When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

Melanie, Zack, and Chris, survey the course of Russia’s brutal war of aggression in Ukraine at the one-year point, with a focus on a recent paper by RAND’s Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe. How did we get here? What key assumptions have been tested? And what does that mean for the future? How do U.S. and Ukrainian interests in this war align or conflict? Does a long war serve anyone’s interest? And what are the prospects that this war will end any time soon? Grievances for China’s mishandling of the balloon fiasco, and to Disney for bowing to the Chinese Communist Party’s implicit censorship. Attapeople to those negotiating a new Compact of Free Association with countries in the South Pacific, for the few smart voices trying to dial down the hysteria over balloons, and to those members of Congress hoping to repeal the 2002 Iraq war AUMF.

Episode Reading:

• Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe’s, “Avoiding a Long War: US Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” RAND Corporation, 2023.
• Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, “In Its Push for an Intelligence Edge, China’s Military Turned to Balloons,” New York Times, February 9, 2023.
• “With China looming, U.S. signs assistance deal with Micronesia,” Reuters, February 10, 2023.
• Chan Ho-him, “Disney Cuts ‘Simpson’ Episode with China Labour Camp Reference in Hong Kong,” Financial Times, February 6, 2023.
• Press Release, “Kaine, Young, Lee, Roy, Spanberger, & Cole Introduce Bill to Repeal 1991 and 2002 AUMFs, Formally Ending Gulf and Iraq Wars,” February 9, 2023.
• David Ignatius, “With Chinese balloon, a hidden Cold War contest drifted into the open,”  The Washington Post, February 10, 2023.
• Robert Manning, “Lessons and mysteries of ‘balloongate’,” The Hill, February 7, 2023
• “Testing Assumptions About the War in Ukraine, One Year Later,” Stimson Center, February 15, 2023.

Image: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense