November 11 - The Apec Summit and the New Trade Pact; Growing Ties Between China and Russia; A Highly Decorated Veteran on Veterans Day

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the announcement at the APEC summit in Beijing of a new Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific that some see as a rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that the U.S. is pushing which involves 12 countries but excludes China and Russia. An expert on the Chinese economy, Barry Naughton, the author of “The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth”, joins us to discuss the possibility that the two treaties are not mutually exclusive and how efforts by China’s new leader to reassert Communist Party orthodoxy will likely come at the expense of increased trade and economic growth as President Xi Jinping dials up the anti-Western and nationalistic rhetoric.   

Part 2

Then we examine the growing ties between Russia and China whose two leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are pumping up anti-Western propaganda and stoking nationalistic fervor at home while cracking down on democratic aspirations and free expression in the press and on social media and the Internet. Gilbert Rozman, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University who specializes in studying the societies of China and Russia, joins us to discuss his article at The Huffington Post, “The Sino-Russia Partnership is Stronger Than the West Thinks” and how much the growing anti-Western nationalism in both countries is overcoming traditional suspicions between the two countries who share a long border with over a billion Chinese on one side and very few Russians on the other side in Russia’s vast under-populated Pacific region in the east.  

Part 3

The finally on Veterans Day we speak with Phillip Butler, a highly decorated combat veteran who spent 8 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. He joins us to discuss veteran’s issues following Monday’s announcement by the new head of the VA that he would like to fire as many as 1,000 employees, and also assess why the U.S. has not won a war since 1945, yet has been involved in hundreds of small wars and is now going back to Iraq for a third war in that divided and devastated country.