Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

My guest today Jeffrey Smith helps topple dictators for a living. His organization, Vanguard Africa, is very new but they already have one success under their belt--the peaceful transition of power from The Gambia's longtime ruler. He now has his sites set on Africa's second longest ruling leader, Paul Biya of Cameroon. We kick off with a discussion of the situation in Cameroon and have great digressions about the Zimbabwe, some deficiencies of the NGO community in DC and, of course, the Gambia. Jeff discusses how and why he came to focus on issues of democracy and human rights in Africa and how he found inspiration from the hero of an anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: How to Get a Job at the United Nations #8: How to Pick the Right International Relations Graduate School

Pop Quiz: do you know how many people are in the world right now? The answer is 7.6 billion. That data point and much more are contained in a report called "World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision," which was recently published by the UN. The report contains all sorts of facts and figures that are both interesting on its own, but also extremely consequential to understanding the future of our species in a very literal sense. On the line with me to talk through some of the demographic trends of the world's population, is John Wilmoth, Director of the Population Division at the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. We discuss the trajectory of the world's population including where the big population centers of the future will be. We also have a fascinating conversation about the relationship between contraception, child survival and population growth and why, from a policy perspective one of the more useful things you can know is the age distribution of a population -- and here, Europe and Africa represent two extremes that we discuss at length. I promise after listening to this interview you will about the world demographics and why it matters. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: How to Get a Job at the United Nations #8: How to Pick the Right International Relations Graduate School

Gregory Stone once lived underwater for 30 days. He is an ocean scientist and author who has spent a career studying and advocating on behalf of our oceans. He's now with an executive vice president with Conservation International and is one of the world's leading authorities on ocean health and ocean conservation. We caught up just as a big UN conference on oceans was wrapping up in New York. This was the first-ever UN conference on Oceans and ocean health and we kick off discussing some of his takeways from that meeting. We of course discuss his life and career and where his love for the oceans all began. And we have some great digressions along the way about scuba diving in the antarctic, the first time he saw up close the effect of climate change on coral reefs and why plastic is such a nemesis for our oceans. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: How to Get a Job at the United Nations #8: How to Pick the Right International Relations Graduate School

Marietje Schaake was under 30 years old when she first joined the European Parliament as a representative from the Netherlands in 2009. She candidly discusses the kinds of challenges she faced as a young woman navigating what was then--and still is--mostly and old mens club. We caught up shortly after a series of consequential elections in Europe, including the victory of Emmanuel Macron in France and the surprising near-defeat of Therese May in the UK. We kick off this conversation discussing the current state of right wing populism in Europe and the effect that Donald Trump is having on European politics. This conversation is a great explainer of how the European Parliament works--we use Martietje's efforts to create some rules of the road for digital trade as an entry point to discuss the procedures, processes and politics of the European Parliament and the EU more broadly. Marietje Schaake is someone I've known for many years. We are both alums of Humanity in Action from our University days and it was great to catch up with her and learn about her work as an MEP. Marietje's website Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: How to Get a Job at the United Nations #8: How to Pick the Right International Relations Graduate School

Hans Binnendijk is a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic relations and a longtime DC foreign policy insider. He served in top posts in the Clinton administration, including in the National Security Council and he was the founding director of the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at National Defense University. Hans is a senior foreign policy hand who has collected many affiliations along the way. Hans wrote one of my favorite op-eds of all-time, that made the case for robust State Department funding by comparing the number of people in military marching bands to the number of US foreign service officers. We kick off with a discussion about State Department staffing and then have a longer conversation about his life and career, including his experience as a child immigrant from post-war Netherlands and how he rose through the ranks of the DC foreign policy establishment. It's a good talk with some interesting digressions along the way. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)

There is yet another crisis in the middle east. This week, Saudi Arabia and its close allies in the region moved against Qatar, cutting off sea and air travel and moving to isolate their fellow sunni Gulf country. Like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar is a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional group of erstwhile allies that coordinate security policies against Iran and other common threats. But tensions have been brewing for many years between Qatar and other countries on the Arabian Peninsula and these tensions have apparently come to a head in the wake of Donald Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia. Qatar is home to both Al Jazeera and the region's largest US military airbase -- which is currently the strategic nerve center of the US air campaign against ISIS. This fact did not apparently stop President Trump for issuing statements, on Twitter of course, in support of Saudi allegations that Qatar is a nemesis that supports terrorist groups. On the line with me to unpack this situation and explain the roots of these regional rivalries, which has much to do with both the Al Jazeera television station and Qatar's backing of different proxies during the aftermath of Egypt's Arab Spring is Marc Lynch. Marc has been on the show before, most recently to discus his newest book The New Arab Wars, Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East. He is a professor at George Washington University and someone I rely on to help me make sense of tangled middle eastern politics. You can--and should follow him on Twitter at @AbuAardvark. If you have 20 minutes and want to learn about why this spat between Qatar and its neighbors is so profoundly consequential to global politics, then have a listen. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)

Donald Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement In the wake of this decision, I wanted to get a sense of the consequences of this decision to both the climate change goals embedded in the Paris Agreement and also to the wider diplomacy and geopolitics that surrounds global climate change. I bring you two perspectives on these very timely questions. First, I speak with Paula Caballero of the World Resources Institute who does a good job explaining the kinds of global implications of this decision. Then, I speak with Pete Ogden of the United Nations Foundation and we discuss the linkages between federal and sub-national domestic politics, like the actions of mayors and governors, to this decision. If you have 30 minutes and want a deeper understanding of the implications of the US decision to walk out of the world's most important climate change agreement, have a listen. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)

One overlooked aspect of the global conversation on conflict, disaster and humanitarian affairs is internal displacement and the plight of internally displaced people, or IDPs. Like refugees, IDPs have been forced from their home by conflict or disaster. But unlike refugees, they have not crossed an international border and are not afforded the kind of legal protections embedded in widely adopted international treaties like the refugee convention. But as my guest Alexandra Bilak a explains, the number of IDPs around the world is actually greater than the number of refugees. Alexandra is director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and we caught up as her organization released its latest flagship annual report on Global Trends in Internal Displacement. We run through the numbers, the key policy challenges and discuss how the international community can do a better job of keeping the priorities of IDPs in the front and center of broader conversations about refugees and migration. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)

Sharon Weinberger is the author of the new book The Imagineers of War:The Untold Story of DARPA. DARPA, for the un-initiated, stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and it is the branch of the Pentagon that is famous for developing some far-out-there technologies, some of which were total flops but others that have become central to not only modern warfare, but also daily life. We have a fascinating conversation about the history of technology in modern warfare and the implications of having a military institution conducting research that can have big-society wide consequences. Sharon has been a journalist on my radar for many years since she founded this great national security focused section of Wired magazine called Danger Room. And we discuss Sharon's pathway into journalism and another book called A Nuclear Family Vacation, with co-author Nathan Hodge that offers something of a tourist perspective on nuclear sites around the United States and its territories. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)

We are nearly six months into the year and already 9 journalists have been killed in 2017, including 4 in Mexico alone. That figure comes from reporters without borders and is part of a larger data set that my guest Sabine Carey is collecting on the murders of journalists around the world. Sabine is a political scientist at Mannheim University in Germany, and co-author with Anita Gohdes of a new study about the killing of journalists around the world. Their research finds that the murder of journalists can predict the deterioration of human rights in a country within two years of the murder. Their study is is titled "Canaries in the Coal Mine: What the Killing of Journalists Tell Us About Future repression" and can be found in the academic Journal of Peace Research. And in this conversation Sabine walks me through her research and the broader political and policy implications of her findings. Leave a review on iTunes! You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show! Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include: #1: International Relations Theory, explained. #2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation #3: A Brief History of NATO #4: The Syrian Civil War, explained. #5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea. #6: Better Know Vladimir Putin #7: The Six Day War, Explained. (Coming soon!) #9: "Sustainable Development," explained (Coming soon!)