Tag: pacific islands

Options For Ending the War in Ukraine

We begin with the choices facing Russia, Ukraine and NATO since neither Russia or Ukraine can win the war underway leaving the possibilities of either escalation that could lead to nuclear war or negotiation which appears stalled with Russia’s Foreign Minister Lavrov calling the state of the peace negotiations in Istanbul “dismal”. Joining us is George Beebe, the Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He served in government for nearly twenty-five years, including as director of Russia analysis at the CIA and as a White House adviser on Russia matters for Vice President Dick Cheney. His latest book is The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe and we discuss a third option of an indefinite stalemate with a ceasefire along a heavily armed border in Europe, much more unstable that the Iron Curtain that divided Europe during the Cold War.

At the 40 Nation Meeting in Germany Scholz Pledges Heavy Weapons to Ukraine

Then we go to Berlin to speak with Daniela Schwarzer, executive director for Europe and Eurasia of the Open Society Foundations. A renowned expert in European affairs and transatlantic and international relations, she is an honorary professor of political science at Freie Universität Berlin and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Previously, she was director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations and served on the executive team of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. We discuss the meeting of 40 nations in Germany at which Germany pledged to deliver heavy weapons to Ukraine, something the Scholz government had been dragging its feet on since the war began.

A Secret Agreement Between China and the Solomon Islands Has the U.S. and Australia Worried

Then finally we look into the secret agreement made between China and the PM of the Solomon Islands which has the U.S. warning it would have to respond if China were to establish a military base there. Joining us is Cleo Paskal, a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies focusing on the Indo-Pacific region and the strategic implications of geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical change. She has briefed government departments of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, India and many others and is the author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map. We discuss how this brewing crisis is impacting the upcoming Australian elections on May 21 with the current conservative Prime Minister on the defensive for what the opposition is calling “the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific in 80 years.”