Day: June 10, 2024

Briefings

Background Briefing: June 10, 2024

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Israel’s Opposition Leader Quits the War Cabinet But Netanyahu Will Continue the War Through the US Elections to Hurt Biden and Help Trump

We begin with the withdrawal from the war cabinet by two Israeli Army generals and former Chiefs of Staff of the IDF, Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz, the leader of the opposition. We discuss how Netanyahu’s governing coalition faces more calls for elections and threats from hardline right wing ministers while US Secretary of State Blinken makes his eighth visit in eight months to push for a ceasefire which the hardliners will not support. Joining us from Israel is Haggai Matar, an award-winning Israeli journalist and political activist. He is the executive director of +972 Magazine.

An Analysis of the Results of the EU Elections and the Far-Right Sweep That Did Not Materialize

Then we look into the results of the European Union parliamentary elections in which the fear of far-right sweep did not materialize although France’s Marine Le Pen got 31% of the vote compared to Marcon’s 14% and the far-right AfD in Germany made gains as did the Freedom Party in Austria. Joining us is R. Daniel Kelemen, McCourt Chair at the School of Public Policy at Georgetown University as well as a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law. The author of Eurolegalism: The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union and The Rules of Federalism: Institutions and Regulatory Politics in the EU and Beyond, he is a Senior Associate in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of the Executive Committee of the European Union Studies Association.

A Historical Analysis of Whether We Are in 1938 With Putin’s War on Ukraine 

Then finally we get an update on whether there could be an end to the war in Ukraine ahead of next week’s peace conference in Switzerland at which China will not be there because Putin was not invited and Saudi Arabia won’t attend because China is not going. 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’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. He is the author of The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy and Collisions: The War in Ukraine and the Origins of the New Global Instability and we discuss an article at The Guardian, “‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history.”