Background Briefing (5am)

Background Briefing with Ian Masters – September 11, 2023

Modi, the Host of the G20, Employs Fascist Tactics to Make India a Hindu Only Nation

We begin with the G 20 summit in India at which China and Russia were absent and from which a lukewarm declaration on the war in Ukraine emerged. Joining us to assess the creeping authoritarianism of the Modi regime as India’s Prime Minister hosted the G20 under is Christine Fair, a Professor in the Security Studies Program within Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. She is a specialist in South Asian security and recently returned from India where she spent the last two and a half months.

As China’s Economy Stumbles With Youth Unemployment at 21.3%, Xi Doubles Down on Repression

Then we discuss the absent rising giant China whose economy is stumbling with youth unemployment at 21.3% as Xi Jinping puts internal and external security ahead of dealing with China’s economic problems. Joining us is Victor Shih, the Director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. He is currently engaged in a study of how the coalition-formation strategies of founding leaders had a profound impact on the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party as well as constructing a large database on biographical information of elites in China. The author of Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation and the editor of Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability: Duration, Institutions and Financial Conditions, his latest book is Coalitions of the Weak: Elite politics in China from Mao’s stratagem to the rise of Xi.

The Looming Possibility of Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide Against Armenia

Then finally we speak with David Phillips, a Professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University who was the Director of the Peace-building and Rights Program at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University and a former senior adviser and foreign affairs expert to the U.S. Department of State during the administrations of Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. He chaired the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission and the Track Two Program in Turkey and the Caucasus and his books include Unsilencing the Past, Diplomatic History: The Turkey-Armenia Protocols, and most recently Frontline Syria: From Democratic Revolution to Proxy WarWe discuss the looming possibility of ethnic cleansing and even genocide against Armenians as tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan escalate.