The Foreign Affairs Interview – Détails, épisodes et analyse

As the U.S. presidential election swings into high gear, speculation about a second-term Trump foreign policy is also becoming more intense. Would he push radical changes to policy on China, or Ukraine, or the war in Gaza? Can his campaign promises be taken at face value? Would he be reined in—by staff, Congress, or his own aversion to risk? 

Kori Schake has been one of Trump’s fiercest critics among Republican foreign policy hands. Schake is a senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Safe Passage: The Transition From British to American Hegemony. She served on the National Security Council and in the U.S. State Department under President George W. Bush. Yet even while warning of the consequences of a second Trump term, she shares the view that U.S. foreign policy needs to change—to align with what she calls a new conservative internationalism that would invest in American strength without neglecting the rest of the world.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

As the war in Gaza grinds on, Israel’s endgame remains unclear. What does it mean to destroy Hamas? Who will provide security and govern Gaza when the fighting stops? How has this war changed Israel’s relationship with its neighbors and the wider world?

To discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the future of Gaza, Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan moderated a panel on August 1 that included Audrey Kurth Cronin, Marc Lynch, Dennis Ross, and Dana Stroul. Cronin is director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy & Technology and the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. Lynch is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. Ross is a counselor at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a professor at Georgetown University, and a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East, serving in senior national security positions in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations. Stroul is director of research at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Martin Indyk has probably spent more time and energy than anyone else—certainly more than any other American—trying to find a path to peace among Israel, its neighbors, and the Palestinians. He’s worked on these issues for decades. Indyk served as President Barack Obama’s special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from July 2013 to June 2014.  He served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997, and again from 2000 to 2001. He also served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council from 1993 to 1995 and as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the U.S. Department of State from 1997 to 2000.

He spoke to Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan on April 1. The conversation covers the prospect of a cease-fire in Gaza; how the Biden administration is, and is not, using its influence to shape Israeli actions; and the possibility that this terrible war could finally move both sides toward a two-state solution.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

More than any time in the last 75 years, we’re living in a world at war. Conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine dominate headlines. But that’s just part of it. Last year, Azerbaijan seized Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing thousands of ethnic Armenians to flee. There’s a full-scale civil war in Myanmar. In Africa, there is war in Sudan, Ethiopia, and Congo, and there have been seven coups on the continent since August 2020.

Comfort Ero, the head of the International Crisis Group, has been tracking these conflicts as closely as anyone. She has watched the international system grow more brittle and less effective at preventing war—and has been doing the hard political work of ending conflict once it breaks out.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

India has enormous momentum. Its population has surpassed China’s, making it the most populous country in the world. Its economy is expected to become the world’s third largest in the next few years. And, as much as any country, it seems positioned to take today’s geopolitical tensions and turn them to its advantage.

The country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is expected to win a third term in office this spring, cementing his own political dominance. But that has come with a dark side—an assault on civil rights and democracy, which some warn will ultimately hinder India.

To address Modi’s third term and India’s future more broadly, Foreign Affairs editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan moderated a panel including Alyssa Ayres, Ashley J. Tellis, and  Pratap Bhanu Mehta. Ayres is Dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And Mehta is Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

A year ago, protests began to rock Israel. For months, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the country’s Supreme Court. Then came Hamas’s attack on October 7, and everything changed.

“The war has caught Israel at perhaps its most divided moment in history,” writes Aluf Benn in a new piece for Foreign Affairs. Benn, the editor of Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, argues that Netanyahu worked to divide Israeli society with policies that put the country on track for disaster.

He spoke to Foreign Affairs Executive Editor Justin Vogt on February 27.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.

Four months after Hamas’s October 7 attack, the war in Gaza continues with little reason to think that Israel is particularly close to achieving its declared goals. Meanwhile, the Middle East is on the precipice of a full-scale regional war—and it may be that that war has already begun.

Dahlia Scheindlin is a pollster, a policy fellow at Century International, and a columnist at Haaretz. She is the author of the new book, The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University.

We discuss the domestic political landscape inside Israel, the risks of further escalation in the region, and whether there is a better path forward.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview. 

Last fall, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates took to the pages of Foreign Affairs to issue a warning: with America facing the most dangerous geopolitical landscape in decades, dysfunction in Washington threatened to turn that danger into disaster.

Today, Russia and China are testing the international order. Iranian proxies are attacking U.S. forces on a daily basis. And, as Gates writes, “at the very moment that events demand a strong and coherent response, America cannot provide one.”

Gates worries that such dysfunction at home could prompt America’s foes to make risky bets—with catastrophic consequences for both the country and the world. 

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview. 

Ukraine may be facing the toughest chapter of its war since the first days of Russia’s invasion. The frontlines have changed little over the past year. And, in November, Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, used the word “stalemate” to describe the situation on the battlefield. In the West, the political tides may be shifting—especially in the United States, where Republicans in Congress are holding up new aid, and Donald Trump, running for reelection, has said he’ll end the war in 24 hours if he returns to the White House. 

Since the war began, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has been tirelessly and eloquently making a case for Ukrainian victory, both on the world stage and in the pages of Foreign Affairs. In a January 23 conversation with Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, he discussed why the West should not give up on Ukraine, and the country’s prospects of victory in the months and years ahead.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview. 

There’s a growing sense that Russian President Vladimir Putin is in a pretty good position heading into 2024. Certainly that’s what Putin wants the rest of the world to think—that he can outlast Ukraine and its supporters in the West. Yet the situation looks more complicated on the ground in Russia. 

And there are few people better positioned to make sense of that reality than Andrei Kolesnikov. Kolesnikov, a journalist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been in Moscow since the war began. Over the last two years, he’s written a series of deeply illuminating pieces for Foreign Affairs. In December 2022, the Kremlin listed Kolesnikov as a foreign agent. 

Kolesnikov spoke with Foreign Affairs Senior Editor Hugh Eakin on January 8 about Putin’s hold on power and how Russians view their leader and his disastrous war.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.