Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Kelsey Norman is a Fellow for the Middle East and Director of the Women's Rights, Human Rights, and Refugees Program at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Her new book, Aiding Autocrats: Migration Management, Governance and Repression in Africa, examines how wealthy countries increasingly use foreign aid to persuade other governments to stop migrants before they reach Europe or the United States—and the unintended political consequences of those policies.
In this episode, Kelsey explains what she calls "migration management aid" and how it has shaped relationships with countries including Turkey, Libya, and Rwanda. We also discuss whether more recent policies, including the Trump administration's deportation agreements with countries such as Eswatini, fit into this broader pattern.
The conversation then turns to one of the book's central arguments: that outsourcing migration control can undermine democracy and good governance by strengthening authoritarian governments and giving them new resources and leverage. We conclude by discussing whether there is a better way for wealthy countries to cooperate with governments on migration without reinforcing repression or sacrificing human rights.

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is a Guyanese diplomat and candidate for Secretary-General of the United Nations. If selected, she would become both the first woman and the first person of Indigenous descent to lead the world body. She joins Mark for a substantive conversation about her vision for the UN at a moment of profound strain on the multilateral system. Drawing on her experience representing Guyana on the Security Council, Rodrigues-Birkett discusses what she learned about the UN's strengths and limitations in preventing and resolving conflict—and what she would do differently as Secretary-General. She also lays out her approach to global development and global health, and makes the case for diplomacy and international cooperation as essential tools for tackling the challenges ahead.

Vali Nasr is everywhere in the news these days. The Iranian American scholar has written scores of books and articles about Iran and the Middle East, and even before the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, he was someone policymakers and journalists regularly turned to for insight into Iran.
On a personal note, I have followed his work for years, and since the outbreak of the war, I have found his commentary and analysis particularly useful.
Back in 2017, Vali came on the show to discuss his life and career. I wanted to understand how he developed his worldview and built a career that also included a stint in the Obama administration, where he worked with Richard Holbrooke on Afghanistan policy.
In this conversation, Vali opens up about the influence of his father, a prominent academic in Iran, and the trauma of being forced into exile after the 1979 revolution. He explains how those experiences shaped his worldview in ways that, at the time of our conversation, he said he was still coming to grips with.
Vali Nasr is helping to shape our collective understanding of Iran at this critical moment. This conversation goes deep into the personal experiences and intellectual influences behind the views he holds today.
This episode comes from deep in the archives. Global Dispatches is now 13 years old, and the first 200 or so episodes followed a different format from the show today. Back then, I focused less on topical and thematic issues in international affairs and more on the life stories of the people who shape our understanding of the world.
For obvious reasons, this felt like a particularly good moment to republish my interview with Vali Nasr, which originally aired in April 2017.

For decades, Cuba has deployed doctors on medical missions around the world, often to places where skilled health workers are badly needed. These missions have a genuine humanitarian component—but they also generate billions of dollars for the Cuban government, making medical services Havana's most lucrative export.
The United States is now pressuring countries to end these agreements, threatening one of Cuba's last major sources of income. The story of Cuba's doctors therefore raises a much larger question: What is the United States actually trying to accomplish in Cuba—and what does its pressure campaign mean for the doctors and the communities they serve?
Journalist Sarah Maslin recently wrote a fascinating piece in The Economist about the precarious situation facing thousands of Cuban doctors amid the U.S. crackdown—and what it could mean for Cuba's future.

The world promised to be better prepared for the next pandemic. But has it followed through?
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who co-chairs the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about the intersection of global cooperation, diplomacy, and pandemic preparedness.
We begin by discussing what the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo reveals about the strengths and weaknesses of the global pandemic response system. We then turn to the political and practical significance of a Pandemic Agreement reached at the WHO and an upcoming United Nations High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, taking place in September.