None Of The Above Eurasia Group Foundation

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in the world and home to some of the world’s most critical developing economies. But historically, US foreign policy has treated the continent as a monolith and a site for great power competition, ignoring the role of African nations in deciding their own future. This week, None of the Above is joined by Horn of Africa expert Michael Woldemariam, and journalist Robbie Gramer, to discuss America’s relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa. 
 
How should Washington balance the often conflicting priorities of human rights and security in the region? Can Washington develop productive partnerships with African states, outside the prism of competition with Russia and China? And is there even room for coexistence on the continent between the United States and these competitors? As the Biden administration begins to reveal its strategy, guest host and Eurasia Group Foundation research fellow Zuri Linetsky asks Michael and Robbie whether Biden’s Africa strategy represents something new, or is more of the same. 
 
To listen to previous episodes and learn more about None Of The Above, go to www.noneoftheabovepodcast.org. To learn more about the Eurasia Group Foundation, please visit www.egfound.org and subscribe to our newsletter.​​
 
Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor of international relations at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, who focuses on security and politics in the Horn of Africa. Michael is the author of the book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and its Discontents (2018).

Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy, who covers the US State Department, the Pentagon, and most recently the Biden administration’s new US-Africa strategy.

The fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted the global energy market and hiked the price of fuel nearly everywhere around the world. In Europe, which finds itself caught between efforts to cut itself off from Russian oil and Moscow’s firm grip on energy exports, the repercussions of today’s energy crisis are acute. While in the United States, which experienced high prices at the pump, efforts have been underway to resolve the crisis. But how much control does the United States have, and does it require the United States to lean on the shoulder of illiberal partners like Saudi Arabia?
 
Often referred to as “black gold,” oil plays an important role in international affairs. Still, according to Emma Ashford, an oil and international relations expert, its role is frequently misunderstood. Emma joins the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah to discuss her new book Oil, the State, and War and complicate commonly held misconceptions on oil’s influence on foreign policy. Mark and Emma also break down America’s efforts to address the energy crisis, green energy’s potential impact on geopolitics, and the tangled web that is the global energy market. 

Emma Ashford is a senior fellow at the New American Engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point. She is the author of Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates (2022).

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created at the dawn of the Cold War to stop the expansion of the Soviet Union. But in the 1990s, when NATO intervened in the Balkan wars, it assumed a new role for itself. Our guest this week was responsible, more than two decades ago, for explaining the NATO campaign in Kosovo to the international press. Now as NATO member countries assist Ukraine in its defense against Russia, can the alliance continue to provide security on the European continent? 
 
In this episode, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah is joined by Jamie Shea, a former NATO official who last served as Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges. As NATO unveiled its strategic concept last week in Madrid, what lessons can the alliance learn from the past and what purpose will it serve in the future?
 
Jamie Shea worked for NATO for 38 years, including as a spokesperson during the Kosovo campaign in 1999 and retired from the alliance as Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges.

The United Nations estimates around half of Afghanistan’s population – nearly 20 million people – faces acute hunger. The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan follows the end of America’s twenty-year war and the withdrawal of all US troops in August 2021. In February, the Biden administration decided to freeze nearly $10 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank in order to prevent money going into the hands of the Taliban. 
 
Are US policies exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and what does freezing of assets mean to accomplish? This week, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah is joined by freelance journalist Matthieu Aikins and the co-founder of Unfreeze Afghanistan Masuda Sultan to better understand the current state of Afghanistan, President Biden’s decision to freeze Afghanistan assets in response to the Taliban’s takeover, and the ongoing plight of Afghans. 
 
Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, and the author of The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees. 
 
Masuda Sultan is an Afghan-American women’s rights activist and entrepreneur who has been working for over 20 years in support of women and girls in education, vocational training, and protection from violence.
 
Show notes:
“Afghanistan: Nearly 20 million going hungry” (UN News, May 9, 2022)
The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees (Matthieu Aikins, February 22, 2022)

General George Marshall occupies a central place in the pantheon of American heroes. He helped lead the Allies to victory in World War II, and as the secretary of state, he championed the plan to rebuild Europe which would be named for him: The Marshall Plan. But Marshall’s record as a statesman wasn’t perfect. Tapped by President Truman to negotiate an end to China’s civil war, he proved unable to broker a lasting settlement and prevent the country’s Communist takeover. 
 
In this episode, the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah concludes Season 3 of None Of The Above with a discussion of Marshall’s legacy with Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, the editor of Foreign Affairs and the author of The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947. As the United States deals with competing global challenges, from Ukraine to Taiwan, Daniel’s depiction of Marshall’s career—for all its triumphs and failures—holds important lessons on the limits of American power. Have a listen, and stay tuned for when we return in June for Season 4. 
 
To listen to previous episodes and learn more about None Of The Above, go to www.noneoftheabovepodcast.org. To learn more about the Eurasia Group Foundation, please visit www.egfound.org and subscribe to our newsletter.
 
Daniel Kurtz-Phelan is the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine and host of the upcoming podcast, The Foreign Affairs Interview. Previously, he served in the US Department of State, where he was a member of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s policy planning staff. He is also the author of The China Mission: George Marshall’s Unfinished War, 1945-1947 (2018).

From the Crimean War of 1853 to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, journalists, reporters, and the media have shaped the public’s understanding of war. But do the stories we read and the photos we see provide an impartial picture of the wars they document? As the Eurasia Group Foundation’s Mark Hannah recently explained in Foreign Policy, certain aspects of American war coverage—reliance on government sources and incentives to simplify geopolitics as battles between good and evil—have long compelled news organizations to tilt toward military action.
 
In this special episode of None Of The Above, host of WNYC’s On The Media Brooke Gladstone and Slate’s “War Stories” columnist Fred Kaplan, are interviewed by Mark at the American Academy in Rome. Together, in these excerpts from that conversation, they unpack the media’s coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the biases which influence how the media understand and depict these conflicts.
 
To listen to previous episodes and learn more about None Of The Above, go to www.noneoftheabovepodcast.org. To learn more about the Eurasia Group Foundation, please visit www.egfound.org and subscribe to our newsletter.
 
Brooke Gladstone is a journalist and host of On the Media, a Peabody Award-winning podcast by WNYC Studios. Brooke is also the Rea S. Hederman Critic in Residence at the American Academy in Rome and the author of The Influencing Machine (2011) and The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time (2017). 

Fred Kaplan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for Slate, where he authors the “War Stories” column. Fred’s most recent book is The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War (2020).