September 18 - Arming Ukraine when a Peace Settlement is the Only Way Out; The British Prime Minister's Ineptitude; Ebola Now a Global Threat

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Ukrainian president’s appearance before a joint session of Congress where he made a plea for U.S. military hardware over and above the non-lethal assistance Ukraine is getting, stating that “one can not win a war with blankets”. Robert English, a Professor of International Relations at USC who formerly worked as a policy analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense and the Committee for National Security, joins us to discuss the possibility that Ukraine’s Petro Poreshenko is courting the more hawkish Congress to put pressure on Obama to arm the Ukrainians at a point where there is a stalemate that is inviting a diplomatic settlement.

Part 2

Then, as Scots go to the polls in record numbers, we  look at the political ineptitude of British Prime Minister David Cameron who has missed signals at every turn that the up-or-down referendum he decided on could blow up in his face as his complacent ministers ignored warnings from civil service professionals that the “No” vote was not a sure thing and that the United Kingdom could soon be split in half. James Cronin, a professor of history at Boston College and an associate at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University where he chairs the British Study Group, joins us to discuss Cameron’s self-inflicted political wounds as his action threaten to take the “Great” out of Great Britain.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the out-of-control outbreak of Ebola in West Africa which the U.N. Security Council has called a threat to global security. Gregory Koblentz, a Professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University and a member of the Scientist Working Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons at the Center for Arms Control and author of “Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security”, joins us to discuss the role of the Pentagon in combating Ebola in Liberia and the virulence of Ebola that was weaponized as a biological weapon in the former Soviet Union.