The world is transfixed by the tragic images emerging from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine: broken people and families, destroyed schools, homes and buildings. Unfortunately, many modern conflicts never really end, so the casualties of such wars never have a chance to heal. Whether or not that will be the case in Ukraine remains to be seen, but that certainly describes the wars in Syria, the West Bank, Gaza, Bosnia, parts of Africa, and elsewhere. In a globalizing world where war was supposed to be a thing of the past, that shouldn't be happening, which ironically may be part of the explanation for why it is.** We too quickly move on to the next issue, assuming that what's done is done.**

War correspondents and war photographers know better. Our guest, Janine di Giovanni has spent much of her celebrated career so far reporting from the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East. She has witnessed the worst of what mankind can do to itself, but also the best that people under extraordinary circumstances can do for others. And that balance between evil and good comes through in her reporting.

Listen as she discusses her experiences and, in particular, the work she has done on the lives of Palestinians in Gaza.

What do YOU think?

This conversation was recorded before the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine.

Most of us thought the war in the Balkans would be the last conflict in Europe; the last time that armies would invade, civilians die and borders changed by force. We were wrong. A revanchist Russia, led by President Putin, is trying to redraw borders, roll back history, and change Europe’s security reality. This is not a new Cold War, but a very hot one.

In that spirit, the Tällberg Foundation recently hosted a conversation about the conflict in Ukraine and its implications—likely to be the first of many. This conversation featured Jan Eliasson, former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Pierre Lellouche, former French parliamentarian and minister, and Dalia Bankauskaitė, a strategic communications expert at Vilnius University in Lithuania, and was moderated by Alan Stoga, Tällberg’s chairman.

Wars have cycles: sooner or later, the fighting ends and the negotiations begin. As hard as it is to imagine amidst the unfolding tragedy of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the diplomats and politicians will eventually gather to define new borders, behaviors, and rules. The Russian attack shattered the European security structure that had evolved after the Cold War ended; something must replace it.

Of course how the fighting ends will shape whatever negotiations ensue. But it is never too early to think about the future contours of the map of Europe.

This podcast with Emma Ashford, Washington-based Atlantic Council geopolitical expert, was recorded before Russia attacked Ukraine. Nonetheless, Emma's thoughts and speculation about a new security structure for Europe are even more important now than when we discussed them before President Putin chose to go to war.

Please let us know what you think about this episode of ‘New Thinking for a New World.”

"We may remain, as we are now, nominally democratic, but be ruled by a technocratic class empowered by greater powers of surveillance than those enjoyed by even the noisiest of dictatorships.”

Those words were written by Joel Kotkin in a recently published essay on democracy’s demise. Donald Trump is not the villain of the piece, as most pundits want us to believe, nor other populists outside the United States. Rather, Kotkin argues that the withering of democratic process and institutions reflects the deeper transformation of American and European societies: the emergence of a ruling technocracy; the use of the pandemic and the environmental crisis to constrain individual rights; the new concentration of power in governments, and the growing distance between the governing and the governed. All of it made worse by the mind-boggling concentration of economic wealth, which is as much an issue in China as it is in the United States.

Kotkin’s analysis deserves our attention. What do you think—not about Trump, but about democracy? Who can do what to bend the arc away from the dystopian end game that he and others describe?

Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California and Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, as well as the author of the Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.

Climate change is the ultimate example of a problem that can only meaningfully be addressed at the global level. Dramatic action in a few countries may be interesting, maybe even important depending on the countries, but actually reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere requires many countries moving rapidly in the same direction.

Last November, more than 100 countries sent delegations—many including presidents and prime ministers—to Glasgow for the 26th United Nations High Level Meeting on Climate. It was supposed to an inflection point, not only to deepen national commitments, but to force the transformational changes in how energy is produced and consumed in order to hold the rise in global warming to one and a half degrees or less.

The results were mixed. Many new commitments were made, but not enough to meet the 1.5 degrees goal. And that was the easy part; delivering policies that actually bend the arc of global climate change is quite another. How likely is that? Is the UN process working? And, since China was notable for its failure to engage in Glasgow, does any of it really matter if the country responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions is effectively sitting on the sidelines?

No one is better positioned to answer those questions than Ambassador Tomas Anker Christensen, Denmark's Climate Ambassador. Tomas was deeply engaged in the European and global run up to Glasgow, in the negotiations in Scotland, and in the effort since then to translate words into action. Ambassador Christensen recently served as a juror for the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.

In many, perhaps most countries in the West, there is a wide and growing gap between citizens and their political leaders. Governments often fail to deliver on basic aspects of the social contract and voters sometimes respond by endorsing extreme solutions on the right or the left. Populists have not proven any better at delivering what voters want, so anger and frustration increase while democracy suffers. COVID made it worse. On the one hand, most governments in most places gathered extraordinary powers during the pandemic. On the other hand, few governments actually translated that power into better outcomes for their citizens.

Even as the pandemic seems to be easing, the residue remains: more inequality, more inflation, more economic and social stress. If there is a silver lining, it is that our sorry condition has caused some people to rethink how politics ought to work and try to reinvent, rather than tear down, democratic processes and institutions. Alice Barbe, a French political activist, has founded the Academy of Future Leaders to do exactly that. Alice was a finalist in last year's Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize and recently shared her ideas, hopes and solutions. Do you think she is headed in the right direction?

Hostile troops massing on the border of a Central European democracy, fears of staged provocations, risk of a wider conflict that could spiral out of control, urgent diplomatic negotiations that fail to soften a would be aggressor's demands. No, it's not 1938, it's 2022, but Russia's threats against Ukraine and its demands for new security and arrangements in Europe sound all too familiar.

Of course, the huge difference today is that Germany is not only firmly anchored in the West but is a cornerstone of the European Union. Nonetheless, today's Germany is a center stage in the Ukraine crisis.

The Ukraine crisis is far from over; however it ends, the consequences will be profound. Constanze Stelzenmüller—an expert on Germany, geopolitics and trans-Atlantic relations who is based at the Brookings Institution in Washington—is deeply knowledgeable about all aspects of the crisis. Listen as she shares her views on what is at stake.

The Middle East is changing. In the past couple of years, peace treaties have been signed between Arab countries and Israel. New investment and trade relationships are emerging based on economics, not religion. The threat of war between Shia and Sunni is no longer in the headlines. Western powers, especially the United States, seem to be fading from the scene.

Almost more amazing than any of that, in December more than 700,000 Saudi kids participated in a four-day rave in the Saudi desert with regular intermissions for Islamic prayers. What's going on? Has the Middle East of strict Islam suddenly turned into something more modern? Have the Arabs figured out how to move beyond religious conflict? In a world that wants to abandon hydrocarbons, are the Arabs just enjoying the last party before their world collapses?

What happens as foreign powers become spectators rather than actors? Can the locals actually find the peace and prosperity that has eluded them for so long?

Neil Quilliam is a deeply knowledgeable, experienced expert in the region. He has been engaged with the politics, economics and societies of the Middle East and North Africa for decades: today from his perch at Chatham House in London and earlier through his service in the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and his history of living in, working on and studying the Gulf and the Levant.

Whether we like it or not, global politics today is defined by confrontation—which could lead to conflict—between autocracies and democracies. However, unlike the great geopolitical divisions of the past, the new dividing lines are not ideological or ethnic or religious or economic. Rather, the two camps are defined by how their leaders come to and maintain themselves in power. The autocracies seem to have figured out they have much in common, including fear of democracy, and translate that understanding into effective mutual support. Ironically, the democracies spend considerable energy criticizing each other, emphasizing their different approaches to issues like immigration, climate, trade, etc.

Not surprisingly, as historian and journalist Anne Applebaum wrote in the Atlantic in November: “The Bad Guys are Winning.” As she put it, "If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.”

With Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, Belarus dumping Middle East migrants in Poland and Lithuania, China threatening Taiwan (as well as countries like Lithuania and Australia who dare to disagree with Beijing) these are potentially life and death issues. Listen as Applebaum discusses how this new world (dis) order might evolve.

We live in an always on, hyperconnected, digital society. Almost every aspect of our lives now has a virtual element, which means we leave endless trails of data to be hoovered up for good and for evil. Unfortunately, some of the results include cybercrime, illegal spying, harassment, cyber intimidation and identity theft.

It’s bad enough when these activities are aimed at you or me; much worse when they target dissidents, crusading journalists, citizens who are pushing back against government oppression. That’s where Ronald Deibert and the Citizen Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto come in. Ron and his colleagues are in the business of fighting back, using cutting-edge technologies to protect citizens and civil society from digital predators.

Listen as Ron, a finalist for the 2021 Tallberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize, explains how Citizen Lab does the voodoo they do so well.