37th & The World

 Pakistan faces political turmoil as two parties form a coalition government amid inconclusive elections, sparking accusations of "mandate theft." Ukraine alleges war crimes against Russia, the US draws criticism for vetoing a UN ceasefire in Gaza, and tensions rise between Rwanda and Congo over a mineral-rich border. Secretary of State Blinken announces a $200 million aid plan for Haiti amid increasing instability.

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Israel began the next part of its campaign in Gaza, former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died, Senegal's election in jeopardy, Japan's economy plunges into recession, and Indonesia has elected a new president, a man formerly banned from entering the United States. 

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Three years after the Tatmadaw military deposed Myanmar's ruling party in a coup d'état, the country still faces an ongoing crisis. In this interview, GJIA sits down with Dr. Htwe Htwe Thein, an associate professor at Curtin University, Australia, specializing in business and economic development in Myanmar.

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Since October 7, Russia has carefully calibrated its public response to either side of the war. Has Russia’s role in this conflict been influenced by its past trade, military and other involvements with Middle Eastern countries?

Former CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty sits down with GJIA to discuss the role of Russian disinformation in the Middle East and the Israel-Hamas war. 

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5in5, the new section of 37th & The World, delves into five key foreign affairs headlines each week in under five minutes. Rising tensions with Al Shabaab in Somalia, US and UK strikes on Houthi rebels and North Korea's president is discussed. 

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The Hamas invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023 sent shockwaves throughout the world. Since the invasion, how can Saudi Arabia work with Israel in the region regarding Iran? Will there be a new outcome between the two countries? GJIA sits down with Dr. Daniel Byman to discuss the diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, and the United States since October 7. 

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Exploring space for internet access could transform the lives of half the world. But there's a catch—the benefits might only reach a few, mainly the United States. How can we ensure everyone gets a piece of the space economy? Join us as we discuss the need for global cooperation and the risks of missing out on economic growth with Dr. Eytan Tepper.

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Sports competitions have played out internationally for hundreds of years and undoubtedly received sustained international attention today. But the application of Sports to international diplomacy, "sports diplomacy", is a new concept in international relations.

GJIA sits down with Dr Stuart Murray, Associate Professor at Bond University, Australia, and a Global Fellow at the Academy of Sport at Edinburgh University. He is also the author of "Sports Diplomacy: Origins, Theory, and Practice", which offers an accessible overview of the role sports plays in international relations and diplomacy.

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Earlier this month, thousands of visitors flocked to Washington's National Zoo and watched as the famed three giant pandas left DC on a plane back to Beijing. How has this affected US-China relations, and what does the recent APEC summit mean for future US-China diplomacy?

37th & The World sits down with Dennis Wilder, a former senior American intelligence official currently serving as a professor of practice at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow of Georgetown's Initiative for US-China Dialogue on Global Issues. He is also a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

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In international relations, cities occupy a rich focal point of migration, economic activities, and other distinctive urbanized social formations. The work of Professor AbdouMaliqu Simone asks us to reposition questions of urban studies through the centering of “Southern Urbanisms,” the everyday ways of living for residents who inhabit cities located in the Global South. In this interview GJIA sat down with Professor Simone to discuss the significance of Southern Urbanisms and how this paradigm can transform how we view social life in cities.

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Beginning in November 2022, China faced massive demonstrations contesting its strict zero-COVID policies, which left many citizens constrained within their homes and short of necessary materials. Multiple protests erupted in response to conditions faced by China's workforce, including violent clashes in Zhengzhou against authority figures at the world's largest iPhone factory. In this interview, GJIA sat down with Dr. Eli Friedman, an Associate Professor at Cornell University, to discuss the context and ramifications of these protests as well as broader insights about the state of Chinese labor and its relation to the broader world.

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International economic institutions such as the International Monetery Fund and the World Bank are fraught with controversy in large part due to interventionalist policies that less wealthy states claim undermine their sovereignty. Jamie Martin, Assistant Professor at Harvard University, intervenes with a unique historical perspective into this debate with his recent book The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Economic Governance, which focuses on how international efforts to sway global capitalism emerged from elite political struggles and cooperation in the United States and Europe after World War I. In this interview, GJIA questions Martin on his book and potential paths of global economic governance that prioritize “cooperation without dominance.”

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As the eyes of the globe shifted towards Qatar during the 2022 World Cup, media reports focused on the working conditions and deaths of migrant workers building Qatar’s infrastructure and in the Middle East at large. Indeed, throughout Jordan, Lebanon, and all the Gulf Arab states, a system for migrant labor called kafala has been in place for decades. Under this system, states give employers sponsorship permits to bring in foreign workers, which bind workers to their employers and allow for exploitation. To explore the persistence of the kafala problem and analyze the possible avenues for lasting reform, GJIA sits down with Ryszard Cholewinski, the Senior Migration Specialist in the International Labor Organization’s Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut.

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Iran has captured the international spotlight in recent weeks, as Iranian citizens are undertaking mass demonstrations following the detainment and killing of 22 year-old Mahsa Amini by Iran’s “morality police” for wearing an inappropriate head covering. As the Iranian people’s popular unrest mounts, so too does the regime’s repression – with Iranian police killing hundreds of protestors since the uprising’s outset. Amidst an already tenuous Middle Eastern landscape, the Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker joins GJIA to discuss how the United States should navigate these protests and the regime’s brutal crackdown.

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Food insecurity is one of the most daunting global issues: approximately 1 billion people are risk of malnourishment across the world. In 2021, the New Global Commons Working Group at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD)  put together Peace Through Food: Ending the Hunger-Instability Nexus, a report that synthesizes analyses of food scarcity and political instability in order to guide policymakers. In an interview with Kelly McFarland, Director of Programs and Research at the ISD, GJIA discusses the gravity of this crisis and the implications of the working group’s report for the leadership of nation-states and international organizations.

Read an edited transcription of the interview here.

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Art never exists within a vacuum: it is always embedded within a broader historical context and political interpretations. Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction epic Dune, currently in the midst of a two-part film adaption, exemplifies this dynamic. Dune narrates the story of a humanity dispersed across the stars 20,000 years into the future. It focuses on the young nobleman Paul Atreides as he acts upon a prophecy to control the planet Arrakis and its valuable spice—which makes space-travel possible—with the messianic command of Arrakis’ indigenous Fremen people. Far more than a pulpy adventure tale, Herbert incorporated environmental science, history, religious thought, and political philosophy from the nearly two-hundred books he consulted to write Dune, resulting in a rich tome with commentary on religious and cultural synthesis, resource-based geopolitics, and colonialism and anti-colonial resistance. In this interview, GJIA covers these themes and more with Haris Durrani, a Ph.D. candidate in history at Princeton University who is also dubbed, the “leading post-colonial Dune scholar of our time.”

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The decolonization that spanned across the 20th century dramatically reshaped our world, but what often escapes common knowledge about this period is that anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen did not only envision decolonization as a campaign for national sovereignty but as an effort to fundamentally counter global hierarchies of material wealth and race.  Adom Getachew narrates these transcontinental efforts of Pan-African leaders in her 2019 book Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination.  In this interview, GJIA explores the historical insights of her book as well as how contemporary projects for worldmaking can learn from the past century. We additionally discuss further lessons for a world after empire from the volume guest edited by Getachew, Imagining Global Futures.

Read an edited transcription of the interview here.

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Only within recent years has race become a common analytical framework within mainstream international relations (IR) theory. Alexander Barder argues in his book Global Race War that the dominant paradigms of international relations are rooted in historical racial hierarchies and power relations. GJIA discusses the implications of this theory for not only political hotspots, but also for International Relations courses as microcosms of imperial ideology.

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Since 2019, Kenyans from the Kipsigis and Talai people have sought reparative compensation for their evictions enforced by the British military in favor of white settler-owned tea plantations across decades of colonial rule. In 2021, Fabian Salvioli, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparations, and guarantees of non-recurrence, issued three reports that backed Kipsigis and Talai demands to rectify their historical claims of land dispossession during the colonial era. In an interview with Mr. Salvioli, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs contextualizes this reparative controversy within broader questions of UN-backed transitional justice and the legacies of colonialism.

Read an edited transcription of the interview here.

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Reparations for large-scale atrocities such as slavery and colonialism have increasingly developed as a political demand for populations descended from historically harmed groups. The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs sat down with Olufemi Taiwo, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, to discuss his novel approach to reparations that stresses a global, material, and progressive outlook: the constructive view of reparations.

Read an edited transcription of the interview here.

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