Middle East & North Africa

Has something fundamentally changed in the level of US, international involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Aljazeera's Steve Clemons interviews Stephen Walt.

Michael Lipin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

NPR's Ari Shapiro speak with political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studies civil resistance movements, about the protests China and Iran.

Winning hearts and minds doesn't defeat insurgent groups, author Jacqueline Hazelton argues. So why does the United States still rely on counterinsurgency?

Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes join Andrea Mitchell to talk about Biden's next steps on Iran and Russia. Burns says that Biden's "speech today at the Munich Security Conference has put the United States squarely back on center stage globally."

Ambassador Nicholas Burns in conversation with Andrea Mitchell about John Bolton's book.

Dan Snow is joined by Calder Walton to talk about whether there was a huge intelligence failure around the outbreak of the pandemic, but also whether our intelligence communities are properly organized to realistically evaluate the real nature of the threats to our societies. He also has a bold idea to help avoid a future recurrence.

How do presidents incorporate morality into decisions involving the national interest? Moral considerations explain why Truman, who authorized the use of nuclear weapons in Japan during World War II, later refused General MacArthur's request to use them in China during the Korean War. What is contextual intelligence, and how does it explain why Bush 41 is ranked first in foreign policy, but Bush 43 is found wanting? Is it possible for a president to lie in the service of the public interest? In this episode, Professor Joseph S. Nye considers these questions as he explores the role of morality in presidential decision-making from FDR to Trump.

Understanding the ongoing conflict in the middle east is complicated. Differences in ideologies have resulted in wars and impact the entire world.  Rami Khouri is a journalist who has spent 50-years working in the middle east.  Burns Hargis sat down with Khouri to get his perspective on the conflicts in that region.

Audio recording of a May 6, seminar with Soha Bayoumi, Assistant Dean of Harvard College (moderator); Sherine Hafez (University of California, Riverside); Hanan Hammad (Texas Christian University); and Valentine Moghadam(Northeastern University).