Diplomatic Immunity

Season 3, Episode 4: ISD Director of Programs and Research Kelly McFarland talks to Bibi La Luz Gonzalez of Eat Better Wa'ik—an anti-hunger NGO in Guatemala—and Johanna Mendelson Forman of the Stimson Center, a think tank based in Washington, DC. They discuss food security and hunger in the context of worsening conflict, climate change, and the effects of the pandemic around the world. Johanna participated in ISD's spring 2021 working group on the nexus between food insecurity, instability, and conflict. Bibi is an activist and organizer focused on hunger and human rights. Their insights help us to understand better the links between local solutions and global food systems in the quest for food security.

Featured articles:

Peace Through Food: Ending the Hunger-Instability Nexus, ISD New Global Commons Working Group Report (August 2021)

Event video: Covid, Conflict, and Climate: Food Insecurity Today and the Way Forward (ISD and the Stimson Center, September 14, 2021)

Johanna Mendelson Forman, "Can food build peace? Challenges for life in the Anthropocene," The Diplomatic Pouch, September 13, 2021.

Episode recorded: Friday, September 24th, 2021.

Episode image: Peace Through Food (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy)

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 3, Episode 3: ISD Director of Programs and Research Kelly McFarland talks about the Arctic with Sherri Goodman of the Wilson Center and Jeremy Mathis of the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. Sherri and Jeremy discuss the deteriorating climate situation in the Arctic, security challenges, defense capabilities, geopolitical competition between the United States, Russia, and China, and the recent death of a Russian official on an exercise in the region.

Featured articles:

The New Arctic: Navigating the Realities, Possibilities, and Problems, ISD New Global Commons Working Group Report (July 2018)

Sarah Kaplan and Andrew Ba Tran, "Nearly 1 in 3 Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer," The Washington Post, September 4, 2021

Episode recorded: Monday, September 20th, 2021.

Episode image: U.S.-Canada Fourth Joint Mission To Map the Continental Shelf in the Arctic Ocean. Views of the U.S.-Canada fourth joint mission to map the continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean in August and September 2011. The 2011 joint mission employed the flagship icebreaker from each country, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy and the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Louis S. St-Laurent (LSSL), with each ship performing different functions and one ship breaking ice for the other [State Department photo/Public Domain].

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 3, Episode 2: ISD Director of Programs and Research Kelly McFarland talks to scholars of U.S. foreign policy Emma Ashford from the Atlantic Council and Charles Edel from the Wilson Center. Emma and Charlie debate some of the key questions in U.S. foreign policy on relations with China, Russia, and climate change, and the role of historical analogies in that process.

Featured articles and books:

Charles Edel, Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order (Yale University Press, 2019)

Ernest May, "Lessons" of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 1973)

Emma Ashford, "Strategies of Restraint," Foreign Affairs, September/October 2021

Joshua Shifrinson and Stephen Wertheim, "Biden the Realist," Foreign Affairs, September 9, 2021

Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel Collins, "Competition With China Can Save the Planet," Foreign Affairs, May/June 2021

David Kang and Xinru Ma, "Power Transitions: Thucydides Didn't Live in East Asia," The Washington Quarterly, Volume 41, 2018 - Issue 1

Episode recorded: Friday, September 10th, 2021.

Episode image: Deputy Secretary Sherman Meets with People's Republic of China Appointed Ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2021 [State Department photo/Public Domain].

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 3, Episode 1: For the first episode of season 3, ISD Director of Programs and Research Kelly McFarland talks to Axios politics editor Glen Johnson. Glen guides listeners through the main challenges facing the Biden administration and global leaders today, from climate change to China, and helps set up our new season looking at challenges in the Global Commons. In addition to his career as a journalist, Glen served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for strategic communications under Secretary of State John Kerry from 2013 to 2017. He is also the author of a book, Window Seat on the World, about his experiences traveling with the secretary of state: https://www.glenjohnson.com/

Episode recorded: Tuesday, August 20th, 2021.

Episode image: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry steps aboard an Air Force jet as he prepares to depart from Andrews Air Force Base for a trip to Egypt, the Middle East, and Europe for consultations on Iraq and other regional matters on June 21, 2014. [State Department photo/Public Domain]

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 3 of Diplomatic Immunity begins September 1.

Learn more about ISD's New Global Commons research.

Read ISD's latest working group report.

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

For our final summer bonus episode, Kelly McFarland spoke to Happymon Jacob and Rick Moss, authors of two new cases on back-channel diplomacy for ISD's case studies library. Happymon is an associate professor in the Centre for International Politics, Organisation & Disarmament in the School of International Studies at Nehru University in New Delhi. Rick is an associate professor in the Russian Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College's Center for Naval Warfare Studies.

They discuss their respective case studies on the 2004-2007 India-Pakistan back channel and U.S.-Soviet back channels during the Cold War; the role of personalities in back-channel diplomacy; secrecy in diplomatic negotiations; compartmentalization of issues; and some of the broader pros and cons of back channels.

Instructors can register for an account with ISD's Faculty Lounge to access all our case studies free of charge.

Visit our website: casestudies.isd.georgetown.edu

Episode recorded: August 3, 2021.

Featured books and articles:

Happymon Jacob, Case 356: The Kashmir Back Channel: India-Pakistan Negotiations on Kashmir from 2004 to 2007 (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, August 2021)

Rick Moss, Case 353: Circumventing the Foreign Policy Bureaucracy: Henry Kissinger, Anatoly Dobrynin, and Back-Channel Diplomacy (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, April 2021)

Rick Moss, Nixon's Back Channel to Moscow: Confidential Diplomacy and Détente (University Press of Kentucky, 2017)

Happymon Jacob, "India must directly engage with Taliban 2.0," The Hindu (paywalled), July 22, 2021

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

A bonus episode on U.S.-Russia relations from The Ambassadorial Series at the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Ambassador Tom Pickering, Chair of the ISD Board of Advisers and a seven-time U.S. ambassador, discusses his experiences as ambassador to the Russian Federation from 1993 to 1996 with Georgetown University's Jill Dougherty.

Watch all eight video conversations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiPyUMZMRG090RRIITQCS4gBdaVOH_p99

Learn more about the series: https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/monterey-initiative-russian-studies/ambassadorial-series

Image: U.S. Embassy Moscow

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world.

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

In case you missed it, here's one of our favorite conversations from season 2. 

Part 1 of a Diplomatic Immunity mini-series, Diplomacy and the Arab Spring at 10 - Origins and Legacies of Revolution

Tunisia: A conversation between Ambassador Gordon Gray and Youssef Cherif. Presented by Kelly McFarland and Alistair Somerville. Additional commentary from Tamara Cofman Wittes. 

Listen to Part 6, A Conversation with Stephanie Williams: https://diplomaticimmunity.libsyn.com/part-6-a-conversation-with-stephanie-williams-diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring-at-10

Listen to Part 5, Syria: https://diplomaticimmunity.libsyn.com/part-5-the-tinder-is-dry-uprisings-and-repression-in-syria-diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring-at-10

Listen to Part 4, Libya: https://diplomaticimmunity.libsyn.com/part-4-uprisings-civil-war-and-hope-in-libya-diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring-at-10

Listen to Part 3, Yemen: https://diplomaticimmunity.libsyn.com/part-3-revolution-transition-and-collapse-in-yemen-diplomacy-and-the-arab-spring-at-10

Listen to Part 2, Egypt: https://diplomaticimmunity.libsyn.com/part-2-tahrir-square-and-beyond

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision makers around the world.  

Produced by Alistair Somerville and Kelly McFarland

Production assistance by Jonas Heering

Design by Rebecca McFarland, Jonas Heering, and Alistair Somerville

Additional audio from Voice of America, the Obama White House, Julius H on Pixabay, the Free Music Archive, and Soft and Furious

Supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York 

https://isd.georgetown.edu/news/diplomatic-immunity/

Originally released: April 21, 2021

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world. 

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 2, Episode 13: For the final episode in season 2, ISD Director of Programs and Research Kelly McFarland talks to former Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun. Biegun, who served in this role and as special representative for North Korea during the Trump administration, discusses the deputy's day-to-day role, the challenges the State Department faced bringing American citizens home during the COVID-19 pandemic, and domestic polarization under the Trump administration. 

Additional insights from ISD Rusk Fellow and FSO Hammad Hammad. 

Episode recorded: Friday, April 20th, 2021. 

Diplomatic Immunity: Frank and candid conversations about diplomacy and foreign affairs

Diplomatic Immunity, a podcast from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, brings you frank and candid conversations with experts on the issues facing diplomats and national security decision-makers around the world. 

For more, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter @GUDiplomacy. Send any feedback to [email protected].

Season 2, Episode 12: Kelly McFarland talks to Chet Crocker, Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service and a member of the ISD Board of Advisers. Chet combines the academic and practitioner perspective, having previously served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Alongside Fen Osler Hampson and Pamela Aall, he is the co-editor of a new collection of essays, Diplomacy and the Future of World Order, published in May by our friends at Georgetown University Press. 

We were also joined by two of the book’s chapter authors: former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ana Palacio, and Georgetown international affairs professor and ISD Board member Lise Howard.

They discuss the scenarios the authors present in their book, as well as the concept of “peace and conflict diplomacy” as a tool for states to manage others' conflicts, cope with great power competition, and deal with threats to the state system overall.

Purchase Diplomacy and the Future of World Order on the Georgetown University Press website: http://press.georgetown.edu/book/georgetown/diplomacy-and-future-world-order

Discussants also referenced Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan's recent article in Foreign Affairs, "The New Concert of Powers How to Prevent Catastrophe and Promote Stability in a Multipolar World."

Episode recorded: Friday, April 23rd, 2021. 

This episode was sponsored by UN-Scripted, a podcast from PassBlue, an independent media organization covering the UN. Listen here: https://www.passblue.com/podcasts-about-the-united-nations/