Q & A Archive

China’s central bank is currently conducting trials for its digital currency, which it hopes to have available for widespread use by the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. But many privacy advocates are alarmed at the amount of data that Chinese authorities will be able to collect through the new digital yuan, and the resulting potential for abuse. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, WPR’s Elliot Waldman discussed the implications of China’s new digital currency with Yaya Fanusie, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Listen to the full interview with Yaya Fanusie here: If you […]

Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his decision to fully withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan by Sept.11. After 20 years and two generations of American service members fighting there, America’s longest war will come to an end. What will the legacy of that war be for the U.S. military? And will it have a lasting impact on American society? In this week’s big picture Trend Lines interview, Andrew Exum joins WPR editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein to discuss those questions and more. Exum is a partner at Hakluyt & Company, a global advisory firm. He began his career as an officer […]

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, President Joe Biden discussed the two leaders’ intent to “pursue a strategic stability dialogue on a range of arms control and emerging security issues,” according to a White House statement. Specifically, Biden said he hopes to build on the U.S. and Russia’s recent agreement on a five-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which is the last remaining nuclear arms control deal between the two countries. According to Sarah Bidgood, the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation […]

One of President Joe Biden’s first actions after taking office in January was to agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin on extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Better known as New START, it is the last remaining nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow, verifiably limiting each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems. The renewal of New START was widely welcomed by experts, given its important role in limiting the number of deployed nuclear weapons in the world. In a phone call this week, Biden and Putin discussed their intent […]

Over the course of the past five years, a number of figures on the Democratic Party’s left wing, supported by grassroots organizations and advocacy groups, have been expanding the range of discussions about U.S. foreign policy. The progressive agenda that has emerged, although not a formal platform, is beginning to play a more prominent role in policy debates in Washington’s foreign policy establishment, including within the Biden administration. In this week’s Trend Lines interview, Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, joins WPR’s editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein to discuss what a progressive foreign policy would look like and how […]

Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, a recurring theme among the Washington foreign policy establishment was how to repair the damage he was doing to America’s global standing. For many, particularly the centrist current of the Democratic party, that meant restoring the traditional approach to American foreign policy that Trump consistently undermined during his four years in office. But some figures on the party’s more progressive left wing saw returning to the status quo ante as insufficient. People like Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ro Khanna, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, began expanding the range of policy discussions and debates, […]