Chatham House

In the first episode of the season, Anna speaks to Laurence Tubiana about the outcomes of the 2022 UN climate conference in Egypt, COP27, and the issues that will shape the international climate agenda in 2023. Tubiana was a key architect of the Paris Agreement in her previous role as France’s Climate Change Ambassador and Special Representative for COP21, and currently serves as CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a professor at Sciences Po.

This week on the show, we look at the role disinformation plays in the United States and Brazil. The storming in Brasilia of federal government institutions by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro echoed strongly the events seen at the US Capitol Building on January 6th 2021. We discuss the impact on Brazil's democracy, the role played by social media platforms and how conspiracy theories percolate online. This week we also look at the state of American politics going into 2023. How are things shaping up for Joe Biden’s presidency after the mid-terms now that a new Congress has been sworn in? And what are the wider challenges being faced more broadly by the American body politic? Our experts also discuss the legacy of January 6th, two years on from the insurrection at The Capitol. Joining guest host Leslie Vinjamuri this week is Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow for Latin America, Serusha Govender the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Academy Fellow at Chatham House and Alex Krasodomski, a Senior Research Associate with our Digital Society Initiative. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.  

In our first episode of 2023, we look at Africa and the complex role China plays on the continent. A recently published Chatham House report highlights twenty-two African countries suffering from debt distress, with Beijing a key creditor to many. This comes as China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang is touring several African this week and next, with visits to Ethiopia, Angola, Gabon, and the headquarters of the African Union. This week we also hosted Dr Comfort Ero, President of the International Crisis Group, where, in conversation with our own Dr Patricia Lewis, Comfort discussed the ten conflicts to watch in 2023. Our panel look at some of the key conflicts mentioned and how the world is responding to them. Joining Bronwen Maddox on the podcast this week are Dr Alex Vines, the Director of our Africa programme; Creon Butler, the Director of our Global Economy and Finance programme; Dr Yu Jie, the Senior Fellow on our Asia-Pacific programme, and Armida van Rij, a Research Fellow with the International Security programme. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.

The last episode of Reflections at 100, marking the centenary of International Affairs, looks at women’s contributions to international thought, and how they have been erased from the discipline of International Relations. Isabel and Krisztina speak to Dr Katharina Rietzler about women’s contributions to the journal and international relations, especially in the UK. Then, Krisztina speaks to Professor Barbara Savage about Black women’s contributions to international relations in the US. To wrap up this episode, Leah de Haan sheds light on Chatham House's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiative and Jo Hills shares their thoughts about putting together the archive collections.    Reflections at 100 is a mini-series accompanying the journal’s centenary Archive Collections. The collections bring together articles from our archive which speak to the past, present and future of current affairs issues. In each podcast episode, we speak to contributors from a specific collection and explore what the research tells us about policy-making today.  Explore the Archive Collection freely until the end of December 2022, including Katharina’s introduction: . International Affairs was started at Chatham House in 1922 to communicate research to members who could not attend in person. Over the last 100 years it has transformed into a journal that publishes academically rigorous and policy relevant research. It is published for Chatham House by Oxford University Press. Credits:  Speakers: Barbara D. Savage, Katharina Rietzler, Leah de Haan and Jo Hills Hosts: Isabel Muttreja and Krisztina Csortea Editor: Jamie Reed Sound Services  Recorded and produced by Chatham House.

In our final episode of the year, we discuss the UK’s foreign policy ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific where, despite the turnover in British prime ministers, London has eyes on being a strategic player in the region. The last eighteen months have seen the deployment of a Royal Navy carrier strike group, the emergence of the AUKUS alliance, talk of closer diplomatic ties with India and ASEAN and, in the context of Brexit, the UK potentially joining the CPTPP pan-Pacific trade deal. How sustainable is a UK presence in the Indo-Pacific? And what are the UK’s strategic objectives in the region? Joining Bronwen Maddox this week to discuss the UK’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific are Shashank Joshi, the Defence Editor at The Economist and Veerle Nouwens, a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI and co-author of a recent Chatham House report on transatlantic cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.

South Asia is home to one-quarter of the global population who reside in only 3.5 per cent of the world’s land area, making it the most populous and most densely-populated region in the world. It is also one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change: a recent study found that Chittagong in Bangladesh and Ahmedabad in India are two of the fastest-sinking coastal cities, leaving millions of people vulnerable to rising sea levels. This episode takes place during COP15, the UN’s Biodiversity Conference, and explores how climate change is threatening coastal cities, including megacities like Mumbai, Karachi, and Dhaka, and how community initiatives such as the  are responding to adapt and build resilience. The discussion also considers whether there are alternative models to foster regional cooperation and to encourage working together on a common climate agenda. Speakers: Yusuf Jameel, Research Manager, Project Drawdown Ashwin Naidu, Founder, Fishing Cat Conservancy Dhanasree Jayaram, Assistant Professor, Manipal Academy of Higher Education Anum Farhan, Programme Coordinator, Environment and Society Programme, Chatham House

As 2022 comes to a close, this week on the podcast the staff of Chatham House reflect on a year of war in Ukraine and twelve years of war in Syria. Joining Bronwen Maddox in the studio is Oz Katerji, a war correspondent and freelance journalist who in the early stages of the Syrian uprising reported on the brutality of the regime of Bashar al-Assad from neighbouring Lebanon and Turkey and covered closely the role played by Russia's armed forces in the conflict. Having written extensively on the Middle East, in January of this year he journeyed to Ukraine, where he was present in Kyiv on February 24th as Russia began its invasion. He reported extensively on the battle for Ukraine’s capital and later Russia's offensive in the Donbas in Foreign Policy magazine, the New Statesman and Rolling Stone. Joining Bronwen to unpack the wider role played by Vladimir Putin's military in Ukraine and Syria are James Nixey, the Director of our Russia and Eurasia programme and Lina Khatib, the Director of our Middle East, and North Africa programme. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.

Anti-lockdown protests are sweeping the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. What does the unrest tell us about China’s response to COVID-19? How serious a challenge are they for Xi Jinping’s legitimacy so soon after the 20th Party Congress? Meanwhile on the Korean Peninsula, 2022 has been a record year for Pyongyang’s ballistic missile tests. How far has the North’s nuclear programme and its missile systems developed, and what does it mean for the country’s neighbours such as Japan? Joining Bronwen Maddox in the studio to answer these questions and more are Ben Bland the Director of Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific programme and Dr Yu Jie a Senior Research Fellow with the Asia programme. Joining the panel this week from Washington DC is special guest Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Editor-at-Large for The Diplomat magazine. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.

This episode of Africa Aware discusses the current state of the Commonwealth and the relevance of language-based intergovernmental organizations to African states as they seek to diversify their international relations. We are joined on the episode by HE Professor Robert Dussey, Foreign Minister of the Togolese Republic, and HE Michael Moussa-Adamo, Foreign Minister of the Republic of Gabon, who outline the reasons why both their countries with colonial ties to France joined the Commonwealth in October 2022, and how they seek to contribute to the development of the organisation.

In Tigray, the world’s largest armed conflict rages between Ethiopian federal government troops and the Tigray Defence Forces. With estimates placing those killed in the fighting at 600,000, how did Ethiopia, one of Africa’s great success stories, descend into civil war, and what hopes are there for recent peace initiatives? Meanwhile in Ukraine, all eyes are on Zaporizhzhia, as Europe’s largest nuclear plant continues to be occupied by Russian forces. With fresh reports of explosions near the dormant reactors, how is the international community responding? Finally, what role does Turkey, a middle power country with great power ambitions, surprisingly play in both conflicts? Joining guest host John Kampfner on the podcast this week are Dr Patricia Lewis, the Director of our International Security programme here at Chatham House, Ahmed Soliman, a Senior Research Fellow, on our Africa programme and Galip Dalay, an Associate Fellow with our Middle East and North Africa programme. Read our expertise: Subscribe to Independent Thinking wherever you get your podcasts. Please listen, rate, review and subscribe. Presented by Bronwen Maddox. Produced by John Pollock. Sound by Abdul Boudiaf and Robin Gardner.