Podcast Archive

Over the past 20 years, the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East has been transformed and reshaped. Old rivalries and historical enmities have hardened and deepened, driving strategic realignments and the emergence of a range of new or newly empowered actors from both within and outside the region. At the same time, political change has been harder to come by. With a few notable exceptions, waves of popular protest movements across the region in both 2011 and last year have failed to achieve the reforms and accountability they have demanded from their governments. In today’s big picture Trend Lines interview, […]

Until a couple weeks ago, Moria was the largest refugee camp in Europe. Situated on the Greek island of Lesbos, it housed roughly 13,000 people in facilities that were designed to hold 3,000. But starting on the evening of Sept. 8, a series of fires swept through Moria, reducing it to a smoldering ruin by the end of the week. Greek authorities have charged four young Afghan migrants with arson in connection with the fires. With nowhere else to go, thousands of Moria’s residents were left homeless, without access to basic services. Their plight casts a harsh and damning light […]

After the unpopular president of Mali, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, was ousted by the country’s military last month, the leaders of the coup promised to set up a transitional civilian government and eventually hold elections. That came as a relief to the crowds of anti-government protesters who had been in the streets for months, demanding Keita’s resignation. Since the coup, however, things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. Following three days of talks with opposition groups and representatives from civil society, Mali’s ruling military junta recently released its blueprint for a transition plan back to civilian government. But the plan was […]

Over the past five years, and accelerating amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new consensus on China has emerged and consolidated in the capitals of many Western and Asian democracies. The hope that China’s integration into the global economy will gradually result in a softening of its posture abroad and political liberalization at home has faded, particularly under the rule of Xi Jinping. China has shown little willingness to remedy the unfair trading practices it has long used to tilt the playing field in its favor during its rise as an economic power. And under Xi, the Chinese Communist Party has […]

Education has traditionally been viewed as humanity’s great equalizer, providing children from less privileged backgrounds with the tools they need to achieve greater degrees of financial security and success in their chosen fields. Unfortunately, education can serve to entrench socio-economic disparities just as much as it alleviates them. That has become all too clear in recent months, as the families and schools with the greatest resources, both financial and technological, look to be the ones best-prepared to weather the coronavirus pandemic. But according to Rebecca Winthrop, senior fellow and co-director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, […]