Rear Vision — How History Shaped Today

Since the start of the 20th century, oil has been the lifeblood of global development. Today, the story behind oil — and the politics of supplying oil and denying oil.

From sanctions to tariffs to seizing oil fields — it feels like we've entered a new age of economic warfare. But experts say we're really just returning to the past. To the time before the rules-based international order was established at the end of the Second World War.
Gunboat diplomacy it seems is once again de rigueur.
Guests
William Alan Reinsch — Senior advisor, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Saadia Zahidid — Economist and Managing Director of the World Economic Forum
Markus Jaeger — Adjunct professor, International and Public Affairs, Columbia SIPA
Abraham Newman — Professor of Government, Georgetown University. Author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Holt/Penguin 2023)
Hugo Slim — Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford

For just over three weeks huge street protests have swept across Iran and threatened to topple The Islamic Republic regime of Iran. The regime has responded with a brutal crackdown on dissent and imposing a total internet blackout. President Donald Trump has urges Iranians to keep protesting and has promised that 'help is on its way'.
So how should we understand what’s happening in Iran and why does President Trump care so much. In this podcast extra we trace the story of Iran from the 1953 CIA coup that overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and ushered in the rule of the Shah through to the events that lead to the 1979 Iranian Revolution that ousted the Shah and the return of the Ayatollah, and finally, Iran post 1979 and the role that Iranian women have played in resisting the rule of the Ayatollahs.

Is the liberal international rules-based order – that has underpinned international relations for the past 80 years - about to collapse. The United States once its greatest champion is withdrawing funding from hundreds of international organisations, and at the same time unending the global economy by imposing of tariffs across the board. What might this mean for global security, and the global economy and can we blame Donald Trump and his wrecking ball or are there deeper forces at play?

President Trump not only want to make America great, he also wants to make it bigger and incorporating Canada as the 51st state would certainly do that – except for the fact that Canada is a sovereign nation. The story of Canada and the United States and why President Trump wants to turn Canada into the 51st States of the Union.