The Bottom Line

China announced plans to flex its muscles near Taiwan in response to a visit Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, made to the island.

For China, Taiwan is a breakaway province that must be “reunited” with the mainland. For Taiwanese leaders, it is a sovereign nation that wants to maintain its status quo.

The US policy is called “strategic ambiguity” – supporting Taiwan’s autonomy for now while being cautious not to anger China.

International relations expert Stephen Walt tells Steve Clemons that the interests of Beijing and Washington are too interdependent for either power to risk escalation.

Whose message is swaying American voters in the lead-up to the midterm elections later this year?

Republicans want to focus attention on crime, immigration and inflation. Recent polls indicate that former President Donald Trump would win against President Joe Biden if presidential elections were held today. This is despite the year-long efforts of a Democratic Party-led panel that has been investigating Trump’s involvement in the efforts to reverse his election loss in 2020.

Host Steve Clemons asks Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle about the January 6 investigation, and his party’s prospects for holding onto power after November.

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In 2020, Dr Deborah Birx was appointed to lead the White House Coronavirus Response team.

At the same time, President Donald Trump was spreading misinformation and trying to convince Americans that he had everything "totally under control".

Two years later, the United States has more than 1 million deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Birx tells host Steve Clemons that she wrote her new book, Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of the Trump Administration, Covid-19, and Preventing the Next Pandemic Before It’s Too Late, because the US government is still not able to communicate effectively with its people when it comes to the coronavirus.

The United States is principally responsible for creating the crisis in Ukraine, according to University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer, and it has no current interest in reaching a negotiated settlement now.

Mearsheimer sees US sanctions against Moscow as an attempt to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers.

The way he sees it, the US has declared war against Russia, in effect, but the Ukrainian people are doing the fighting.

Join host Steve Clemons for this wide-ranging conversation about how both sides consider themselves locked in an existential threat, with no way out.

Normal relations between Afghanistan and the United States are not on the horizon after 20 years of war.

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Zalmay Khalilzad, who was born in Afghanistan and has worked with several US administrations on Afghan affairs. Khalilzad has been the US representative to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations. Most recently, he was US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation under former President Donald Trump.

In this wide-ranging interview, Khalilzad talks about the chances for national reconciliation in Afghanistan, the country’s $7bn reserve fund held by Washington, and US foreign policy.

Mass shootings are a part of life in the United States. Some make national headlines, like the killing of elementary school children in Uvalde, or the targeted killing of Black people in a supermarket in Buffalo.

But Americans are not able to reach a grand consensus on what to do about it, and conservatives are steering the conversation away from guns and towards mental healthcare.

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Anthony Barksdale, the former acting police commissioner of Baltimore, and researcher Mark Follman, author of Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America.

Three months into Russia's invasion of Ukraine, several NATO members say the priority should be an end to hostilities; but where would that leave Ukraine?

For the West, what are the objectives of the war? Is the goal to extend the fighting indefinitely to weaken Russia economically and militarily as much as possible?

In this episode, host Steve Clemons asks former US national security adviser John Bolton about the strategy of NATO in Ukraine, the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis, and former President Donald Trump’s claims that the war would not have happened if he were president.

Three months into the fighting in Ukraine, Poland has established itself as the main conduit of weapons and aid from the West to Ukraine. It has also absorbed the highest number of Ukrainian refugees, 3.4 million people. And it is working to end its energy dependency on Russia within months.

Russian leaders have warned Poland - which joined NATO in 1999, several years before it joined the European Union - against taking such a strident role against Moscow.

Host Steve Clemons asks Poland’s ambassador to the United States, Marek Magierowski, about the opportunities and challenges facing his country and region.

The debate in the United States on a woman’s right to abortion has raged on for decades.

For conservatives, it is about religious values and the country's future as a Christian nation. For progressives and many moderates, it is about individual rights.

If the US Supreme Court rolls back Roe v Wade in the coming months, it will be a milestone in the Culture Wars.

Host Steve Clemons asks journalist Julia Manchester and historians Jonathan Zimmerman and Andrew Hartman whether there is still room for compromise among the two camps on abortion and other values- and lifestyle-based issues like gay marriage, immigration and racism.

#TheBottomLine

NATO, the military alliance of Western countries, does not include Ukraine but is heavily involved in the current conflict as it supports the country in the face of Russia's invasion.

In the first half of this episode, host Steve Clemons talks with NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană about the alliance’s support for Ukraine.

And in the second half of the show, Steve talks with Time magazine correspondent Simon Shuster about the two weeks he spent with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his team in their wartime compound in Kyiv. We ask what is going on in the mind of the Ukrainian leader these days?