Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the looming possibility of another sectarian war in Iraq and the end of the Sykes-Picot borders drawn up by the British and French colonists at the end of World War 1. Iraq expert and professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole joins us to discuss the impending break-up of Iraq and what countries or states might be left after the next round of sectarian slaughtering is over.

Part 2

Then we speak with the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Steven Pifer, about the likely response to Russia turning off the gas pipeline that supplies both Ukraine and other Western European countries. Ambassador Pifer is the director of the Brookings Institute’s Arms Control Initiative and a former special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council. We examine the latest pressure from Russia on the new government of Petro Poroshenko and assess whether Putin is engaged in a good cop/bad cop strategy or is making it up as he goes along while the U.S. is distracted by Iraq.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Brian Umana, a former congressional campaign manager in Charlottesville, Virginia about his article in the Washington Post, “I’m a Democrat and I helped the Tea Party unseat Eric Cantor” and the possibility of a future for the left/right coalition he worked on with the insurgent Tea Party campaign of David Brat who beat Cantor by running an anti-Wall Street and crony capitalism campaign using immigration as a wedge issue to accuse Cantor of wanting to help corporate America import cheap labor.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the lightning speed with which major Iraqi cities are falling to fighters with ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and assess the military situation on the ground in Iraq with a former intelligence officer in the U.S. Army in Iraq, Jessica Lewis, the Research Director at the Institute for the Study of War who is the Institute’s lead analyst with their al Qaeda portfolio and the author of Al-Qaeda in Iraq Resurgent, Parts 1 and 11. We discuss the likelihood of the Sunni jihadists blowing up Shiite shrines to inflame the conflict further and the amount of military equipment falling into the hands of ISIS as the U.S. evacuates its personnel from the Balad air base just north of Baghdad.

Part 2

Then James Gelvin, a professor of History at UCLA who is a specialist on the Middle East, particularly Greater Syria, the area of present day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, joins us. We discuss the Syrian as well as the Iraq dimension to the explosion of ISIS onto the world stage and how much the ambitious maps that ISIS displays will come to fruition as they try to impose their Islamic caliphate on the region.

Part 3

Then finally, Sebastian Junger joins us in the studio to discuss his latest feature documentary Korengal, the sequel to Academy-Award-nominated Restrepo. He is the best-selling author of “The Perfect Storm”, “A Death in Belmont” and “War” and we discuss his and the late Tim Hetherington’s 10 months spent with a group of American soldiers in a remote mountain outpost under constant Taliban attacks and how the war in Afghanistan effects the soldiers on the front line.