Month: February 2022

Briefings

Background Briefing: February 14, 2022

On By gram

 

NATO Should Not Expand Eastward For Its Own Sake, Not Russia’s

We begin with the former head of the Russia/Ukraine desk at the State Department who believes NATO should not be expanding eastward but instead should be setting limits and saying no to partners and friends because it is time for NATO to limit itself — not for Russia’s sake but for the sake of its own coherence and for its own capacities of self-defense. Joining us is Michael Kimmage, a professor of history and department chair at the Catholic University of America, chair of the Kennan Institute Advisory Council and a fellow at the German Marshall Fund. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book is The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy and we discuss today’s staged conversation on State TV between Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov and Putin in which Lavrov suggested there was a diplomatic path out of the crisis to be explored to which Putin replied, “good.”

 

Could the U.S. Find Itself in Two Cold Wars, the One We Have With Russia and Another With China?

Then we explore the possibility that the U.S. could find itself in two Cold Wars, the one we now have with Russia, and another with China. Joining us to assess the growing ties between Russia and China is Gilbert Rozman, the Emeritus Musgrave Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the editor-in-chief of The Asan Forum, a bi-monthly, online journal on international relations in the Indo-Pacific region. He taught at Princeton from 1970 to 2013, specializing in societies of China, Japan, Korea, and Russia, and he is the author of International Relations and Asia’s Northern Tier: Sino-Russian Relations and North Korea, and Mongolia.

 

Why Latinos Are Turning to the Republican Party and What Democrats Can Do About It

Then finally we speak with Justin Gest, an Associate Professor of Policy and Government at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government where he studies immigration and the politics of demographic change. He is the author of five books including The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, Crossroads: Comparative Immigration Regimes in a World of Demographic Change, and the forthcoming book, Majority Minority. He joins us to discuss his article at CNN, “Why Latinos are turning to the Republican Party” and what Democrats must do to hold onto the minority (soon to be majority) vote.