Foreign Exchanges: the Podcast

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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 here. Kelsey writes a newsletter on the intersection between national security and technology for C4ISRNET called Tomorrow Wars, which you can find here.

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:

* Will the Coronavirus Kill Globalization?

* What the Coronavirus Says about Us

* The Politics of the Coronavirus

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!

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 @sahelblog. His recent World Politics Review piece on the squabbling at the top of Mauritanian politics can be found here.

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.

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)

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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?”

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!

All of FX’s interviews are available to the public, but if you’d like to support the podcast and get access to exclusive content, subscribe today:

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

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).