Written by Elisa Garbil – 29.09.2025 When Bashar al-Assad fell in late 2024, many Syrians dared to imagine a future beyond authoritarianism and endless war. The dictator’s sudden departure sent a wave of relief across the country, and for a fleeting moment, optimism seemed to outweigh fatigue. Yet the early glow of freedom quickly dimmed. By mid-2025,…
Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil Today Dominic Bowen hosts Broderick McDonald on the podcast to discuss the future of Syria. They dive into the different external actors and their interests, the challenges that the new government of Syria is facing, the fine line of institutional reform and unity, the need for inclusion of the minority groups, what the impact…
Broderick McDonald is a Research Fellow at Kings College London’s XCEPT Research Programme and a Research Associate the Oxford Emerging Threats Group. Prior to this, he served as an Advisor to the Government of Canada and was a Fellow with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC). Broderick’s writing and commentary has appeared in The New York…
“‘The cancellation or what you call the abeyance of the Indus Water treaty is not anything which is practical but it is very political; it is politically dividing these two countries and creating huge mistrust. Just in May, these two countries were on the verge of nuclear war so anything can happen”. Ashok Swain, Episode…
In this episode Dominic Bowen and Dr Audrye Wong dive into how Beijing is recalibrating power and influence in a turbulent world. Find out more about China’s two-pronged response to US decoupling, sharpened economic coercion and rare-earth export controls, charm offensives across the Global South, Belt and Road’s “small yet beautiful” recalibration, BRICS and BRICS…
Audrye Wong is Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California. Her research covers China’s economic statecraft, including a book forthcoming with Oxford University Press, as well as China’s foreign influence activities and propaganda campaigns. Her work has been supported by…
Coordinated and Produced by Elisa Garbil A different episode today where Dominic hosts one of his colleagues Elisa Garbil on the Podcast! They dive into Elisa’s top 5 International Risks and debate why these are so important. Listen to the episode to find out which risks she finds important, what Dominic finds of them, and what their…
Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security in Political Science and International Studies, at the University of Birmingham. A political scientist by background, he specialises in the management of contemporary security challenges, especially in the prevention and settlement of ethnic conflicts, in post-conflict state-building in deeply divided and war-torn societies, and in contemporary geopolitics and great-power…
Despite decades of innovation in oncology, over 40 percent of cancers remain preventable. Yet only 5 percent of global cancer spending is allocated to prevention. In any other domain of risk management, such a mismatch would be considered negligence. This week on The International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen is joined by Dr. Joachim Schüz to…
This week on The International Risk Podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Joachim Schüz for a critical conversation on why cancer prevention must be treated as a global systems risk, not simply a medical challenge. Dominic and Dr. Joachim Schüz explore how exposure to toxins, industrial expansion, regulatory failure, and political inertia are reshaping the global cancer…
