Russian border, is planning to close the entire border for the next two weeks in hopes of stemming the flow of asylum seekers attempting to enter Finland. Authorities say that 900 such people have tried to cross the border from Russia this month, a hefty increase that they say is the product of a deliberate effort by the Russian government to funnel people to the border.
NETHERLANDS
Confounding polling that suggested a narrow race, the far right Party for Freedom (PVV) handily won last week’s Dutch parliamentary election. PVV came away with 37 seats in the 150 seat House of Representatives, 12 ahead of the second place GreenLeft-Labour alliance. The victory may put party boss Geert Wilders in line to become the next Dutch prime minister, assuming he can moderate his extremist agenda enough to attract coalition partners. That may be easier said than done.
AMERICAS
ARGENTINA
Speaking of far right election victories, libertarian extremist Javier Milei won Argentina’s presidential runoff on November 19. Polling, which had been wrong at every stage of this election, was wrong again, having predicted a tight race only to see Milei win an 11 point victory over Finance Minister Sergio Massa. Milei, whose agenda includes dissolving Argentina’s central bank and ditching the peso in favor of the US dollar, may find himself struggling against a relatively unfavorable Congress once he takes office next month.
UNITED STATES
Finally, The Nation’s Mohammad Alsaafin finds both US and Israeli plans for the future of Gaza to fall short, for one seemingly basic reason:
Speaking to reporters last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that the territory’s governance should be unified with the West Bank, and laid out a series of edits for the future of Palestine.
“Gaza cannot continue to be run by Hamas,” Blinken said. “It’s also clear that Israel cannot occupy Gaza…. it is imperative that the Palestinian people be central to the governance of Gaza and the West Bank.
Blinken’s parameters were defied days later by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared, “IDF forces will remain in control of the Strip,” and made clear that he will not allow the Palestinian Authority to play a role there. (Netanyahu then told Fox News that Israel “does not seek to occupy” Gaza, though, given the facts on the ground, it is hard to know how Israel defines “occupation.”)
The back-and-forth over what comes next in Gaza has prompted headlines like this one from NBC News: “The gap between the Biden administration and Netanyahu government over Gaza’s future is widening.”
But there is a glaringly absent party in these conversations: the Palestinian people themselves. Nobody seems particularly interested in what they might have to say about the future of their land.
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Friends, for family reasons and also because of my own mental exhaustion I will be taking a longer than usual break from the newsletter for this year’s Thanksgiving holiday. The newsletter will be going quiet following Thursday’s roundup and will return to our regular schedule on Tuesday, November 28. As I’ve written before here I can always tell when it’s time for me to take a bit of a break from the newsletter and the truth is we probably passed that point around three or four weeks ago so I’m running on fumes. Thanks for reading and for supporting this venture!
TODAY IN HISTORY
November 14, 1965: The Battle of Ia Drang, the first major engagement between the United States and the North Vietnamese Army, begins. It ended on November 18 with both sides claiming victory, though the NVA’s ability to fight the much better armed US Army to a draw was a boost to their morale and probably the battle’s most important effect.
November 14, 2001: Fighters with the Northern Alliance rebel coalition enter and occupy the city of Kabul, marking the end of the US war in Afghanista—just kidding. I had you going there for a second, didn’t I?
INTERNATIONAL
With deaths due to “extreme heat” projected to increase five-fold by 2050, according to The Lancet Countdown, you’ll no doubt be pleasantly surprised to learn that an AP investigative report shows that the “green transition plans” being formulated by most major fossil fuel companies are not green, not transitional, and not even really plans. Without any serious government pressure to force them to invest in genuinely renewable technologies, these firms are able to do things like, say, classify natural gas development as a “green” investment. That’s absurd, of course, but who’s counting?
The main problem with these plans has long been, and continues to be, the fact that fossil fuel companies exempt the products they sell when assessing their progress toward “net zero” carbon emissions. Firms only account for “Scope 1” emissions, which are their direct carbon outputs, and “Scope 2” emissions, the indirect output that results from their production process. The emissions that ensue when people burn the products they sell are considered “Scope 3” and energy firms disavow any responsibility for them. Like tobacco companies, they argue that what the customer does with their products is the customer’s business, not theirs. Maybe people just want to buy a barrel of oil and place it in their foyer as a conversation piece or put it to some other use that doesn’t emit carbon. Who’s to say?
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Early Wednesday morning Israeli forces began what they called “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area in the Shifa hospital” involving “medical teams and Arabic speakers, who have undergone specified training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the intent that no harm is caused to the civilians.” There are hundreds of patients and thousands of other people who have been trapped in the hospital by the IDF and the chances that “no harm” will come to any of them in the next several hours are probably slim. Israeli officials have been insisting that Hamas’s lair is located underneath the hospital but at this point it’s too soon to know if that’s the target or if this is a more limited operation. This is a developing story so there’s not much more I can say about it at this time.
What I can say is that the Biden administration gave a green light to this operation earlier in the day, when White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the administration has “independent intelligence” (which is code for “we didn’t get this from the IDF”) that “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip — including Al-Shifa — and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.” According to Kirby this intelligence shows that the militant groups have a “command and control” center in Shifa and “have stored weapons there.” Kirby insisted that that the administration was not endorsing an Israeli attack on the hospital, but anybody with ears to hear or eyes to read what he said should have no doubt as to what the intent was.
I wrote everything below prior to news of the Israeli assault breaking so some of it might no longer be relevant but I think most of it still is:
Gazan health authorities said on Tuesday that some 40 patients at Shifa—three of them babies—have died since that facility ran out of generator fuel on Saturday. Without electricity the hospital cannot maintain its incubator units and so there are now 36 newborns who are at critical risk. With the IDF surrounding the hospital it’s also become impossible to transfer the dead to a cemetery, so personnel are planning to bury some 120 bodies in a mass grave on site. Gazan officials have proposed evacuating the facility under the auspices of the Red Cross/Red Crescent and sending its remaining patients to Egypt but there had been no movement on that front at time of writing. The Israeli government has apparently offered to send the hospitals more incubators, a fascinating attempt at a humanitarian gesture that would be completely pointless because the problem isn’t the incubators, it’s the electricity.
In other news:
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David Ignatius at The Washington Post reported (I use that term loosely) on Monday that “Israel and Hamas are close to a hostage deal.” With the caveat that if David Ignatius told me the sky was blue I’d glance out the window to double check, the terms he reported are that Hamas would release (or facilitate the release) of the women and children that it and other Gazan militant groups took hostage during their October 7 rampage through southern Israel. This would be done in stages and be matched by the release of Palestinian women and children being held by Israeli authorities. It would also involve a ceasefire of unspecified duration but “perhaps five days” according to Ignatius. The ceasefire could allow some time to address humanitarian issues in Gaza though I don’t know what that would entail and whatever it was would almost certainly be inadequate.
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Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met with International Committee of the Red Cross President Mirjana Spoljaric Egger on Tuesday and later told reporters that the ICRC has had no access to the aforementioned hostages. It’s highly unlikely that the Israelis would agree to anything involving hostages without at least proof of life, so this could be a big sticking point with respect to the potential prisoner deal outlined above. Families of the hostages, meanwhile, are marching from Tel Aviv to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem to pressure him to take some action to secure the hostages’ release.
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Israeli occupation forces killed at least eight Palestinians in the West Bank on Tuesday, seven of them in Tulkarm. The IDF carried out a drone strike in that city, an occurrence that’s still relatively rare in the West Bank though it’s certainly become more common over the past year and in particular the past month.
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Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a statement on Tuesday endorsing what he laughably termed the “voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world.” I guess “leave or die” is a choice, right? A couple of Israeli politicians floated this idea on Monday in a Wall Street Journal editorial that was less a serious proposal than a written middle finger to Western critics of the Israeli military campaign. That piece didn’t go into extensive detail about what a mass relocation would look like—again, it wasn’t meant as a serious proposal—but Smotrich’s intent is much easier to guess, and that’s the permanent ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the relocation of its population as far away from Israel as possible. Smotrich, whose ministerial brief also includes running the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories office, isn’t part of Netanyahu’s “war cabinet” but that doesn’t mean he’s completely lacking in influence.
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The US and UK governments on Tuesday announced new sanctions targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members along with a Lebanese entity that allegedly facilitates money transfers from Iran to Gazan militant groups. This is the third round of sanctions the Biden administration has imposed since October 7. Also on Tuesday, over 400 employees of the Biden administration sent a joint letter to their boss, Joe Biden, expressing opposition to the administration’s approach to the Gaza conflict.
YEMEN
Houthi rebels say they fired another barrage of missiles toward Israel on Tuesday. There’s no confirmation of this, though the IDF did say that its air defenses downed a single missile near Eilat that we can probably assume was of Houthi provenance. The leader of Yemen’s Houthi movement, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, delivered a speech on Tuesday pledging that his rebel fighters would continue attacking Israel. In particular, Houthi suggested that they could target Israeli commercial vessels in the Red Sea, which would certainly be an easier target for them than Israel itself.
IRAQ
A Turkish drone strike killed two people, both allegedly members of the Sinjar Resistance Units militia, in northern Iraq’s Nineveh province on Monday evening. The Sinjar militia was formed in 2014 with assistance from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and is still allied with that group, which makes its personnel potential targets for the Turkish military.
Elsewhere, the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court removed two members of the Iraqi parliament on Tuesday, one of whom just happened to be speaker Mohammed al-Halbusi. It’s not clear why, though another MP named Laith al-Dulaimi had reportedly sued Halbusi alleging that the speaker forged Dulaimi’s name on a resignation letter. Dulaimi was, as it happens, the other MP who had his term ended by the court (I assume that’s not a coincidence). The ruling created a potential political crisis for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shiaʿ al-Sudani. As speaker, Halbusi was Iraq’s leading Sunni Arab politician, and his support was important to Sudani’s government. Three members of his Progress Party quit their cabinet posts after the court ruling and it remains to be seen how that will impact Sudani’s position.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
Afghan Commerce Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi apparently visited Pakistan this week, where—according to the Afghan government—he pressed Pakistani Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani on the issue of all those Afghan migrants the Pakistani government is presently deporting. Specifically it sounds like Azizi raised the issue of allowing deportees to at least take some of their money and/or possessions to Afghanistan with them. Deportees are currently arriving with nothing and are being housed in what are effectively refugee camps—leaving aside the incongruity of being a “refugee” in one’s home country—on the Afghan side of the border.
MYANMAR
Reports on Monday only hinted at some new fighting in western Myanmar’s Chin state, but as more details are emerging the situation there sounds pretty serious. According to the Chin National Front, rebel fighters had by the end of the day seized two Myanmar military outposts and were working to seize control of the Myanmar-Indian border. According to Indian media the fighting has sent some 2000 people streaming across that border to escape. In neighboring Rakhine state, the rebel Arakan Army has also been seizing military outposts and authorities have imposed a curfew in the state capital, Sittwe, as a result. Rebel factions across Myanmar have launched new offensives in recent weeks, starting with the “1027” (for October 27) operations by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army in Shan state. Myanmar’s ruling junta is clearly struggling to mount a response.
CHINA
Joe Biden told reporters on Tuesday that his main goal in meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco this week is to restore “normal” communications between their governments. In particular this would involve a return to regular military-to-military contacts, something Beijing ended in the wake of former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year. Any prospect of resuming those contacts was complicated by the fact that former Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu was under US sanction. But as he’s no longer defense minister that complication is no longer an issue.
AFRICA
LIBERIA
Liberian voters turned out on Tuesday for the second round of that country’s presidential election, pitting incumbent George Weah against Joseph Boakai. Both candidates finished with just under 44 percent of the vote in last month’s first round. Such a close finish might augur poorly for the incumbent in a head to head matchup, though that’s just one of many factors that could sway this vote in either direction. Polls have closed in that contest but I have yet to see anything by way of preliminary or partial results.
MALI
Mali’s ruling junta says its security forces have seized control over the northern town of Kidal after battling with rebels in that region for several days. The Malian military and mercenary auxiliaries marched on Kidal after United Nations peacekeepers vacated the region as part of their ongoing withdrawal from Mali. Kidal has been a rebel stronghold since the initial northern Mali uprising in 2012 and government control there has been nebulous at best since then. There’s been no comment as far as I know from the rebels and it’s unclear what their disposition is at this point.
ETHIOPIA
According to Addis Standard, Fano militia fighters attacked a predominantly Oromo community in Ethiopia’s Amhara region last week, killing at least 25 people and displacing some 3000 into the Oromia region. The Fano militia is still battling the Ethiopian government but Amhara paramilitary groups have also made a pastime of preying on ethnic Oromo communities (likewise, Oromo militias have preyed on ethnic Amhara). In this case they apparently demanded grain from the community and attacked after residents refused to comply.
On a more upbeat note, the US Agency for International Development is reportedly planning to resume food distribution across Ethiopia next month under a “one-year trial period.” The agency suspended its Ethiopian food program earlier this year amid allegations that the aid was being diverted. It resumed providing food aid to Ethiopian refugees last month and is now planning to spend the next year testing whether procedural changes adopted by aid groups and the Ethiopian government are enough to stop that alleged diversion. Solid data is hard to come by but it’s possible that hundreds or thousands of Ethiopians have died because of the decision (which the UN World Food Program joined) to suspend food aid.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The death toll from Sunday’s Allied Democratic Forces attack on a village in the eastern DRC’s North Kivu province has risen to 33, according to provincial officials. ADF fighters are also believed to have been responsible for attacking a village in neighboring Ituri province on Tuesday, killing at least 11 people.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
Vladimir Putin signed a new law on Tuesday that permits elections to be held even in parts of Russia that are under martial law. This apparently clears the way for the portions of Ukraine that Moscow claims to have annexed to participate in next year’s presidential election. The effect will be to try to stitch those regions a little more tightly to Russia and complicate any possible return to Ukrainian authority.
UKRAINE
The European Union promised back in March to supply the Ukrainian military with 1 million 155 mm artillery shells within 12 months. You’ll never guess how that went. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told a meeting of EU defense ministers on Tuesday that the bloc isn’t going to fulfill its commitment and even went so far as to criticize the fact that it was made in the first place. The will was apparently there, but EU member states still don’t have the collective capacity to churn out that many shells that quickly. The effort has apparently sparked a boost in production capacity but not enough to meet the 12 month deadline.
SWEDEN
Sweden’s NATO accession may be moving slightly forward, as the Turkish parliament’s foreign affairs committee will take up the issue on Thursday. It’s been about three weeks since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan submitted Sweden’s accession to parliament and it should be clear by now that the folks in Ankara are in no particular hurry to work their way through that process. There may be some impetus on the part of other NATO members to have the issue resolved in time for the alliance foreign ministers summit on November 28, but Erdoğan has proven himself to be fairly impervious to that sort of pressure in the past.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s William Hartung wonders whether the “Arsenal of Democracy” really cares all that much about the “democracy” part:
The list of major human rights abusers that receive U.S.-supplied weaponry is long and includes (but isn’t faintly limited to) Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Turkey, Nigeria, and the Philippines. Such sales can have devastating human consequences. They also support regimes that all too often destabilize their regions and risk embroiling the United States directly in conflicts.
U.S.-supplied arms also far too regularly fall into the hands of Washington’s adversaries. As an example consider the way the UAE transferred small arms and armored vehicles produced by American weapons makers to extremist militias in Yemen, with no apparent consequences, even though such acts clearly violated American arms export laws. Sometimes, recipients of such weaponry even end up fighting each other, as when Turkey used U.S.-supplied F-16s in 2019 to bomb U.S.-backed Syrian forces involved in the fight against Islamic State terrorists.
Such examples underscore the need to scrutinize U.S. arms exports far more carefully. Instead, the arms industry has promoted an increasingly “streamlined” process of approval of such weapons sales, campaigning for numerous measures that would make it even easier to arm foreign regimes regardless of their human-rights records or support for the interests Washington theoretically promotes. These have included an “Export Control Reform Initiative” heavily promoted by the industry during the Obama and Trump administrations that ended up ensuring a further relaxation of scrutiny over firearms exports. It has, in fact, eased the way for sales that, in the future, could put U.S.-produced weaponry in the hands of tyrants, terrorists, and criminal organizations.
Now, the industry is promoting efforts to get weapons out the door ever more quickly through “reforms” to the Foreign Military Sales program in which the Pentagon essentially serves as an arms broker between those weapons corporations and foreign governments.
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Hello Foreign Exchanges listeners! I’m very pleased to be joined for another of our irregular podcast interviews by Elizabeth Urban, Associate Professor of History at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. She’s written a fantastic book, Conquered Populations in Early Islam: Non-Arabs, Slaves and the Sons of Slave Mothers that offers a window into the experiences of marginalized peoples during a period in which Islam and the society that formed around it were still taking shape. Elizabeth and I were grad school colleagues so it was great to reconnect with her for this interview, and I think we have a very interesting chat about a topic that deserves more attention. We talk about the challenge of early Islamic sources, the changing position of the mawali as Islamic society developed, and the utility of studying these groups within a broader category of “unfree peoples” rather than as discrete units. Enjoy!
Please pick up Elizabeth’s book, at Bookshop.org or wherever you prefer to shop. And if you haven’t checked out Foreign Exchanges please do that too!
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Hello everybody! After a very extended hiatus we’re back with a real, full blown Foreign Exchanges podcast (more on that at the end of the show)! I’m joined by Carl F. Petry, Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of History Emeritus at Northwestern University and author of The Mamluk Sultanate: A History, a book that you can—nay, should—buy today. Professor Petry and I discuss who the Mamluks were, how they came to rule much of Egypt, Syria, and the Hejaz in the mid-13th century, and why it took until 2022 for the emergence of an accessible English language survey of their sultanate to emerge.
Don’t forget to pick up a copy of Professor Petry’s book, and if you’re not already subscribed to Foreign Exchanges please do:
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Listen now (81 min) | Our climate correspondent offers his thoughts on how the Glasgow summit ended and what its final agreement means.
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This week I’m pleased to welcome back The Intercept’s Andrew Fishman for an update on Foreign Exchanges’ favorite world leader, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. We’ll talk about Bolsonaro’s cratering poll numbers, fueled by a bungling response to COVID and anger over rampant corruption.
We’ll talk about Lula’s legal vindication and his reemergence as the favorite to become Brazil’s next president. We’ll talk about the alterations Bolsonaro and his oligarch buddies are attempting to make to the Brazilian electoral system and about the likelihood of a coup should, as expected, Lula win next year’s presidential election. And we’ll talk about what may be Bolsonaro’s greatest contribution to mankind, the possibly irreversible destruction of the Amazon rain forest. Possibly one of the more depressing episodes this podcast has ever produced, and that’s saying something.
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Listen now (56 min) | The University of Florida's Terje Østebø is back to discuss a somewhat shocking turn of events in Ethiopia's Tigray region and what the future may hold.
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Listen now (62 min) | A discussion of American impunity and our two-tiered system of international law.
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Listen now (77 min) | Kelsey Atherton and Andrew Leber join me to talk about a new progressive foreign policy effort and recent developments in the world of military drones.
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What happens when an Islamic Republic decides that the “Republic” part maybe isn’t such a big deal? Journalist and returning guest Séamus Malekafzali and Sina Toossi, senior research analyst at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), join the program to discuss this Friday’s Iranian presidential election. We’ll talk about the field, such as it is, and how it came to be the way it is, and we’ll get into presumptive winner Ebrahim Raisi’s past and his potential future. Additionally we’ll discuss what Raisi’s (likely) presidency could mean for future US-Iranian relations.
You can find Sina on Twitter and at NIAC, where his Iran Unfiltered series is a great look into a media environment to which us Westerners don’t have many points of access. Séamus is also on Twitter and his Substack newsletter is definitely worth a look if you’re interested in Iran.
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Listen now (84 min) | Quincy Institute fellow Annelle Sheline on building a better peace process in Yemen and what ails Oman.
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Listen now (65 min) | Sahel expert Alex Thurston is here to talk about the apparent death of Abubakar Shekau and another coup in Mali.
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Listen now | The Quincy Institute's Eli Clifton joins me to discuss his new report on improving transparency and increasing credibility in the world of think tanks.
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Two perspectives on the events of the past couple of weeks and the broader effort to increase awareness of the Israeli occupation and its effects.
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We try to unpack the events of the past two weeks in Chad.
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We're marking the end of America's longest war with what may be the longest episode of this podcast to date.
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Today we’re very lucky to be joined by Annelle Sheline, Research Fellow for the Middle East at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and a non-resident fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Annelle’s research focuses on religious authority in the Middle East, particularly the intersection of religious and national identities in the Arab monarchies, and she’s done fieldwork in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
One of the countries in that list has been particularly newsworthy of late, and somewhat surprisingly it’s Jordan. Annelle is here to provide some context for the alleged coup attempt that Jordanian authorities claimed to have thwarted over the weekend, including an examination of the key question: has former crown prince Hamzah bin Hussein really been plotting with unnamed foreign governments to overthrow his half-brother, King Abdullah II (shown above)? Suffice to say we’re both a bit skeptical. Annelle’s Responsible Statecraft piece on the coup and its potential to serve as a justification for a broad political crackdown is available here and you can find her on Twitter here.
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Journalist Séamus Malekafzali joins me to try to get a head start on assessing the state of Iran’s June presidential election, a task that I acknowledge is a bit of a sucker’s game since the Guardian Council hasn’t started rejecting candidates yet. At this point the only thing we know for sure is that term-limited incumbent Hassan Rouhani won’t be sticking around.
But along the way we discuss the current direction of Iranian politics, the increasing politicization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and check in with a couple of prominent presidential candidates from years past, including once and would-be future President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Check out Séamus’s writing on Iranian politics and other stories about the Middle East at his Substack newsletter, and also check out his podcast, The Greatest Sin, here or at Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
(The episode title refers to the current year on the Iranian calendar, if that wasn’t clear.)
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Listen now (74 min) | Returning champ and brand new FX contributor Alex Thurston, of the University of Cincinnati and Sahel Blog, joins me to discuss his first FX column and the similarities between America’s Forever War in Afghanistan and France’s Forever War in the Sahel. Alex also offers his perspective on Sunday’s presidential runoff in Niger and the unrest that has ensued, which diverges from what you’re likely to find in most Western media outlets. Enjoy!
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Terje Østebø of the University of Florida returns to discuss the ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and where things stand in the wake of reports that the Ethiopian military has captured the Tigray regional capital, Mekelle.
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Listen now | Returning champion Alexander Thurston rejoins the podcast to talk about his new book, Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups.
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Listen now | Thomas C. Field Jr. of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University joins me for the second time to update us on the situation in Bolivia.
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Listen now (66 min) | University of Washington professor, Quincy Institute fellow, and (above all) Foreign Exchanges columnist Daniel Bessner joins me for a chat about his first two FX pieces, the development of US foreign policy and the foreign policy establishment in DC, and some of the structural obstacles to overhauling that foreign policy for leftists.
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This week I’m joined by Jessica Moody, a PhD candidate at Kings College London whose work focuses on post-conflict Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire for you francophones out there). She’s here to discuss the tensions surrounding President Alassane Ouattara’s (somewhat abrupt) decision to seek a constitutionally-questionable third term in the forthcoming (October 31) election, and the context for those tensions going back to the 1990s), as well as her thoughts on what’s likely to happen next.
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Today I’m joined by reporter Joshua Kucera of Eurasianet, a great source for news and analysis on the Caucasus and Central Asia. As you may be aware, fighting broke out several days ago between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Josh gives us an update on that situation (current as of Tuesday evening, September 29, in the Caucasus) as well as some of the historical and political context to the Nagorno-Karabkh dispute and some perspective on the potential for this latest clash to escalate into a full-blown war or even a wider regional conflict.
This map of the situation as it’s been frozen in place since the 1990s Nagorno-Karabakh War ended may be helpful:
Source: Wikimedia Commons
You may also appreciate this photo of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin pretending to like each other, which as you’ll see is relevant to the discussion:
Source: Russian government via Wikimedia Commons
Josh’s latest, which attempts to suss out what Azerbaijan is trying to accomplish with this latest round of fighting, is now available at Eurasianet. You can also find him on Twitter: @joshuakucera.
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FX’s regular analyst on all things related to the Sahel, Alex Thurston, joins me to discuss the August 18 coup in Mali, the ouster of former President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, and what may be on the horizon for Mali and the rest of the region.
Keïta voting in Mali’s 2018 presidential election (Voice of America via Wikimedia Commons)
As always, Alex’s blog is a great resource for those interested in the political ups and downs of the Sahel region. He also mentioned a recent Jacobin piece by historian Gregory Mann that is available here.
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I’m very pleased to be joined this week by Terje Østebø of the University of Florida to discuss the roots and nature of Ethiopia’s “ethnic federalist” system and the impact that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s political changes have had on it. If you’ve been following reports of violence in Ethiopia’s Oromo community or of the rise of nationalist movements among some of its smaller ethnic groups and felt like you would appreciate some deeper background into those stories, this is the interview for you.
Abiy during last year’s Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi (Russian government via Wikimedia Commons)
Terje Østebø received his PhD in the History of Religion from Stockholm University, and is currently the chair of the Department of Religion and associate professor at the Center for African Studies and the Department of Religion, University of Florida. He is also the founding director of the UF Center for Global Islamic Studies. His research interests are Islam in contemporary Ethiopia, Islam, politics, and Islamic reformism in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, ethnicity and religion, as well as Salafism in Africa. He has lived in Ethiopia for 6 years, and has extensive field-research experience. Major publications include Islam, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia: The Bale Insurgency (1963-1970) (Cambridge University Press, 2020); “African Salafism: Religious Purity and the Politicization of Purity” in Islamic Africa, 6, 1-2, 2015; Muslim Ethiopia: The Christian Legacy, Identity Politics, and Islamic Reformism (co-edited with Patrick Desplat), (Palgrave-Macmillan 2013); Localising Salafism: Religious Change among Oromo Muslims in Bale, Ethiopia (Brill 2012); Islamism in the Horn of Africa: Assessing Ideology, Actors, and Objectives, International Law and Policy Institute (2010).
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The Ploughshares Fund’s John Carl Baker returns to the show to talk about the push to modernize the US nuclear arsenal, what that entails, and how much it will cost. We then assess the wreckage the Trump administration has made in terms of arms control and what that means for the future, depending on what happens in November.
Then-US President Barack Obama signing the ratification of New START, February 2011 (Official White House Photo)
Plugs:
Check out the work Ploughshares and its partners are doing.
Sign up for the Discontents newsletter.
Check out what’s happening with OptOut and sign up for their newsletter.
If you’ve somehow come here and aren’t signed up for Foreign Exchanges, please do that too.
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I'm joined by Dr. Owen Miller, lecturer in Korean Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Building in part off of his recent piece for Jacobin, Owen helps me better understand the root causes of the Korean War, the factions involved, and the impact the conflict had on the Korean people.
A US Navy Douglas AD-4 Skyraider preparing to launch from the USS Philippine Sea for a strike mission in Korea in October 1950 (US Navy photo via Wikimedia Commons)
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I'm very pleased to be joined by Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, co-hosts of the fantastic podcast "Blowback," covering the Iraq War and the utterly surreal political and media environment that both enabled the war and was fundamentally shaped by it.
Mission accomplished indeed (US Navy via Wikimedia Commons)
Episodes are currently being released every Monday on your favorite podcast outlet, but you can hear the full 10 part series plus get access to bonus episodes right now at Stitcher Premium (sign up with the code "BLOWBACK" for a free one month preview).
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Listen now (80 min) | This is the web version of Foreign Exchanges, but did you know you can get it delivered right to your inbox? Sign up today: Returning guest and scholar of the Sahel Alex Thurston joins me to discuss the recently reported death of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leader Abdelmalek Droukdel. Serendipitously, this subject coincides with Alex's forthcoming (probably in September) book,
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Listen now (85 min) | Latin America scholar Thomas C. Field Jr. joins me to discuss the last six or so months in Bolivia, from the disputed October election to the ouster of President Evo Morales to the machinations of the post-coup government that replaced him. You can find Thomas on Twitter @thomascfield and you can find his books at lots of places, but Powell’s has them
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Listen now (71 min) | Returning guest Alex Thurston joins the show to discuss COVID-19 in the Sahel, how the region's militant groups have responded to the pandemic, and recent militant and military activity in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, and elsewhere. Be sure to check out Alex's
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I'm joined by Andrew Fishman, reporter for The Intercept and managing editor for The Intercept Brasil, to discuss the ongoing soap opera that is Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's haggard response to the coronavirus, as well as the new drama surrounding the recent resignation of ex-Justice Minister Sergio Moro.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks (Brazilian government via Wikimedia Commons)
You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AndrewDFish.
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Listen now (75 min) | I'm joined by Michael Brooks, returning champion and host of The Michael Brooks Show as well as co-host of The Majority Report with Sam Seder and Jacobin's Weekends with Ana Kasparian and Michael Brooks. We're discussing his new book, Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right
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Listen now (53 min) | I’m joined by returning guest David Adler of the Democracy in Europe Movement to discuss how Europe has risen—or failed to rise—to the challenge posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. David offers his thoughts on the lack of collective action within Europe and what it might mean for the eurozone and the European Union moving forward, as well as some ideas for improving European institutions.
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Listen now (82 min) | I’m joined by historian and podcaster Patrick Wyman, whose “The Fall of Rome” and “Tides of History” are two of the very best historical podcasts out there, to discuss pandemic diseases in Roman history. We’re talking the Antonine Plague, the Plague of Cyprian, and the Plague of Justinian, and what they meant to the Roman Empire and (especially in the latter case) to world history in general. Later, and apropos of nothing in particular, we discuss Patrick’s
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Listen now (69 min) | This is the web version of Foreign Exchanges, but did you know you can get it delivered right to your inbox? Sign up today: I’m joined by defense technology journalist Kelsey Atherton to talk about wars, pandemics, COVID-19, US sanctions, and his latest piece for Inkstick Media, “The Plague and the Long War,” which you can find
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Listen now (62 min) | This is the web version of Foreign Exchanges, but did you know you can get it delivered right to your inbox? Sign up today: I’m joined by John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org) at the Institute for Policy Studies, to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic and its worldwide political ramifications. John has written three recent pieces on the pandemic:
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David Adler of the Democracy in Europe Movement and the University of Washington’s Daniel Bessner join me to discuss the US dollar’s global influence and how that it with the more overtly military aspects of Empire USA. Their recent The New Republic piece is called “To End Forever War, End the Dollar’s Global Dominance.” Enjoy!
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Listen now (72 min) | Returning guest Alex Thurston discusses the recent dust up between the leaders of the G5 Sahel nations and French President Emmanuel Macron, then guides us through an introduction to Mauritania and its current political crisis. You can find Alex on Twitter at
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Fatemeh Aman, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and expert analyst on Iran and South Asia, joins me to discuss the effects that the assassination of Qassem Soleimani and the shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 are having inside Iran. She breaks down the protests, assesses the impact of the “Maximum Pressure” campaign, and offers some insights into Iranian politics as things stand right now. If you’ve been following Iran news lately I think you’ll find her perspective extremely valuable.
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In today’s episode I’m joined by journalist Branko Marcetic to discuss his new piece at In These Times looking at the transformation of Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, from foreign minister for a leftist government in Uruguay to useful tool of right-wing US foreign policy. We look particularly at the role the OAS has played in the coup that ousted former Bolivian President Evo Morales and at Almagro’s wild changes of opinion with respect to Venezuela.
OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2017 (Wikimedia Commons)
All of Foreign Exchanges’ interview episodes are available to the public, but if you’d like to support these shows and get access to the rest of FX’s content, please subscribe!
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I’m joined by defense technology journalist Kelsey Atherton of C4ISRNET to discuss several recent stories related to technology in the military, from the alleged need for a fully autonomous nuclear deterrent (!) to the Pentagon’s plan to create a domestic quadcopter industry from whole cloth. You can find Kelsey’s “Tomorrow Wars” newsletter here, and you can find Kelsey himself on Twitter here. Enjoy!
LINKS
War on the Rocks: “America Needs a ‘Dead Hand’”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: “Strangelove Redux”
The Atlantic: “Coming Soon to a Battlefield: Robots That Can Kill”
New York Times Magazine: “Are Killer Robots the Future of War?”
New York Times: “Dear Tech Workers, U.S. Service Members Need Your Help”
Foreign Policy: “Pentagon Seeks to Counter China’s Drone Edge”
Fifth Domain: “Can Congress legislate a secure technology supply chain for the Pentagon?”
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I welcome back Ryan Cooper (@ryanlcooper), national correspondent for The Week magazine and co-host of the exciting new Left Anchor podcast (you can also check them out on Twitter). Ryan wrote a piece last week (his full archive is here) looking at the alternative to the ossified “free trade” consensus that’s emerging on the left in the Democratic primary, and he’ll walk us through the development of that consensus and why it’s so ripe to be challenged now.
Tom Friedman and The Mustache of Understanding make a cameo appearance
Yes, I know I introduce the episode as “August 7,” but that’s because we did in fact record the interview yesterday evening. I’d hoped to send it out yesterday in fact but by the time I got done with my usual amateur efforts at cleaning it up I decided it would be better to send it out in the morning. Enjoy!
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I’m joined by Stephen Wertheim (@stephenwertheim on Twitter), Co-Founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Research Director of its Ending Endless War program and a Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. Stephen has been trying to make sense of the Blob for a while now and he’s here to share his thoughts about an overly militarized, interventionist U.S. foreign policy establishment. We discuss the development of the Blob and the role he sees the new Quincy Institute playing in trying to bring new perspective to the foreign policy debate in DC. This episode also features a guest appearance by my dog, so be sure to listen for that. Enjoy!
Quincy’s logo, pilfered from their website
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I’m very pleased to welcome Andrew Fishman (@AndrewDFish), managing editor for the Intercept Brasil. He’s here to guide us through the bombshell reporting the Intercept is currently doing on the scandal involving the Operation Car Wash scandal (yes, it’s a scandal over a scandal) and what seems to have been the very politically motivated corruption prosecution of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. That prosecution prevented Lula from running for president again in 2018 and paved the way for the election of far-right demagogue Jair Bolsonaro. We’ll talk about Lula, Operation Car Wash, and the timeline of events that brought them together, and then Andrew will take us into what the Intercept has learned about Lula’s case and the actions of its presiding judge (now Bolsonaro’s justice minister), Sérgio Moro. Enjoy!
For English readers, you can find the Intercept’s series on the Lula prosecution here (that’s part four but there are links to the previous three pieces). If you know Portuguese, you can go here and check out all seven parts published to date (the English series is a little behind).
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I’m very grateful to be joined in this episode by Darren Byler, lecturer in anthropology at the University of Washington. Darren’s research focuses on art and culture in Xinjiang and he’s done considerable field work in the region. He’s here to walk us quickly through Uyghur history, to talk about his own work in the region, and to give us a sense of the Chinese government’s campaign to stamp out Uyghur culture under the guise of “counter-terrorism.”
LINKS:
Darren has a website, “The Art of Life in Chinese Central Asia,” that covers art and politics in Northwest China and Central Asia and provides a digital home for Xinjiang artists to tell their stories and display their work. Check it out at LivingOtherwise.com.
Darren also writes a regular column on Xinjiang for supchina.com, which you can find here.
Finally, his recent Guardian piece on high-tech state surveillance in Xinjiang is here.
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I’m joined by Australia’s own Matt Brady to discuss Saturday’s election and the sordid cast of characters involved in its decidedly unexpected outcome. We look at what happened to the Labor Party and what to expect now that Scott Morrison has a whole term ahead of him—at the risk of spoiling the ending, it’s not good. Enjoy!
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Listen now (51 min) | I'm joined for either the first or third time by Alex Thurston from Miami University of Ohio to talk about inter-communal violence in Mali, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso, as well as an update on the Boko Haram(s) conflict in Nigeria. Alex is an expert on the Sahel region who writes at several places, but you should definitely check out his
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Hey folks. This is just a short introductory message to welcome you here to Substack and explain a bit about how the podcast end of things is going to work. Mostly it’s an excuse for me to test out Substack’s podcasting feature before doing a real episode, which I will be doing later this week. I know there have been some questions about an RSS feed and I answer those as best I can in the audio. I’ll have more updates on that as I hear more from Substack. If you have additional questions/issues regarding podcasting please use the comments or email me: attwiw@gmail.com (I’ll be changing that but for now I’m still using it. Thanks for listening!
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We're a day earlier than usual with this week's first episode, but I like to get interviews out quickly because of the possibility they'll be overtaken by events.
As promised, I'm joined by John Carl Baker, a senior program officer at the Ploughshares Fund who works on North Korea, to discuss last week's failed US-DPRK summit in Hanoi. John walks us through the history of US-North Korea diplomacy back to the Clinton administration, offers his thoughts on the positives and negatives of the Trump approach toward North Korea, and suggests a better way forward that centers inter-Korean engagement and lets Koreans take the lead for a change. Enjoy!
John's recent Defense One piece with Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione, on Democrats' response to Trump's North Korea diplomacy, is here.
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In something of an emergency episode brought on by the sudden onset of a political crisis in Venezuela, I'm joined by political scientist and DSA member Jared Abbott. Jared specializes in Latin America and just returned from doing fieldwork in Venezuela, and he's here to hopefully put recent events into some context. This episode is open to the public so feel free to share.
The Jacobin interview Jared mentions toward the end of the show can be found here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/venezuela-maduro-chavez-military-intervention
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For our final regular podcast of 2018, I'm joined by political scientist Ann Marie Wainscott of Miami University of Ohio. Ann is currently researching the religious sector in Iraq, but I wanted to talk about her past work in Morocco (ruled by King Mohammed VI, pictured). We talk about the Moroccan government's efforts to bureaucratize religious expression after the Casablanca bombings of 2003, Morocco's efforts to position itself as a "third pole" in the Islamic World, between and apart from the Saudi-Iran rivalry. Finally she helps shed some light on conditions in the Rif surrounding the 2016-2017 Hirak Rif protests and on recent developments in the frozen Western Sahara conflict. This one will be open to the public. Enjoy!
Ann's book is Bureaucratizing Islam from Cambridge University Press. The 2017 Journal of Politics and Religion article she mentions can be found here if you have some institutional access, and she's also got a 2015 article in the Journal of North African Studies on Islamic education in Morocco post-Casablanca. Check out her website, annmariewainscott.com, and give her a follow on Twitter, @AnnMWainscott.
Finally, since this is it for our regular podcasts in 2018, let me say Happy Holidays to you and yours, and see you in 2019!
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We're joined for the second time by Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) to talk about French President Emmanuel Macron's tribulations, France's "yellow vest" protests, why austerity leads both to fascism and to a cooked planet, and of course why Vladimir Putin is behind all of it. Enjoy!
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Freelance writer and Harvard Divinity School grad student Hannah Gais is back, so that makes two repeat guests on the podcast! She's going to try to explain to me how the Orthodox Church works, an effort that goes so well you can hear my dog literally howling by the end of it (I'm pretty sure she saw some kids outside). We talk about the schism between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I over Bartholomew's decision to allow Ukrainian church leaders to form their own autocephalous Orthodox Church separate from Moscow and try to Make Sense Of It All. Enjoy!
Hannah has also written a piece about the schism, which we discuss during the interview that you can find here. You can find her on Twitter at @hannahgais.
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Today I'm joined in person by Emerson T. Brooking, co-author of a new book called LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. We talk about the ways social media is being used to make life worse, where we're heading in terms of how governments and other bad actors weaponize social media, and what we can do about it. Enjoy!Buy the book: https://www.powells.com/book/-9781328695741
You can follow Emerson on Twitter at @etbrooking. And if you can, Emerson asked me to ask you to support Stacey Abrams, the Democrat running for governor of Georgia. Her actblue page is here.
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If you're a Michael Brooks fan, which you should be, then hopefully you've heard me on his show a few times now. Today I'm very grateful for the chance to turn the tables on him as we talk about Brazilian politics, corruption, Lula, and what has been an extraordinarily eventful presidential campaign. Enjoy!Do yourselves a favor and check out The Michael Brooks Show, on libsyn and/or YouTube. And if you're not already subscribing to Michael's Patreon, that's here.
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Alex Thurston (@sahelblog on Twitter) joins me again to try to make some sense of the dizzying array of extremist groups in Mali and to talk about the aftermath of the Malian presidential election last month, which saw Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (pictured) reelected albeit with very low turnout. Be sure to check out Alex's Sahel Blog and his books:
Salafism in Nigeria from Columbia University Press
Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement from Princeton University Press
Enjoy!
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I'm joined by Michael Youhana to discuss his recent piece for the Fellow Travelers Blog, "Ending the War on Weapon States." We talk about what constitutes a Weapon State, how the War on Weapon States has impacted post-Cold War US foreign policy, and how to think about WMD and "rogue states" without falling into the usual Blob b**t. Apologies for a couple of spots where the audio is rough, one of us was fighting a lousy internet connection and the Skype quality suffered for it.You can find Michael's Fellow Traveler's piece here.
Follow Michael on Twitter: @Michael_Youhana
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Unlocked for the public again because we've got another interview. Today I'm joined by defense technology reporter Kelsey Atherton, who you should be following on Twitter. We're talking about building a left-wing foreign policy vision, the new Fellow Travelers Blog that aims to get that conversation going, Space Force, and drone madness. Enjoy!Kelsey's piece on the Maduro incident is here.
Fellow Travelers Blog on Twitter.
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I'm joined by Alex Thurston from Miami University of Ohio to talk about Boko Haram in particular and Nigeria in general. Alex is an expert on the Sahel region who writes at several places, but you should definitely check out his Sahel Blog and his books:
Salafism in Nigeria from Columbia University Press
Boko Haram: The History of an African Jihadist Movement from Princeton University Press
You can also follow him on Twitter.
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Here's that interview I promised you all last week. I'm speaking with writer Branko Marcetic, who has been covering Donald Trump's trip to the NATO summit and his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki for Jacobin and In These Times. He's been doing some great work countering the overwrought conventional narratives about both events. We discuss what really happened in Brussels and Helsinki and talk about NATO's superfluous post-Cold War existence. This one is open to the public. Enjoy!Links:
"The Mysteriously Vanished NATO Critique" for Jacobin
"The NATO Summit Wasn’t a Victory for Trump—It Was a Victory for Militarism" for In These Times
"What the Liberal Establishment Gets Wrong About the Trump-Putin Summit" also for In These Times
Follow Branko on Twitter
Listen now (64 min) | I'm throwing this one open to the general public because I think it's a good discussion and because...I've got a guest! Yes, you get to listen to somebody else talk for a change! I'm very excited to be joined by Ryan Cooper, National Correspondent for
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As promised, I did a 20 minute spot with the District Sentinel guys earlier today to discuss Netanyahu's presentation yesterday. You can go check it out on their Patreon and also check out the other great work they're doing, but they were kind enough to let me also post the audio here for you guys as well. One thing I'll add here: I mentioned Netanyahu wanting his speech to get on Fox and Friends so he could be sure Trump saw it. I actually gave him too much credit, because it turns out Netanyahu himself appeared on Fox and Friends this morning to deliver his sales pitch directly at Trump. I did not know this when we were doing the interview. In my defense, you would need to drug and restrain me to get me to watch Fox and Friends.
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Today I'm pleased to be joined by Dan, aka Twitter user @dankmtl, for a crash course on the history of Armenian communities in the Middle East. Obviously we spend a fair amount of time on the Armenian Genocide, its causes and lingering effects, but we go all the way back to good old Tigranes the Great (see one of his coins above), who expanded Armenia to its largest extent in the first century BCE. This is a subject that can only be given the most cursory of treatments in a single podcast episode, but Dan is more than up to the challenge.I was going to post this on Tuesday as usual, but events in Armenia are kind of overtaking the interview. As I say in a section I just added, ex-Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan just resigned today after days of protests over his decision to switch over from president to PM in order to hang onto power. Dan and I did this interview on Sunday and talked briefly about the protests, but obviously we didn't have any idea he was about to step down. I figured I better get this out before anything else happens. Anyway, enjoy!
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Today's episode is another interview and it is again going to be available to the public. I'm grateful to have been joined by John Feffer of the Institute for Policy Studies to talk about his recent piece for Foreign Policy in Focus on Donald Trump's majoritarian politics and the spread of majoritarianism around the world (I know I mention "a couple of pieces" in my intro but consider that a function of the fact that I got about five hours of sleep last night and that my plan for the interview changed as we were recording it). John walks us through the concept of majoritarianism, examines the construction of a "majority" in the first place, and looks at majoritarianism's causes and a hopeful counter to it. You can find more of John's work at Foreign Policy in Focus, LobeLog, and his own website. Enjoy!I close with an appeal for you to support a new resolution in the US Senate offered by Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee, and Chris Murphy that could potentially end America's role in the ongoing Yemen atrocity. WinWithoutWar.org's petition is here. I know I usually post episodes on Tuesdays but because the petition is timely I wanted to get this episode out as soon as it was ready.
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We're lucky to be joined by freelance writer, full-time grad student, and Russian active measure Hannah Gais to talk about the 2016 election, Russiagate, Vladimir Putin, the state of US-Russia relations, and Russia's many crimes including killing God. I'm opening this episode to the general public for a change, so please share widely.Hannah's Baffler piece, "Who's Afraid of the Russian Soul?" is here.
Enjoy!
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I'm proud to bring you our first interview! Veteran reporter Jim Lobe joins me to talk about neoconservatism, a subject on which he has been reporting and lecturing and giving interviews for many years now. We talk about defining neoconservatism, about its development from a niche intellectual movement on the leftish side of the spectrum into perhaps the dominant foreign policy ideology on the right, and about its ability to thrive despite its close association with the bar-none worst foreign policy decision in modern American history.Jim's website, which you should know if you read my work, is lobelog.com, and the piece he references on Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump is here. Enjoy!
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