New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

Once again, Americans are getting ready for a presidential election that is widely described as the most important in their lifetimes. That may or may not be true, but two things are certain: the two candidates, former President Trump and current Vice President Harris, are about as different as different could be, and many Americans wish they had other choices.

But they don’t; either Trump or Harris will be elected in November. With a little more than five weeks left to campaign (although early voting has already started in some states) both candidates are desperately trying to break what the pollsters insist is more or less a tie, both in the national polls and in the so-called swing states whose Electoral College votes will in effect select the winner.

How are the candidates trying to persuade voters who haven’t already made up their minds? How do they ensure that their core voters actually cast ballots, in a country where the highest turnout since 1990 saw 1/3 of registered voters decline to vote in the equally tight 2020 Biden/Trump contest? What do voters see in the candidates that attract or repel them?

Scott Miller, an accomplished political and corporate consultant based in the swing state of Georgia, has some answers or at least some well-informed intuitions. Scott, with a long history of advising successful (as well as the other kind) both Republican and Democrat candidates in national and state elections, continues to be a close observer of American politics; he is one of the “go-to” gurus of U.S. elections.

What do you think? Who would you vote for and why?

During the summer, Iranians elected a new president: Masoud Pezeshkian, a cardiac surgeon, who is considered to be a political reformer. His victory surprised at least many foreign observers who are skeptical about all things Iranian, not the least that anyone could win an election against so-called hardliners. But Pezeshkian did exactly that.

Did he win in spite of or with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader and of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards? Can he cope with the profound challenges facing his country, domestically and internationally? Does he have the needed room to maneuver to reduce the crushing Western sanctions that make life so difficult for ordinary Iranians? What does “reformer” even mean in the complicated Iranian context?

The best answers to those questions should probably come from an Iranian. Hossein Mousavian, a scholar and author at Princeton University, was a long-serving Iranian diplomat who worked on his country’s nuclear negotiations with the West, among other assignments. Listen as he describes the new President and assesses the possibility for new directions in Iran’s trajectory.

Tell us what you think: should the West restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear arms policies and reduce or even eliminate sanctions?

The Greek philosopher, Epicurus, wrote “The art of living well and dying well are one.” However, most of us spend our lives desperately trying to avoid even thinking about dying, never mind preparing for it.

An exception is Dr. Christian Ntizimira, a Rwandan surgeon, who founded the African Center for Research on End-of-Life Care. He has thought long and hard about the social, psychological, cultural, and spiritual factors, as well as the physiological ones, that shape the final days of someone who is dying. Of course, it's not just the patient about whom he is thinking, but also family, friends, and community.

Admittedly, death is not one of those topics that make for a comfortable conversation or a comfortable listening experience. But as Shakespeare wrote for Julius Caesar, “Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” So listen to this episode of New Thinking for a New World and tell us if it helps you think a bit differently about your own inevitable demise.

This episode was originally published on February 1, 2024.

We live in a world where facts are everywhere, recorded and shared ubiquitously. That ought to make this an era where arguments, journalism, and politics are routinely rooted in fact; unfortunately, it is more a world where too many people insist not only their own opinions, but on their own “facts.”

The problem is technology running amok, a bit like the broom in Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice (or the perhaps more familiar versions starring Mickey Mouse or Nicolas Cage). Wouldn’t it be a better world if endless open-source information and smart, widely distributed technology shed light instead of heat?

The good news is that there are people trying to do exactly that, starting with Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, an investigative collective focused on online open-source investigation. Listen to this episode of New Thinking for a New World, as he discusses how he and Bellingcat separate fact from fiction.

This episode was originally published on May 23, 2024.

Israel is at war, and not just with Hamas, Iran, the Houthis, and their fellow travelers. Israeli’s most dangerous war may be with itself.

That was certainly true before October 7th, and it’s still true. Back then the streets were full of protesters opposing Prime Minister Netanyahu, his government, and their policies; the country seemed split down the middle. That split has not disappeared: today more than three quarters of Israelis reportedly worry about the “strong or very strong" conflicts between the political right and left, while more than half worry about conflict between religious and secular Jews. Shockingly, in the midst of war, extremists recently breached an army base—the Israel Defense Forces are still the most trusted national institution—attempting to free soldiers accused of abusing Palestinian prisoners.

Arguably Netanyahu's declaration in June that “There will be no civil war” was an explicit acknowledgment of the deep, dangerous currents coursing through Israeli society.

October 7th and the subsequent war against Hamas have been catastrophic for Israelis and even more for Palestinians. It is not possible to imagine what the morning after might look like for anyone until the war ends. But it is possible to begin to understand how the past year has affected ordinary people: their daily lives, their hopes, and their fears for the future—Israeli as well as Palestinian. Any hope for a different future necessarily must start with such an understanding.

In that spirit, this is the first of what we hope will be a series of conversations with Israelis and with Palestinians, not about big-picture politics or strategy or the war, but about the human impact and implications of all the hatred and fighting and destruction of the past 10 months.

The first two voices are Israelis Leora Hadar and Naty Barak. Liora lives in a West Bank settlement and is a mother, a bibliotherapist, and an activist in the grassroots peace movement, Women Wage Peace. Naty is a retired businessman, sustainability expert farmer, and a longtime resident of Kibbutz Hatzerim in the Negev desert.

Listen as they talk about the tragedy of Israel's wars and tell us what you think.

The Middle East is a war zone with Gaza as ground zero. But barely a day goes by when there isn't also fighting in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Israel, the Red Sea, or elsewhere. The danger is that one of these battles could suddenly ignite a bigger conflict with global consequences.

Perhaps surprisingly, Yemen may be a prime candidate for that honor. For years the Iranian-backed Shia Houthis have been fighting, more or less successfully, the Saudi and Emirati-backed Sunni government; today the Houthis control a majority of Yemen's population, but not the country’s hydrocarbons. And—suddenly—they matter, far beyond Yemen’s borders.

Why? First, the Houthis are an integral part of Iran's coalition of regional militias who could become significant players in a regional conflict. Second, for months the Houthis have been attacking container ships going through the Red Sea, diverting substantial traffic away from the Suez Canal. Third, a recent Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv led Israel to launch a disproportionately devastating assault on the Yemeni port of Hodeida which was clearly aimed more at the Iranians than at the Houthis.

That’s exactly how a local conflict could become something much bigger.

Our guest on this episode is an expert in all things Yemen. Allison Minor is an American Middle East expert, at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Although she recently served as Deputy Special Envoy for Yemen at the U.S. State Department, the views she shared with New Thinking for a New World are her own, and not those of the American government.

What do you think: can a general war in the Middle East be avoided?

War in Ukraine. Fighting in Gaza, and across the Middle East. Risky air naval incidents in the South China Sea. Worries about a potential Taiwan conflict. All of it wrapped in visibly growing tensions between China and Russia on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other.

So much for the end of history and a lasting peace dividend. Once more, rival geopolitical blocks are maneuvering for advantage, competing directly and through proxies. Once more, economics is playing second fiddle to geopolitics as countries seek to secure their supply chains and ramp up military spending.

Is a war among the great powers possible? Could we be stumbling towards something that looks more like the hot and cold world wars of the 20th century than almost anyone thought possible?

Philip Zelikow is an American diplomat and a scholar with decades of frontline experience, thinking about and working on the great issues of war and peace. Listen as he discusses his fear about our future in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.

Do you think that the United States, China, and Russia are heading towards conflict?

It’s not exactly headline news that many countries are inventing all sorts of novel ways to seal their borders from migrants and refugees or, when those efforts fail, to force the uninvited and unwanted to leave. It is news, however, when Europe funds, supports, and encourages governments of countries like Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania literally to dump refugees in the Sahara as either punishment or powerful disincentive for trying to escape to Europe.

Of course, on paper the lucrative deals the EU and individual European governments offer North African countries to stop migrants can be made to sound like humane, sensible solutions to the risks of leaky boats crossing the Mediterranean. But are they?

How are the hundreds of millions of euros paid to transit countries actually used? How are would-be refugees treated? Who assures their safety and survival? Does anyone worry about their human rights, never mind watching out for the kind of corruption that such programs can spawn?

There are answers to those questions, but they aren't pretty. Recently a collaboration of journalists, led in part by the Dutch-based organization Lighthouse Reports, published their conclusions under the headline, "Desert Dump.” May Bulman, Investigations Editor of Lighthouse Reports, summarizes what they learned.

Europe should be ashamed.

Tell us what you think.

Politics in Mexico has long been a blood sport: not only “winner takes all,” but also incredibly violent. Last month’s national elections—when the country's first female president won with a record number of votes and by a record margin of victory—demonstrated both trends. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party (founded and still controlled by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador) won huge national and state legislative victories. But the electoral campaign was punctuated by more than 100 political assassinations, as well as widespread kidnappings, forced disappearances, attempted murders, and attacks on family members and campaign staff—all by drug cartels competing for turf, control of markets, and quiescent politicians.

Even worse, this kind of political violence seems to be on the upswing in other parts of Latin America from Central America through the Andean countries and even into Chile. Why? The simple answer seems to be that controlling local, state, and national politicians is good for business—even if that sometimes requires killing those who have other ideas.

Can the cartels be stopped? Is Mexico becoming a narco-state? Is the infection spreading too fast in too many places to be contained?

Answers require a deep understanding of the cartels. That’s where Chris Dalby, an expert on cartel violence, comes in. He is a journalist and founder of World of Crime, which investigates and documents how the cartels operate. Listen as he explains what the Mexican cartels want and how they are getting it.

What do you think: Can Mexico beat the cartels or will the cartels beat Mexico?

Much to everyone’s surprise, France’s President Macron recently decided that—like much of the rest of the world—his country ought to have national elections this year. The outcome of the first of two rounds was devastating for his political project to govern from the center: Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party won a bit more than 33% of the vote. A coalition of leftist parties, the New Popular Front, won 28%. And Macron's Centers party again came in third, 22%.

Headlines around described a “landslide” for Le Pen and speculated that the RN might win an absolute majority of legislative seats in the July 7th second round of voting. While that is one of the possibilities, it's not clear, whether it's the most likely one. What does seem clear is that French politics has entered an incredibly volatile, unpredictable, perhaps dangerous period.

Fear of the populist far right is one of the themes coursing through, perhaps defining French politics. Alice Barbe is a French political and social activist who is firmly planted on the left of the political spectrum in her country. Listen as she shares her fears and discusses her expectations for the second round of voting—and the morning after.

What do you think: can right-wing populism be democratic?