Altamar - Navigating the High Seas of Global Politics

With Viktor Orbán stronger than ever, Hungary’s leader offers a clearly replicable recipe for building an autocracy out of a democracy. Cas Mudde, an expert on populism and the mechanics of the far right, joins this week to discuss.

The face of warfare is changing, and Moscow is embracing it full-throttle. With the digital age giving Putin's Russia a wealth of new ways to pursue longstanding objectives, how is the West to respond? At the same time, are we overestimating the Kremlin's sophistication? The Carnegie Endowment's Andrew Weiss joins this week to discuss.

As Trump announces new tariffs, could this shift toward protectionism spark a wave of inward-looking trade policy around the world? Or could we see precisely the opposite happen? Peter and Muni talk to Andrés Velasco, Chile’s former finance minister, to get a sense of the danger, and to discuss strategies for making free trade politically popular.

Syria's civil war has long ceased to be civil. The last two months have been a gut-wrenching reminder of how internationalized this conflict has become. As regional and world powers become more deeply entrenched, is there any way out of this tinderbox? Peter and Muni discuss with Joyce Karam, the Washington correspondent for Al-Hayat and The National, who's been following this war since its inception.

A massive anti-corruption investigation has taken down some of Brazil’s most powerful people, including former president Lula, who’s still polling first in this October’s general election. What will become of his candidacy? What has allowed Brazil’s judiciary to become so effective? And is this all as positive as it seems from the outside? Political risk analyst Andrea Murta and legal scholar Diego Werneck Arguelhes join this week for a deep dive into the scandal that has captivated the world.

Mohammed bin Salman has flung Saudi Arabia onto a new path. Some say he’s just what the country needs to kick its sclerotic economy into gear. Others say he’s a despot further polarizing an already unstable region. Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and Princeton University professor of Near Eastern studies Bernard Haykel join this week to dissect the competing narratives.