The Global Citizen

Water is drying up everywhere; oceans and rivers are becoming more polluted and poisoned; watersheds are being drained; quality drinking water is getting harder to come by. This dimension of the global environmental crisis calls out for immediate remedy. In this episode, I outline the water crisis abroad and at home, and mention some local-level attempts to combat it.

China's surveillance state relies on a host of intrusive technologies to insure what it calls social stability. The security forces leave no one above suspicion. Similar data collection technologies are already in wide use here, and present a threat to American women in the post-Roe v. Wade era.

Prof. Marantz discusses Vladimir Putin's worldview and ambitions, the forces that may embolden and constrain him, prospects for war termination, and Putin's perceptions of current US/NATO actions.

European unity is being tested in the Ukraine war on three issues: energy, food, and a way forward to ending the war. Russia's cuts in energy exports to Europe, its blockade of Ukraine grain shipments, and its evident playing for time to achieve its expansive security ambitions all tend to exacerbate tensions within the alliance. I examine Europe's responses to these issues in this episode.

China's mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province amounts to a crime on par with genocide. The UN's high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, recently traveled to China to take stock. But the trip was a disaster for the UN and a propaganda coup for Beijing. It was a trip that should never have been made, and it cost Bachelet her job.

President Biden has referred to the US as an “arsenal of democracy,” symbolized by military aid to Ukraine. The US indeed is far and away the world leader in military spending and arms exports. It also leads, not coincidentally, in domestic arms sales and gun violence. Thus, the US is an arsenal, but not of democracy. This episode cites figures from the global arms business and its politics in the US to suggest just how out of control both are.

This episode examines President Biden's controversial comment that the US will “defend Taiwan.” Though Biden has departed from the traditional “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, he is not out of step with longstanding US military support of Taiwan. More disturbing is the intensifying US-China competition all over Asia, which holds the danger of a violent confrontation.

The Omicron variant has caught up to North Korea, causing a potential human catastrophe in a country that not only lacks the resources to fight the pandemic, but is also making the wrong investments for security—in missiles and nuclear weapons. In this episode I suggest that the US and South Korea should persist in their offers of vaccine help to the North for both humanitarian and political reasons.

In this episode I point to the kinds of achievable steps countries could take to avoid global calamity. Pressure tactics on governments and fossil fuel companies seem to have limited effectiveness. One of the more hopeful signs is the rapid shift to solar and wind power, with resulting lower costs. But clearly, it's now or never if the goal is keeping global warming at 1.5℃ to 2.0.

China's initial success at dealing with the COVID pandemic has been replaced by a failing response to the Omicron variant. In this episode, Professor Gurtov examines the failure and its social and political consequences. Popular anger at the new round of lockdowns comes at a bad time for Xi Jinping.