Category: Briefings

Netanyahu is in the Driver’s Seat With Biden and Harris Reluctant Passengers

We begin with the unfortunate fact that much of the World blames the US for the violence in the Middle East that is poised to escalate but at the same time we appear helpless as Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is in the driver’s seat and Biden and Harris appear to be reluctant passengers. Joining us is Andrew Miller, a senior fellow focused on the Middle East in the National Security and International Policy department at the Center for American Progress. He most recently served as the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 2022 to 2024. He previously served as a senior policy adviser to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, covering the Middle East and North Africa, and also served as the director for Egypt and Israel military issues on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, as well as at the U.S. Department of State in a variety of intelligence and policy roles. We will discuss his article at Foreign Affairs, “America Needs a New Strategy to Avert Even Greater Catastrophe in the Middle East: Shuttle Diplomacy Must Be Backed by Meaningful Pressure.”

Under Attack by a Foreign Power, Lebanese and Iranians Rally Around the Flag

Then we examine how with Lebanon under attack by Israel and Iran about to be attacked, Netanyahu’s promise that he will be “liberating” Iranians from their terrible government is a fantasy as the opposite is happening in both countries as the population rallies around the flag when attacked by a foreign power. Joining us is Paul Pillar, who served for 30 years as an analyst at the CIA, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Previously, he served as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. He has also headed the Assessments and Information Group of the DCI Counterterrorist Center, and was deputy chief of the center. Paul Pillar is currently a nonresident senior fellow of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and an Associate Fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His latest book is Beyond the Water’s Edge How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy and we discuss his article at Responsible Statecraft, “On the Dangers of Israel’s Assassination of Nasrallah.”

The Likely Impact of the East Coast Dockworkers’ Strike on the Election

Then finally we assess the likely political impact of the East Coast dockworkers’ strike on the election as President Biden throws his lot in with the striking workers arguing they deserve a raise. Joining us is Lane Windham, Associate Director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and co-director of WILL Empower (that’s Women Innovating Labor Leadership). She is the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide.