PEPFAR Reauthorization Struggle, Banned Books Week, Slovakia Democracy Test, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, U.S. funding for a vital global HIV/AIDS program hits a deadline, Banned Books Week begins, and Slovak elections pose another test of populism in Europe. It's September 28th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week.

I'm Bob McMahon

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, first of all, you might've noticed we have some new music. That is thanks to CFR's very own audio producer and sound designer, who is the composer of this music, Markus Zakaria. We thought we would peg this sonic renewal to an early celebration of International Podcast Day, which occurs September 30th.

ROBBINS:
Well, happy soon to be International Podcast Day, Bob.

MCMAHON:
Thank you.

ROBBINS:
This Saturday spotlights the reach and variety of podcasts. And you know me, I love my numbers. And a Pew Research Center poll found about half of Americans have listened to a podcast in the past year. And one in five of those say they listen to a podcast nearly every day. As for what people are listening to? Nearly half say they regularly listen to comedy and entertainment, pop culture and the arts, and 41 percent listen to podcasts about politics and government. So I knew we were really right to care about Barbie in Saudi Arabia.

MCMAHON:
We were spot on, Carla. And I do think that Pew poll was interesting also for the number of people who rely on podcasts for their news. So they're not just there to kind of plug in, or unplug as it were, but actually to find out what's going on. So it's an area of some hope as the media desert and sort of the noise of disinformation rise. Podcasts are a great place to just connect on a whole host of things. And this podcasting space has come a long way since The World Next Week started almost fifteen years ago. Carla, any podcasts in particular or episodes you'd like to share?

ROBBINS:
I have to confess that I'm a comparative newcomer to the podcasting world, but I've been talking to friends and I've been scouring lists and I was really inspired also when we talked to Rosa Brooks, who's definitely into podcasts. And I've been compiling a virtual podcast shelf, if one can refer to it that way. And I'm just starting on this with my workouts and there are a couple that I'm really excited about. One is The Coldest Case in Laramie, which is from Serial Productions and it's about a 1985 murder of a young woman in Wyoming. And they thought they'd caught the killer several times, but the case has gone nowhere. That just seems really fascinating to me. And another one is More Perfect from WNYC Studios. It's a spinoff of Radiolab and I've loved it. Never really thought of it as a podcast, but it is.

MCMAHON:
It's the Supreme Court one?

ROBBINS:
Yes, it's the Supreme Court one.

MCMAHON:
That's a great one. 

ROBBINS:
Have you been listening to it?

MCMAHON:
Not recently, but I've caught them in the past and I love the way it's put together. They're fascinating and you always learn something. It's great.

ROBBINS:
And some of the things that just, I think this is the fourth season. When can reporter be compelled to testify? One on the original anti-vaxxer. And one that I listened to that really fascinated me about this Andy Warhol Prince photograph case. I never covered the court. I always thought you had to be a lawyer to cover the court, but they're deconstructing this and making it really, really accessible and fun at the same time. So that's More Perfect from WNYC Studios. So those are two for me.

MCMAHON:
That's great. I would just add on a pure candy front, as it were, something from the Ringer Network that my daughter and I bonded over, which is a podcast called The Rewatchables, where a group of people with host Bill Simmons get together and talk about movies, usually from the last thirty or forty years, sort of from their cognitive period of recognizing movies. But they do a great job of just deconstructing when the movie came out, what was special about it, seeing what's aged well, what hasn't, and then getting personal and just saying what connected with them about it.

ROBBINS:
Ooh, can we get invited on that one?

MCMAHON:
I would love to. If we say enough nice things about it, maybe they'll catch wind of us, Carla. But my daughter who's a movie buff, a budding movie buff, a senior in high school, it's her must listen every week.

ROBBINS:
I'm in, definitely in. 

So, Bob, let's begin with the chaos here in the U.S. This Saturday, unless the U.S. Congress surprises us and reaches an agreement on appropriations, the government is going to shut down. And we've talked about one of the big issues that's gotten caught up in this, the push by some far right Republicans to cut off funding to Ukraine, but there's something else that's on the block. It's not an appropriation, it's an authorization. But this hugely successful program to fight HIV/AIDS known as PEPFAR is also at risk. And who's opposed to PEPFAR and why and what happens if it doesn't get that reauthorization?

MCMAHON:
Yes, Carla, it's raising a lot of concern. It's up for a five-year authorization, which it has sailed through in the past for the reasons you cited. Major bipartisan support for this in an era when there had been so few initiatives like this. And it's been especially dispiriting because one of the sponsors of the last five-year authorization is Congressman Chris Smith from New Jersey. This time around though he's pushing for just a one-year reauthorization of some of the expiring provisions and he would want to reinstate some of the anti-abortion restrictions that were there during the Trump presidency. 

Chris Smith is one of the most fervent anti-abortion lawmakers in the country. He predates any of the so-called MAGA lawmakers who made it a big case, especially in the post-Dobbs era. But he's decided to fixate upon PEPFAR as a initiative that has allowed or has provided support for abortions now. And some say it's sort of been ginned up under the misinformation cycle that we now live in and a lot of adherents to the program, including many anti-abortion activists, have said they are wrong about this. This is not a program that in any way supports abortion. It's extremely careful in the way the funding is doled out. And in fact, in some cases it has helped women avoid abortion by carrying through on pregnancies in which they were worried about their children contracting AIDS in the womb. So it's caught up, according to many people who are watching this very closely, in this virulent cycle of misinformation.

The concern though is that even though as you say, it's not an appropriation, it's a reauthorization, the concern is that it raises questions in the broader global health community and in African countries that it helps, about the longevity of the program, about further investments in the program, about just how viable the PEPFAR program is going to be after twenty years of incredible success. And I think it's really worth mentioning some of the numbers about how PEPFAR has helped. And there are people all across the political spectrum who will point to the astounding results. It has been called, without challenge, the most successful global health program ever. It is supporting testing services just in FY 2022 for more than 64 million people. It has prevented five and a half million babies from being born with HIV; they would otherwise have been infected. Provide care for more than 7 million orphans and vulnerable children. Supported training for 340,000 new healthcare workers. It supported antiretroviral treatment for tens of millions of people.

And it encompasses more than fifty countries. There are fifty countries that are supported in PEPFAR programs. There are many more in related programs and it has had a knock on effect, as global health programs tend to do, because they're enhancing infrastructure. Some experts have pointed out the fact that because PEPFAR had improved some of the health infrastructure in Nigeria, it was in a better place to combat the Ebola breakout about ten years ago. These stories come up again and again as you go across primarily the African countries that had been afflicted by HIV/AIDS. 

And it's worth pointing out when this program started that there were 2 million people a year who were dying of this and it was creating whole generations of people without parents. It was wiping out families. It was sort of burrowing through communities and really devastating them. And the prospects were really grim. And it's one of the reasons it galvanized support in the U.S. in a bipartisan way. It was George W. Bush who pushed it through and then he got a lot of support. I'm talking about support across the NGO board, from groups that would never have worked together, zealous religious groups and NGOs that were very big on providing access to all sorts of health services. And they just came together and made common cause.

So we're in a moment now where we don't know what come September 30th, whether there's any signal for reauthorization of this program, whether in the mix-up and in the din overall expiration of the U.S. budget, whether or not this is going to be revived or not.

ROBBINS:
So do we know what the source of this disinformation is? This had been such a bipartisan success. And why suddenly someone like Smith who was such a big supporter of the program, why suddenly are people saying a program that everybody knows inside and out isn't an abortion program, why suddenly are people running scared on this one?

MCMAHON:
Some of the pieces that I've read, including one piece that's getting a lot of attention in The Atlantic by Peter Whener have pointed out the fact in the atmosphere, the post-Dobbs ruling atmosphere in the United States, there is now a media ecosystem involving Republican lawmakers or a new class of Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion activists in which they are staking their claim to their anti-abortion bonafides and they are challenging things that happened before, whether initiatives from Republicans or certainly of Democrats. And this came into their sights somehow, the PEPFAR funding program did. It takes hold under the culture wars that are going on and in the zero sum landscape that we're in, Carla.

ROBBINS:
This is one of these things that I work with with my students and I explained to them the difference between appropriation, which is actual real money, and authorization, which tells you how you can spend the money. And there are certain programs that don't ever get reauthorized or barely get reauthorized and they still trundle forward. Why does it matter if this doesn't get reauthorized? If the money's going to get actually appropriated, I'm assuming someday we'll actually have appropriations, someday the government will be funded. Why do we worry so much about a reauthorization?

MCMAHON:
It's this aspect of the people who are active in this field in particular and in African affairs in particular, say that if there was a lap in authorization, that will get back to the affected countries who don't know the difference between appropriation and authorization. They just hear, "Oh, this isn't happening anymore." And so generating some uncertainty about, "How much should I be investing," a certain minister in a certain country or a certain field of people who are making their three-year plan or whatever, "How much should I invest in this program that I'm relying on American funding for? Well, are they pulling the plug on this? What am I doing this for?"

Because these programs are enormous and in some cases, actually some health experts have said we're at a time, totally separate from the current debate going on over PEPFAR, we're at a time where actually we should be considering maybe realigning U.S. funding for health initiatives in Africa and not be so disproportionately directing them towards HIV/AIDS, but maybe spread them out more. Because our colleague, Michelle Gavin wrote a blog post earlier this year noting this saying if you talk to Africans, they won't list HIV/AIDS as among their top priorities of health. They'll have a whole host of other things. And they see this as this giant thing being imposed outside from the U.S. They benefit from it for the reasons I cited previously, Carla. But they also think, "There are other things we have going on that need more attention. We wish it wasn't just such this one note coming from the U.S."

And so it gets back to your question, maybe it's time for just turn the page and maybe we focus less on AIDS, we focus in another direction. So it's that signaling more than it is actually the fact of money being allotted. And so you have to, U.S. diplomats and health officials in the field, have to make their case. Samantha Power, head of USAID, recently said this is because of the bipartisan support, because of the fact that it's part of permanent U.S. law, this is something that was supposed to be impervious to changing administrations and so forth. But she says this is a damaging moment if this reauthorization doesn't come through.

So it's a lot of perception. It's some individual authorizations, some individual programs affected, Carla, but it is that perception. And also the fact that it could galvanize, those forces who are aligned against the reauthorization, it could galvanize them to go after the actual PEPFAR funding proper and then it becomes an appropriations battle as well.

ROBBINS:
And one certainly wants to listen to countries on the ground when we make our appropriations and authorizations. And if they think that they need money to be spent in other places, we should certainly be listening to them. But the reality in Washington is if that money goes away for PEPFAR, it's not going to get appropriated or authorized for something else. And whether or not people understand that on the ground, that is the reality in Washington. This is something that, that's real money. And that money, if it doesn't go to PEPFAR, a lot of it's just going to disappear.

MCMAHON:
That's a good point and I think it's a point that health diplomats are trying to make and also reminding these countries that their obligations, we mentioned recently the sustainable development goals. Goal number three is to-

ROBBINS:
Do you have those memorized?

MCMAHON:
I'm getting close to it, Carla.

ROBBINS:
I'm really frightened for you. Profoundly frightened for you.

MCMAHON:
You can nerd on nukes. I'll nerd out on SDGs, okay? As I was saying, sustainable development goal three is targets the end of global AIDS pandemic as a public health threat by 2030. That's not that far away. So they were hoping to carry through this main engine of spending and do not see this as a hopeful episode. So a lot of things at stake with the government funding issue coming up, Carla, and this is one to keep an eye on.

Carla, let's stay stateside and talk about another issue raising concern. Next week is Banned Books Week, and that's when libraries nationwide will celebrate the freedom to seek and express ideas and bring awareness to the harm of censorship. Now, there has been a rise in book bannings in various states. This week seems to feel more important than ever. So are we going to see a pushback against bans emerging or are we going to be dealing with a big battle in everybody's public library?

ROBBINS:
Well, the battles are already there. And the hope from this, Banned Books Week, which has been around for several decades, and it's the coalition of sponsors, which are the American Library Association, the Association of University Presses, the Author's Guild, and a whole lot of other people, is that it will energize people to push back against what is spreading from state to state to state. And they have a whole list on their website and we'll post it of ways you can push back: calling and writing elected officials, checking out or buying a censored book, volunteering at your libraries.

And this sort of public local action really is urgently needed today because the number of book bannings, as you said, in schools and public libraries, is really sharply on the rise, because state politicians and local parental groups have made it a really political issue. And interestingly, some of these groups were originally formed to oppose mask and vaccine mandates. And since the decline of COVID, they've turned their sights toward books.

And as a parent, I'm profoundly concerned about this. And it's not just in schools, it's also in public libraries. So it's everybody, anybody, unless you're well enough to do to go and order your own book, people are denied access to all sorts of ideas. The ALA reports nearly 700 efforts last year to ban access to library books and materials focused on 1900 unique titles across the country. And most of the titles being challenged were written by or about LGBTQ people or people of color. There's no secret to what's going on here. The trend line in schools is similarly grim. According to Panamerica in the 2022, '23 school year, there were 3,362 cases of books being removed from schools with more than 1,500 individual titles targeted. And that's a 33 percent increase over the previous year.

And you can guess the states with the highest number of school book bans. Florida, Texas, Missouri, Utah, South Carolina, and again, the top topics being banned are about LGBTQ issues and issues of race. And I went and looked at what are some of the most banned books. Some of them I don't know because I don't have a school aged child, something called Gender: A Queer Memoir, Flamer Tricks. But it's also The Handmaid's Tale, a graphic novel version of it. The Bluest Eye. Some of them really classic books. And this of course isn't a new problem. Over the years many books we now consider classic have drawn bans in this country. The Catcher in the Rye, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Beloved, they have all been banned, but the numbers are much wider and much broader and it's so politicized these days. And so it is a grassroots push against and it needs to be a grassroots push back.

MCMAHON:
It's also concerning especially to be in the United States with this happening because for so many years and those of us from the Cold War era, it was the openness of U.S. society, it was the U.S. pointing a finger at the book banners, especially in the Soviet bloc and other places that were threatened by open exchange of information and access to ideas and so forth. Carla, how does this compare to what's going on internationally? Obviously the authoritarian governments have controlled the media space for a long time, but are we seeing this happen in other democracies?

ROBBINS:
Well, certainly we see countries like Hungary, Poland, other places in the EU that have a rise of homophobia and banning of books that are considered offensive to alleged moral standards there. And Turkey, which at one point claimed to be a democracy, very proudly pulled hundreds of thousands of books off the shelves that were allegedly related to this exotic cleric Fethullah Gülen, and more to come. So we've seen it in a variety of places that claim to be democracies.

And then of course hugely repressive societies which build themselves around censorship, whether it's on the net or whether it's books, some of the most censored places in the world are North Korea and China. But Russia, whether it's censoring any materials about the war and they have their homophobia laws. The really frightening thing is that when you look at their rhetoric, they are pointing back to what we're doing in the United States now. We are losing the moral standing when you look at laws in Florida, when you look at what is going on here. And that is the scary thing, is that we do put ourselves up there as a shining standard because we have a First Amendment, because we are so committed to free speech here in this country. And this is not a good thing.

There is a little bit of hope here. This week is a good thing. The host for it this week is LeVar Burton from famed of, what is it? Reading Rainbow, I think that's what it was.

MCMAHON:
That's right, yeah.

ROBBINS:
Which our kids grew up with. There are also lawsuits challenging what are pretty draconian state laws there. In June, a group of libraries, independent bookstores, and publishers filed a suit in federal court challenging what is a new Arkansas law that requires libraries and bookstores to shelve any material that might be, "harmful to minors in a separate adult only area." And if once this law goes into effect, librarians and booksellers could be found guilty of distributing a harmful item to a minor and they could be punished with up to a year in prison. So there's a big pushback against that case.

And in Texas, another group of booksellers and publishers have challenged a Texas law that would require them to rate every title they sell or have ever sold to schools based on sexual content or lose the right to do business with schools. And that's a big case that's moving forward as well. So grassroots efforts to push back, legal efforts to push back, but it's Whac-A-Mole because it's everywhere.

So Bob, let's shift to Europe. A democracy that is potentially not going in a happy direction. On Saturday, Slovakia will hold its parliamentary elections and according to polls there, left wing anti-EU, anti NATO candidate is gaining pretty good traction. What's going on?

MCMAHON:
Well, we've been here before. We've been here before in terms of pre-election. We'll see what happens post-election. But Slovakia is in this vanguard of countries in Europe that are facing populous pressures. They're facing populous pressures because of split populations, because of the Ukraine war, because of concern over migration and so forth. And we should say Slovakia is a frontline country that has up to now been very staunch in supporting Ukraine. It's accepted almost a million people transiting its country fleeing Ukraine. It's been a strong NATO supporter, it sent military material. But Robert Fico, he's a former prime minister trying to come back to the job has made it a point of talking about ending support for Ukraine, about challenging EU migration policies, about pushing back against what some disaffected Slovaks see as the orthodoxy that's challenging the country's own sense of identity and its own sort of national integrity.

Again, issues that we've seen play out in Hungary and in Poland, which has upcoming elections as well. And by the way, we're going to see some regional elections in Germany coming up as well that'll give us a sense of whether the surging right in this case is going to make any advances in Germany. But in Slovakia's case, again, it's this frontline country and the concern is that it goes the way of say, neighboring Hungary and it becomes a pro-Russian fly in the ointment for the EU as it tries to set up common policies on a whole host of things.

Now, Slovakia, we should note, used to be heavily reliant on Russian energy. There is a segment of the population that has maintained strong feelings towards Russia over the years, but is by no means a huge majority. I mean, the latest polls show that Fico's party, now known as Smer, has a slightly to maybe a second place finishing depending on the poll you look at to the progressive Slovak party. So about polling at about 20 percent or so. It would definitely have to form some sort of a coalition to rule. The country's had, I think, five prime ministers in as many years recently. And so there's a lot of division there. The polls also show something like eight parties could get enough votes to have a representation in parliament. So we're looking at a lot of horse trading going on after these elections if the polls hold true. 

And Fico again has not been dancing around the issues. He's been saying straight out what he would do vis-a-vis Ukraine, for example. He has proved to be in previous times in government to be a more pragmatic figure. But at the same time, he represents this populism and this sense of resentment towards the EU, the sense of Slovak national pride that we've seen again surface in other countries, usually with sort of a right-leaning party or a far right party. And we're going to have to see whether the Slovaks vote for pragmatism or there's a lurch in a direction of populism.

ROBBINS:
So do we have any sense of how much the Russians may be meddling in this election? You'd think that Moscow would be completely consumed with what's going on inside Ukraine, but this campaign has seen a lot of disinformation, the usual tropes about migrant violence and the dangers of COVID vaccines, as well as attacks on Zelenskyy, disinformation upon disinformation.

MCMAHON:
It's a good question. By many accounts that countries being bombarded with Russian propaganda and along the lines of, "The West is responsible for the war in Ukraine." You're hearing it coming from people's mouths as they're being polled and so forth. It's a certain percentage seeing it more the U.S.' fault than Russia's fault. So that's a concern.

At the same time, again, this sense of the country, what the polls are showing in the sense that the country's going to need to have sort of a moderating influence in terms of what coalitions can add up to a governing coalition, that seems to be what's giving some of the observers solace that Slovakia will not go the way of Hungary. And let's be clear, Hungary has a very shrewd leader in Viktor Orban, who over a course of years positioned himself and his party into this dominant space in terms of controlling the courts, controlling the media, controlling all the levers of power to keep him in power and to really play upon fears of Hungarian nationhood and so forth.

Slovakia, it's not that simple to say they're going that same route or that they could go that same route if Fico's party, for example, gets the most votes. Consistently polling it at this 20 percent figure does not point to any sort of a landslide or a mandate. So that's going to be something to keep an eye on, even as the Russian propaganda is very much present and will be. And it's also raising concern about the upcoming elections in Poland where there's a huge amount at stake as well.

ROBBINS:
But it's interesting, we were very worried about the Italian elections, but then Meloni sort of snapped into line, and it seems like the EU is, people speak the frightening notion of breaking with the EU, speak the frightening notion of breaking with the war in Ukraine, and then somehow they get brought back into the fold. But if something happens like the United States cuts off funding to Ukraine, you wonder how much that fold is going to hold.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it's pointing, I think, again and again, and whether it's the countries that have dealt with a populous surge or even the strongest and the biggest EU countries, whether they can really fill in for any sort of major decrease in U.S. aid. We just updated a piece on our website showing a number of charts pointing to U.S. aid for Ukraine, and it's just the numbers are pretty significant and staying there. So I mean the big deal will be in the U.S. obviously with the 2024 presidential elections, what happens there and what that means for Ukraine.

We should note last night there was another Republican debate where Ukraine and support for Ukraine was a very big issue and a very big wedge issue with those candidates, which did not include Donald Trump, by the way. It was by far leading in Republican polling. So I think the bigger question is, is you're right, it's how much durability is their support for Ukraine? Among countries that are NATO members, countries that are EU members, and you're right, you've had these movements that have been put into power and they find it's very hard to cut off the EU ties that bind because it is so much money and it's so much support, including Hungary for that matter. But by the same token, Hungary can still be a spoiler as we're seeing again and again.

ROBBINS:
So, well, we'll have to see. It's remarkable. We in the United States may not spend a lot of time thinking about Europe, but they certainly are thinking about us.

MCMAHON:
And that brings us to our Audience Figure Of The Week portion of the podcast. This is the figure that can be chosen by listeners every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_orgs Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected, "China and Assad Announce Partnership." Why is China drawing closer to Syria at this point?

ROBBINS:
Bob, if the situation in Syria weren't so awful, this would've looked like one of those Bond supervillain meetings. Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Who had been isolated from pretty much everyone but Iran and Russia, since he unleashed what has really been just an absolutely murderous civil war, has been worming his way back into the global fold over the last several months. In May, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS, who has also been brought back in from the cold, brokered Assad's return to the Arab League, and we talked about that. And this past week, Xi, who has been trying to become a player in the Middle East, invited Assad for a four day visit.

This has as much to do with the fact that Xi just wants to show that he's a global player, which is why he brokered this deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia, such as it is. And after their talks, Xi called on the West to lift sanctions on Syria and he offered China help in rebuilding Syria. And you know that Assad will pretty much go anywhere that anyone's willing to talk to him. Assad really, really needs help. He's won the war, but he hasn't won the country. And even after all the destruction he has wreaked, and the place is basically rubble, there again, anti-government protests. Thousands of people are in the streets in recent months. They're calling for Assad to resign. It looks a lot like the beginning of the civil war, and they're driven mainly by economic desperation. And he needs to rebuild this country, but he's not willing to make the political compromises to get the money out of the West.

And so he went there hoping for money. Xi made a big deal of committing to helping him rebuild, but he didn't commit any money at all. There were no announcements of any projects. Syria joined the Belt and Road Initiative in January of last year, but there has not been a single announcement of a Chinese run project since then. And part of it appears to be a security issue. Nobody really wants to start a business in Syria right now. Part of it is a lack of rule of law there, which we'll talk about the irony of that with China. And a good part is that Chinese companies don't want to get crosswise with U.S. sanctions on Syria. They could end up having their assets frozen. So he got the face time. I think that his complete isolation is over with, but I don't think he's going to get a lot of money out of it. Not anytime soon.

MCMAHON:
It does show that China continues to try to stay active virtually everywhere. And you're right, Syria was a no-go zone for so long. And China has been so transactional in its Belt and Road Initiatives and other initiatives elsewhere that you scratch your head thinking about Syria. But it's just a question of China wants to include the Middle East in places where it can be a player.

ROBBINS:
Well, I think that the Saudi decision first to bring him in from the cold, and now this visit with Xi raises a really big question for the United States and for Britain and for all of the West, which is if we painfully accept the notion that this war is over with, do we have to take some consideration of alleviating the suffering in Syria? And what sort of pressure do you put on Assad? Do we accept that he's there? Can we use some sort of promise of aid? Is there a way of going around him and rebuilding without reinforcing his control? This is a really, really hard one, and nobody's talking about it because we've got Ukraine going on.

MCMAHON:
Right.

ROBBINS:
But there was a time in which everybody was talking about it because this really has been one of the most horrific wars. And the UN stopped counting the number of people who died a really long time ago because it was impossible to count. But hundreds of thousands of people.

MCMAHON:
We tend to only hear about it when there are truly epic problems going on, like the recent earthquake or the cutoff of aid corridors into areas where people are starving to death and so forth. And there is that portion of the country that the U.S. is supporting a group of Syrians, the Syrian Kurds, to the undying annoyance of the Turks among others. And what does that mean if the U.S. plays a bigger role in the country? It seems to be really keen not to play a bigger role, but it also has stuck with that arrangement for now, partly because it wants to make sure the Islamic State is eradicated once and for all. And there are still Islamic State actors, I guess around, although some of them are under watch by the Syrian Kurds.

ROBBINS:
So we tend to pay attention to these places when bad guys come along. So whether it's ISIS, Xi paying attention to Syria. Maybe if there were a real investment in Syria, we would have more of a policy for Syria. But maybe I'm not paying enough attention, but I haven't seen a U.S. policy for Syria lately.

MCMAHON:
And that's our look at the turbulent world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Poland hosts the tenth Warsaw Security Forum, which ought to be particularly interesting this year. Another European forum, the OECD Forum on Green Finance and Investment, takes place in Paris. And, several Asian countries celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to the World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review, including of our new music while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for the World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on the World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
This is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.