Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them. The Global Challenges Foundation's 2026 Global Catastrophic Risks report outlines five of the biggest risks facing humanity today -- and how to stop them. You can find the report at globalchallenges.org/gcr-2026. This is the fifth episode of this series, which has included episodes on specific risks like nuclear weapons, ecological collapse, catastrophic climate change — and even near-Earth asteroids. In today's episode, I am joined by the former prime minister of Sweden, Stefan Löfven, and Jens Orback, a strategic advisor to the Global Challenges Foundation, for a wide-ranging conversation about how we can better reform our politics and diplomacy to confront global catastrophic risks. Managing global catastrophic risks requires systems of global governance, and in this episode we discuss how we can build our common defense against these challenges.

The civil war in Sudan is now entering its fourth year. Full-scale conflict broke out in April 2023 following a failed democratic transition, when two powerful rival militaries, the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, fought each other for control of the country. Caught in the middle were the Sudanese people, 14 million of whom have been displaced, making this the largest humanitarian crisis in the world by the numbers. Four years on, I wanted to learn more about the state of the civil war today, including how the Iran conflict is impacting Sudan. Many of the same outside forces in the Gulf that have backed various sides in Sudan's civil war are now themselves under attack. Further, as we explored in a previous episode, rising fertilizer prices are hitting crisis-prone places like Sudan particularly hard. My guest today is Sudan analyst Dallia Mohamed. We kick off our conversation by discussing the current trends in this war. She then explains how the Iran war is impacting Sudan's own conflict before we have a longer discussion about what can break this cycle of violence.

I wanted to share with you a new podcast that I've had a hand in supporting. Houston at Large is a show produced by Rice University Master of Global Affairs students Luisa Tolda and Dante Garcia. The podcast aims to analyze Houston's role in international matters such as immigration, energy, and trade. The first episode of this series, presented today, features Dr. Tony Payan, Director of the Claudio X. González Center for the U.S. and Mexico at the Baker Institute at Rice University. In this episode, Dr. Payan discusses a range of issues, including how immigration impacts Houston and how current events, such as the Iran conflict, have affected Houston, a major energy hub. Congratulations to these students for bringing this podcast to life! Now here are Luisa Tolda and Dante Garicia.

For the first time in nearly 70 years, it looks like there may be major political changes afoot in Cuba — driven by the United States. The Trump administration has been ratcheting up pressure on the island, including by imposing an oil embargo that is strangling the country's energy supplies. On Monday, March 16, Cuba experienced a complete collapse of its electric grid, triggering a nationwide blackout. Meanwhile, Cuba's erstwhile major patron was Venezuela, which, since the ouster of Maduro, no longer provides the support on which Havana once relied. Recent reporting also indicates that Washington and Havana are now engaged in direct talks, even as the Trump administration is explicitly seeking the ouster of President Miguel Díaz-Canel. Trump has also publicly suggested he could "take" Cuba. So will Cuba go the way of Venezuela? What role does the U.S. war in Iran play in Washington's policy toward Cuba? And might the Cuban regime survive after all? My interview guest today, James Bosworth, answers these questions and more. He writes the Latin America Risk Report on Substack, and we kick off with a brief overview of seven decades of U.S.-Cuba relations before having a longer conversation about where things stand today — and where they may be headed. https://www.globaldispatches.org/40PercentOff

Today's episode is produced in partnership with the Global Challenges Foundation. The Foundation is dedicated to raising awareness of global catastrophic risks and strengthening global governance to address them. Global Challenges Foundation's 2026 Global Catastrophic Risks report outlines five of the biggest risks facing humanity today, including catastrophic climate change, the topic of this episode. You can find this report at globalchallenges.org/gcr-2026. Two of the authors of the chapter on catastrophic climate change are my guests today. Manjana Milkoreit is a researcher of earth systems governance at the University of Oslo. Eva Mineur is head of climate and sustainability at Global Challenges Foundation. We kick off by discussing what we mean by catastrophic climate change and examining examples of this phenomenon already underway around the world, before turning to a longer conversation about how to strengthen international cooperation and global governance to prevent catastrophic climate change—and the catastrophe it would entail.

Things are obviously moving very fast in the Middle East. When I caught up with my guest today, Dalia Dassa Kaye, the war was in its second day. Bombings in Iran and throughout the region continued at a rapid clip, and there was little sense of when, if, or how it might end. Regular listeners of the show are no doubt familiar with Dalia Dassa Kaye. She is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and the author of a new book on U.S.–Iran relations, Enduring Hostility: The Making of America's Iran Policy. She has researched and written extensively about escalatory dynamics in the region—how Iran, Israel, the United States, and Gulf countries may respond to being attacked. Now that this dynamic is clearly underway, I thought it would be useful to get her perspective on what we are seeing unfold. We kick off by discussing why the United States and Israel launched this war, given that Trump has never really articulated his motivations as the U.S. moved massive military assets to the region. We then discuss where this may head—and what might inspire de-escalation in the near future. This conversation will give you useful context as this crisis continues to develop. https://www.globaldispatches.org/

Ethiopia is on the brink of a war that could turn into a major regional conflagration. Over the past several weeks, military forces have been moving into position across the region in a conflict that would pit the government of Ethiopia and some allied militias against Eritrea and a rebel faction from Ethiopia's northern Tigray region, among others. There are several concurrent forces driving the region toward conflict: lingering resentments and unresolved disputes from Ethiopia's civil war from 2020 to 2022; a move by the government of landlocked Ethiopia to potentially claim a Red Sea port in neighboring Eritrea; and spillover from the civil war in Sudan, where outside forces like the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia are seeking to expand their regional footprint. All of this is pushing the region, seemingly inexorably, toward war. This would be a disaster. The civil war from 2020 to 2022 killed an estimated 500,000 people and exposed violent ethnic fissures in Ethiopia. This time around, many of the belligerents are the same—but they have switched sides. Back in 2020, Eritrea and Ethiopia allied to fight a rebellious group in the Tigray region. This time, Eritrea and Tigrayan rebels are joining forces to fight Ethiopia, with several other ethnic militias joining in. Also different this time is the active presence of malicious Gulf actors. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Ethiopia had established, with UAE backing, a training camp for the Rapid Support Forces militia that is ravaging Darfur in Sudan. Several NGO groups, think tanks, and regional or specialty news outlets have picked up this story—and are sounding the alarm. But so far, we have not yet seen much Western media attention to this incipient crisis. That's tragic, given the sheer human calamity that would unfold if Ethiopia and Eritrea once again descend into a conflict that reverberates across the region. My interview guest today is journalist Zecharias Zelalem. We kick off by discussing recent moves that suggest war could break out at any moment, and then have a longer conversation about what is driving this conflict—and what might bring the region back from the brink. Support this kind of journalism with your paid subscription. https://www.globaldispatches.org/40PercentOff