Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael

On this edition of Parallax Views, we continue our examination of the crisis in Ukraine after the country's invasion by Vladimir Putin's Russia. On this time we take a look at Cuba's reaction to these recent events with Dr. William LeoGrande of American Universty in Washington, D.C. LeoGrande recently penned a piece for the Quincy Institute's Responsible Statecraft publication entitled "Why Cuba has threaded the Russia needle for 60 years" that delves into the history of Cuba-Russia relation going back to the days of the Soviet Union, Cold War, and U.S. hostilities towards Fidel Castro. Dr. LeoGrande discusses Cuba's reactions to Russian interventions in Czechoslovakia in 1969 and Afghanistan in 1979 in addition to talking about Cuba's response to the invasion of Ukraine. Dr. LeoGrande and I also delve into such issues as Cuba's foreign policy, Fidel Castro's comments on the Soviet Union throughout the years, Barack Obama's attepts to normalize relations with Cuba, how Donald Trump and conservative Florida-based Cubans thwarted normalization of Cuba-U.S. relations, Boris Yeltsin and Cuba, the plight of smaller countries and especially those with a hostile relationship to the U.S., sanctions, Havana Syndrome, and more.

In the second segment of the show, Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, author of Qatar and the Gulf Crisis and Fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, joins me to discuss his Doha News article "What the Russian invasion of Ukraine means for small states". Dr. Ulrichsen discusses how states in the Persian Gulf have reacted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and what it means for Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain among others. He also explains how smaller gulf states may be paying careful attention to the conflict due to a.) memories of Saddam Hussein and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and b.) Putin's invocation of "ancient lands" and how it could be used in a new era of great power competition.

In the third and final segment of the show, Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige podcast joins to offer his take on the situation in Ukraine, U.S. foreign policy, NATO, the controversy over John Mearsheimer and the Realist School of International Relations theory, "the Left", and much, much more.