March 10 – What is Driving Immigrants North From Central America?; Obama’s Explanation and Defense of His Foreign Policy; Time to Stop Threatening North Korea and Start Talking to Them

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an assessment of last night’s Univision-Washington Post Democratic presidential debate in Florida aimed at the Latino vote which to a large extent dealt with immigration.  Martha Arevalo, the executive director of the Central American Resource Center (CARACEN), who specializes in immigration advocacy work, community outreach and Latino strategic communications, joins us to discuss how both Sanders and Clinton handled the questions in Spanish from an undocumented native from Guatemala whose husband has been deported, leaving her and her children to fend for themselves. We also examine the unsafe criminal and political environment in Central America that drives immigrants north, recently made clear by the assassination of the Honduran human rights activist Berta Caceres. 

Part 2

Then we get an analysis of President Obama’s explanation and defense of his foreign policy in a lengthy article by Geffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic from Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland who recently served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Department of State. We discuss Obama’s frank criticism of allies who are “free riders” on defense and his aversion to greater U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

Part 3

Then finally with North Korea now under severe sanctions that cut off supplies of jet and rocket fuel, we will examine whether trying to punish the North Korean regime further for its missile and nuclear tests will ever get Kim Jong-Un to give up his “crown jewels”, a growing if antiquated nuclear arsenal. Bennett Ramberg, who was a foreign policy analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs at the State Department joins us to discuss his article at Reuters “It May Be Time to Return U.S. Nukes to the Korean Peninsula” and the need to try a different approach to the North Koreans by stop trying to threaten them, but start talking to them.