The Budapest accord in 2022
What are your thoughts on the Budapest accord? in 1994 Ukraine joined the Non-proliferation treaty in exchange for security assurances from the US and UK. Seemed like a good deal at the time, reducing nuclear armed states was worth a guarantee for their safety. But in 2022 it's not in the the west's best interests to adhere to the spirit of the treaty. Where does that leave us in trying to get states like North Korea or Iran abandon nuclear weapons?
What happened to the COVID factor that has been left out?
COVID has been discussed to a degree that is honestly exhausting and annoying at this point. And as much as I, personally, have dipped in and out of all of these conversations one risk factor seems to have been left out or at least beaten around the bush about. Whether or not someone can afford to catch COVID. It seems silly to say this when everything around COVID is either free or near free. But the simple factor that if someone of low income or who is financially strained catches COVID they literally can't go to work which means no income which could mean loss of household and snowball. Where do you think that conversation point went and if it was talked about more do you think that could have had an impact on how serious people took COVID.
Advice for policy graduate students
Love the show, huge fan of the show - especially the deep look at the mechanisms of power in foreign policy and domestic politics. Much like Saagar, my first political memory is of the Iraq War, and staunch opposition to that war and the horrific ongoing War on Terror that followed has long been a political lodestar for me. To that end, I am currently a 2nd semester graduate student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and having difficulty trying to figure my path after grad school while maintaining my values. This is tough since my faith in institutions and organizations is rock-bottom, particularly anything US-based around Foreign Policy. As a Georgetown alum, what was your experience like finding employment after grad school, and how did you balance your values with the need to be employed in this sphere? Thank you, Ned
Do You Think They Know?
I was listening to the Pod Save America podcast (a painful experience for me) and Jon Lovett was interviewing Jen Psaki and they were contrasting Fox News coverage and every other MSM station of current events. Jon then said something along the lines of "Trump cared about what the press said about him but Democrats don't seem to care what is being said about them." It got me thinking - do you think that folks on the left of center, both in the political sphere or in real life, realize that the coverage given on every major news outlet except for Fox has a heavy lean to defend/uphold the Democratic Party? To what extent would you say this does or doesn't affect the approach politicians take to legislating?