March 31 – A Critique of Obama’s Handling of Putin; An Examination of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s New Report with Elizabeth Kolbert

Full Program

Part 1

We  begin with the partial withdrawal of Russian troops at the Ukrainian border and the visit by Russia’s Prime Minister to Crimea that the new government in Kyiv is condemning. We will speak with Andrew Kuchins, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Strategic and International Relations’ Russia and Eurasia Program and discuss his criticism of President Obama’s handling of the crisis with Putin over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Andrew Kuchins’ article at CNN “Does Obama Really Understand Putin?” We  also explore possible ways to avoid a new tit-for-tat Cold War dynamic that seems all but inevitable as the recent talks between Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov appear to have gone nowhere and relations between Putin and the United States continue to deteriorate.

Part 2

Then, with the release of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report that global warming poses a growing threat to security, food supply and human life, with a warning that the worst is yet to come, Elizabeth Kolbert, a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker and author of the new book “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History” joins us. We  discuss whether the message that comes out of this report that the world has to adapt and mitigate, means that is too late to stop global warming, and look into what can be done to overcome the organized denial of the problem that is thwarting efforts to address an impending catastrophe.