April 6 – Will A Change of Mind Over Syria Mean Bombing Assad?; Can Trump Retreat From Campaign Rhetoric Bashing China?; Trump’s Warning to China to Solve North Korea

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Donald Trump’s announced change of mind over Syria following the Assad regime’s use of Sarin gas on Syrian children and assess the likelihood of a punitive strike by the U.S. military against Assad’s military and Intelligence infrastructure. Thanassis Cambanis joins us from Beirut to provide a local perspective on the new rumors of war. He writes “The Internationalist” column for The Boston Globe and is a contributor to Foreign Policy and the author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel”.  We will discuss how much Trump himself is responsible for unwittingly signaling to Assad that he has a green light to escalate his depravity following the White House love fest with the Egyptian dictator General Sisi and the callously stupid remarks by Secretary of State Tillerson that Assad’s fate should be decided by the Syrian people.

Part 2

Then we look into the meeting and banquet underway at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat between China’s President Xi and President Trump and explore the steep learning curve Trump has as he retreats from heated campaign rhetoric calling global warming a hoax invented by the Chinese and erroneously charging China with currency manipulation. Scott Kennedy, the deputy director of the Freeman Chair in China Studies and the Director of the Project on Chinese Business and Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joins us to discuss the meet and greet between these leaders and their wives.

Part 3

Then finally, with tensions over North Korea very much on the agenda in discussions with President Xi following Donald Trump’s remark that “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will”, we will speak with former State Department senior analyst, Stephen Noerper, a senior director for policy at the Korea Society who was a fellow at Korea’s Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security. He joins us to examine the limited options Trump has now that his Secretary of State has declared the era of strategic patience with the Kim regime is over.