Day: August 7, 2025

Low Expectations Among Experts For the Upcoming Putin/Trump Summit in the UAE

We begin with the upcoming summit in the UAE between President Trump and President Putin in the hope we all share of ending Russia’s war on Ukraine that many experts on Russia and Ukraine think is unlikely to happen given Putin’s massive investment in his war that has changed the nature of Russian society turning the country into a garrison state. Joining us is David Salvo, the managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund. An expert in Russian affairs, his work analyzes the Kremlin’s authoritarian toolkit to undermine democracy at home and abroad. Previously, he was a foreign service officer in the US Department of State, serving most recently as the deputy secretary of state’s policy advisor for Europe, Eurasia, and international security issues. He also advised senior-level State Department negotiators on the protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus, worked on US policy toward NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and served overseas in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Decades of US Efforts to Woo India Away From Russia and Forge a Strategic Partnership Against China Blown Up Overnight By Trump

Then we look into the decades-long efforts by American presidents to woo India away from the Soviet Union and later Russia along with forging a strategic partnership with India against China that Trump has blown up overnight. Joining us is Dr. Sumit Ganguly, the Director of the Huntington Program on Strengthening U.S. – India Relations at Stanford University. His books include India Since 1980, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia, The Oxford Handbook of Indian Politics and More Than Words: U.S. – India Strategic Cooperation Into the 21st Century.

The Dark Side of A.I. as Silicon Valley Techno-Utopians Oversell Their Products Again

Then finally we speak with an expert on the 18th century enlightenment, David Bell, the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University and the author of several books, including The First Total War, Shadows of Revolution and Men on Horseback: Charisma and Power in the Age of Revolutions. His forthcoming book is The Opening of the Western Mind: A New History of the Enlightenment and we will discuss his essay at The New York Times, “A.I. Is Shedding Enlightenment Values” and how the Silicon Valley techno-utopians have again oversold their products.