The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Will 2024 Lead To An Expanded War?

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

In our first episode of a new year, we ask the provocative question about whether the world is moving towards expanded conflict. Not just Israel-Hamas, not just Russia Ukraine but beyond. Dr Janice Stein is with us for her weekly discussion but this time she includes a segment she made popular in the past, "What are we missing?" touching upon an area she feels we just aren't talking about enough.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. We're in it now, the new year, 2024. The Bridge begins its latest broadcast with this, an analysis of the world situation, Ukraine, Middle East, and what we're missing with Dr. Janice Stein. coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to 2024. Hope you had a good holiday season. Had a chance to be with family, take it easy, take a break. Some of you I know worked over the holidays and well, thank you for doing that. Okay, so what are we going to do with our first episode? Well,

first we're going to kind of explain how things are going to be a little different with the bridge heading forward. I've hinted at this a number of times over the weeks before the holidays, and I just want to make it straight now for you. Sign a new contract with SiriusXM. Great people. Enjoy working with them. They have a live version of the bridge at noon Eastern every day.

It's replayed a couple of times during their broadcast schedule. And what we've done before is Monday to Friday on the bridge. We're going to continue on, but four days a week instead of five. You know, the old guy's getting older. Need a few breaks here and there. So there was a number of ways of doing this. We could either take Mondays off or we could take Fridays off.

But I thought no, because we'll do it kind of in sync with Bruce's decision to back off from the Wednesday smoke mirrors and the truth. He's just too busy. I mean, the guy's got a lot of work on his plate. And it was getting harder and harder to find him wherever he was in different places in the country, in the world for that matter, to do Wednesdays. So after three years, he's just going to do Fridays now with Chantel on Good Talk. So what I decided was Wednesdays.

Wednesdays will become this option day. It'll become a best-of day or, you know, if there's some kind of special moment happening during the week, we can always make a decision to do a new show on Wednesdays. But there will always be a Bridge episode on Wednesday, but we could go back a year, two years, three years, and do a Best Of edition. Sometimes it's kind of fun to listen to those well after the fact. Anyway, Mondays, we will be going forward. It's going to be Janice Stein.

Her programs have been extremely popular with us over these last few months, and they will continue, I'm sure, to be so. And you'll hear the first episode coming up. Yeah, I know it's Tuesday, but yesterday was a holiday. So Mondays will be Dr. Janice Stein. Tuesdays will be a feature of some sort. It may be a feature interview. It may be a feature discussion, you know, like the Moore-Butts conversations.

Those will be still on their agenda kind of once a month, those discussions with Jerry Butts and James Moore. So those will be Tuesdays to have some kind of feature discussion or feature interview. Or it may be a feature look at an end bit because we always have lots of those. Wednesdays, as I said, will be an encore edition. Thursdays will be a new version of Your Turn and The Random Rancher, of course.

Plus, we're going to kind of include a contest each week for the best letter, the best Your Turn, and the winner will get a copy of one of my books, signed copy and sent to them. So that'll be Thursdays, Fridays, of course, good talk. How are the things going to be different on the Your Turn? Well, here's what I was thinking. We'll try it for a while. I'm going to pose a question early in the week,

and I'll pose it today for this week. And I'll read all the letters that come in and pick the past, I don't know, three or four of those letters to read on the program. Here's the question for this week. As I know a lot of you get at this every once in a while in your letters anyway. If you were able to change anything about the Canadian political system, what would that change be? And I'm not looking for, oh, you know, so-and-so should quit,

or so-and-so should be replaced. I'm not looking for that. I'm looking for something, you know, significant as far as you're concerned in terms of the system itself and how it could be best serving us if it changed in some, you know, significant way. So what would that change be? You know, is it some form, and you'd have to be specific, about electoral reform?

Would it be something about question period? Would it be something about cabinet responsibility or accountability? But you've got to be specific. You can't just say that. Okay, and here's the clincher that will make it onto the air. It can't be two, three, four pages long. Some of you love to write, and I love to read, but there's only so much room, right?

So get to your point, make it, explain it, and say goodbye. All right? You can do all that in a paragraph. Get to your point, make it, explain it, and say goodbye. All right? You can do all that in a paragraph. Two at the most. Normal paragraphs. So anyway, give it a whirl. Let's give that a try. So the first question for this week, so it's two days, you've got to get at it right now,

is if you had the ability to change anything about our political system, what would that change be? And, you know, don't limit it to the examples I gave. You know, there's tons of them, voting age, this, that, the other, it's all kinds of stuff. All right? So look for one thing, not two things, not three things. Here are my best 15 ideas. Pick one. Give me your best idea, and let's have that little contest. So each week, we'll do something, okay? And it'll somehow be related, I hope,

to that week's news. So starting off this way simply because here we are in the first week of January and people are still sort of getting over the last couple of weeks. So there you go. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's where to write. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I'll go through it.

We'll pick a small selection and then we'll pick a winner out of those. And the winner gets if they want it. They get one of my books. Okay? So, and I'll sign it and ship it off to you.

We got the winner of the Christmas memories contest. we got the winner of the Christmas Memories Contest. She wrote in a very nice note, just, well, in fact, it arrived just overnight, thanking us very much for the contest and the fact that she was a winner, Cindy Kelly. Cindy Kelly's in British Columbia.

So she was pretty happy to get her copy, her signed copy of, in her case, How Canada Works. Okay, enough already. Let's get to today's program. And she made such a mark on this program and with you throughout the fall in trying to deal mainly with the Middle East story, but also Ukraine. So today we start off with Dr. Janice Stein, University of Toronto, Munk School, Middle East analyst, conflict management expert, somebody who has worked with and worked for governments and institutions literally around the world. And we're very proud and happy to have Janice with us. So let's get right at it.

This is Janice's kind of worldview of things right now as a new year begins and as we get the opportunity to try and understand what that new world is going to be like. So here we go. My conversation with Dr. Janice Stein. Well, Janice, ever since October 7th, the fear has been that this was going to spread to a wider war. Well, we're almost three months in and some of those fears seem to be realized now as we've just, you know, witnessed in the last little while Israel doing an attack in Syria, the U.S. attacking the Houthis in the Red Sea and thinking aloud about perhaps attacking them in Yemen. We've got Iran making noises.

You've got Hezbollah making noises and more than just noises along the northern border with Israel. Have we now reached that point where we have a wider war so for sure this is a hold your breath moment peter you're absolutely right the danger is higher than it's been but i don't think that we have reached the point where we're going to go over the edge. Probably four or five different ways we can go over the edge. If you think about the map of the Middle East, just to the north of Israel is Lebanon. And that's one that almost did go over the edge at the beginning of the war because Hezbollah is right up against the Israeli border.

It's got 150,000 missiles, by far a much greater threat than Hamas posed. And Israel got ambiguous intelligence right at the beginning of the war that they were planning to join an attack. And it's really interesting. This is now leaked from several sources. President Biden got on the phone and walked them back from a preemptive attack, which is what they were thinking of doing. So we dodged a bullet right at the beginning of this. Biden now has a special envoy in the region, Adam Hochschild, and he is going back and forth trying to work out a deal

where his bullet pulls its forces back from the border to the Latani River. That would be consistent with the UN resolution. I don't know if he'll get them all the way back, but if he gets them even somewhat removed directly from the border, then I think that situation will stabilize. So that's one big one.. So that's one big one. Right. That's one big one. And it's been a constant from almost since day one, as you mentioned.

But all these other kind of hotspots that are starting to develop, which could turn this into a much wider war, why is that happening now? You have to see this as kind of loose network, Peter, and the two hot spots are in the Gulf region. You know, right at the bottom of the Red Sea are the Houthis in Yemen. They have a choke point. It's very easy to lob missiles and to send out patrol boats to block access to shipping.

And those attacks have been increasing. They're not trivial for the whole global economy, frankly. We don't think about this, Peter, but 30% of container shipping in all global trade still goes through the Suez Canal. 30%. You know, we've been fighting inflation for a year. Just think. So the insurance companies got involved.

They said, we're not going to insure. Send your ships around the Cape of Good Hope add a month of travel and these are dangerous waters the insurance prices went up and so there is there is a lot of

unhappiness globally with the Houthis raising the costs for everybody but well as you said it came to a head with the Houthis raising the costs for everybody. Well, as you said, it came to a head. They attacked the Maersk ship. It escalated. U.S. helicopters flew in to protect,

and Houthis fired on the U.S. helicopters, and then the U.S. fired back and killed the Houthis. Now, that's the test. That's the hold your breath moment. What do they do next? It's up to the Houthis, right? Do they back off just a little bit? Iran's fingerprints are, frankly, all over this one, because they are the ones who are providing the targeting

information to the Houthis. So this is one case where the Iranians clearly can cool this down. It's going to tell us a lot. Watch this part of the world in the next 24 to 72 hours.

If the Houthis pull back, dial it back a little bit, then we won't have the escalation. The other one that you mentioned, you're right, is just a little bit over in Iraq, where there are U.S. military deployed, have been deployed ever since 2003. The Houthis have also launched missile attacks against U.S. forces. And that's always a dangerous game, frankly. You do it, you do it, you do it, and you infuriate, particularly the Pentagon, frankly. They've got to be careful, the americans right now on that situation because

the iraqis want the americans out right there's some close your bases and get out of town here that's right so you because those bases are threatened to pull them in in a way they don't want to be pulled in the iraqis well there's a lot of attempts to pull people in right the the hooties they i mean the hoouthis have been in this long war up until just not long ago with Saudi Arabia, with Yemen and the Saudis. It's in a kind of ceasefire moment now, but clearly somebody's trying to get the Saudis back in,

and we know why because the saudis are on the verge of making a deal with the israelis that's right so all these things are connected they are that's why i'm saying you have to see it as a network rather than as isolated hotspots frankly and you know irony of ironies why hasn't the United States gotten back in? Because the Saudis don't want to get back in. So the Saudis are acting as a restraining force on the U.S. response now. Who would have thought of that five or seven years ago when the Saudis were saying the Americans aren't reliable, they won't come to our defense? It's really sometimes, you know, the somersaults that we see in this part of the world. I do have a concern here, Peter, that in the Pentagon, especially over that Houthi attack,

there are louder and louder voices saying we have to respond. We have to do something. We're letting this go by. The usual conversation, our reputation will be damaged. There's a real tug of war inside the Biden administration right now. If the Houthis try it one more time in exactly that way, that's the one thing that could trigger a U.S. response, frankly, if they engage U.S. forces.

Well, you know, the Americans have reacted once. It's going to be a little hard to, you know, if the Houthis, you know, push it again for the Americans to say, well, we're not going to do anything this time. That's right. So the level's gone up here. The level of the game has gone up. Harder to control.

Are the, you know, the Russians obviously have their own issues in Ukraine, and we'll get to that later. But are the Russians or the Chinese, how are they looking at this situation in the Middle East? And what, if anything, are they doing? So, who knows? Let me put it to you that way, right? Because there's so much behind this. What China has done throughout this is hope that this de-escalates. It doesn't really want to see the U.S. come in as a major player here. First of all, you know, it gets in the way of China to export Chinese trade,

a stable global economy, which China really needs right now because it's struggling domestically to restart its economy. So it really doesn't want a blow up at this time. China also has very good relations with Saudi Arabia and with the other Gulf states. It imports oil as well as with Iran. and it has a technology relationship with Israel. So it is trying to stand just a bit back, not get drawn in, not get embroiled, and is hoping that this does not escalate and blow. Russians, of course, are in a very different spot.

They would love to see this escalate. As we've all seen, it has taken the world's attention away from Ukraine. It's made it more difficult to assist and support for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress. Any kind of hot war in this part of the world just pulls attention further away from Ukraine. So I suspect the Russians are doing their best to tell Iran how high the stakes are here. The key player ultimately is the Iranians. You know, just to share with our listeners how unbelievable the dance is sometimes.

Peter, if you just pay attention to two conversations that happened in the last week, you have to scratch your head, right? One, the Iranians said explicitly, oh, no, no, no, we didn't know anything about this war. Hamas never told us. We don't know anything about this. This is all Hamas. Everybody

got the signal. They're standing way back. They don't want an escalation. And then an Iranian official said this week, well, you know, this escalation that's going on in the Gulf, it's because Israel killed an Iranian general

in Syria on the ground, General Mousavi, and everybody attended that funeral. It took Hamas literally five hours to say, that's not true. The Houthis are in this to help us. That is absolutely untrue.

And that official statement disappeared from the Iranian website. If we think there's noise and confusion in Washington, the only reassuring thing is there's noise and confusion in Tehran and in Yemen and in East and Yunis. But conversely, that's not reassuring at all. There's confusion on both sides. Let me take it to Israel for a minute, because here I am confused by what's happened really just in the last couple of days.

You've got Netanyahu saying, we're going to stay in this for the long haul. We're here for months, and we're going to keep pushing for months longer. And you've got generals saying israeli generals saying the same thing then at the same time they announce a troop withdrawal yeah now i guess you can look at this two different ways they've kind of cleared the north northern end of gaza and those troops need a rest um you know a little R&R before they go back at it in the south. There are lots of troops in the south there as well, and it's bitter and bloody fighting that's going on in there.

But the signal looked for a moment anyway, and maybe it still does, that the Israelis are prepared to start backing off. You are right. It is the second. You have to take a lot of what Netanyahu is saying now as an effort to keep his extremist right-wing allies in his government. In fact, the Israelis made a commitment to Biden.

They are going to start to draw down forces and withdraw them from Gaza. They took out five battalions. That's a significant number out. They sent another reserve unit home for 30 days rest. I doubt it is ever coming back, Peter. This is the beginning of phase three of the war that the Biden administration has pushed for. You withdraw back over the borders

and you engage in the targeted raids that you and I have talked about. That's where we're going now, and it's about on schedule. And he made that commitment privately to president biden in order to release the pressure that was on him so what impact will that have well if you there if you look you you also i think rightly made the point which is not getting attention in the news for a whole variety of reasons. There's fierce fighting going on in Gaza. So what you have is Hamas fighters that are coming out of the tunnels,

engaging Israeli troops on the ground. Most of the civilians, frankly, have struggled, as you know, to get out of the way. And they are out of the way. But there's fierce fighting even in parts of the north. I think there will be an all-out push by the remaining Israeli forces that are there to engage fighters to destroy as many tunnels as they can. But ultimately, this is going to wind down in the next two or three weeks, and then there will be, frankly, a go after the leader strategy, which you target the Hamas leaders.

And if you think about it, Peter, fundamentally it means it's going to be very hard for them to come out of the tunnels. Or wherever they are. Or wherever they are, because nobody really knows where they are. Right. Whether they're even in Gaza. I mean, we know some of them aren't. But we can assume that the Israelis, given their past, will be tracking them wherever they are.

The leaders. Yeah. Yeah. So you think we're into the moment of that shift, away from the widespread clearing of neighborhoods, down to the more specific targeting of leaders, wherever they are. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, there are still interesting estimates, and who knows?

Who knows? Because we don't have eyes on the ground in a very meaningful way. So if you look at the number of Hamas brigades, roughly 30, three are in fact completely disabled. Eleven are still capable of mounting some resistance, but they're having communication coordination problems. That's 14. And another 12 are now engaged in active fighting. So in a sense, this is far from the Israeli claim that they were going to destroy even the military capability of Hamas, which is the goal they announced at the beginning of the war.

Have they inflicted significant damage? Yes. We don't know how large that tunnel infrastructure is. We don't know what proportion of it has been destroyed. A significant chunk has what proportion. So this is why you would say goal's partly accomplished. That's it. But time has run out well time has run out in terms of support yeah um international support absolutely and time has

run out in terms of of the really more than run out frankly frankly, Peter, the really dire condition in which Palestinians living in Gaza find themselves. The urgent necessity for food and water to go in. Time has run out from that perspective. Time has run out from the perspective of international support. And Biden's signaling clearly their primary starting. Right. Right? Time has run out.

So it was a predictable calendar, and that's why people talked about it over and over and over again in December, beginning of January. And that's where we are. Let me ask you a question about Netanyahu before we leave the Middle East. You know, you and I have watched this guy for 30, 40 years. And the analytical world is littered with the thoughts of analysts,

past and present, who have written this guy off before, right? I did it a few times. Yeah, we all have and i you know a month ago there was there was nobody giving him a chance of surviving this is it any different today let's let's let's paint two scenarios here right The fighting diminishes and enough pressure built inside the country to say, well, we're not going to wait for the end of these targeted raids across the border. And in fact, we're seeing already one of these commissions has been appointed by the attorney general in order to start this process going. But let's say any kind of commission to look at the multiple failures that occurred at the intelligence level, the defense level, and the political level, nine months, 10 months.

What time of year is that? That's the election in the United States. Who wins that election? We get two different results for Netanyahu depending on who wins that election. If it's Biden, it's one result because he's already been pushing him on breaking up that coalition and thinking hard about the future of the Palestinian state. Another world, if Trump up that coalition and thinking hard about the future of of a palestinian state another world

if trump wins that election so i could categorize netanyahu as one of those leaders hanging on along with vladimir putin hanging on and hoping for a trump victory all right um we're going to take a break and uh when we come back, we'll get more to Putin, specifically in terms of the Ukraine and how this year starts off with that situation. And we'll also throw you one of your favorite kind of questions before we leave today, which is the sort of what are we missing? You know, like where are we not talking about that we should be talking about?

But first, this quick break, and we'll be right back. And welcome back, back to our first The Bridge episode of 2024. Janice Stein is with us, and we're looking at all the things that Janice Stein looks at and helps us try to understand. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. All right.

Ukraine, Russia. You know, things look like they were on the, looked like we were heading clearly to stalemate territory and possible talks and all of this just a couple of weeks ago. Now we're into like heavy duty fighting, big time fighting, and huge casualties, you know, on both sides, but specifically on the Russian side, the numbers of dead and wounded, over 300,000 is the kind of accepted figure,

which is, like, unbelievable. I know the Russians know how to take casualties. They've certainly proven that in wars past, but these are incredible numbers. As this year starts, as we are about to enter the third year of this war what um way what's your assessment of where we are because it looks like we're really back at it well this you're you're absolutely right we are back at it peter but we're back at it with russia having momentum right now despite the terrible casualties it's taken. Everybody knows, I think, about those air attacks, widespread air attacks throughout Ukraine,

the 29th, 30th of December. Why did these matter? They actually broke through Ukrainian air defenses. You know, Ukraine miraculously, without fighter aircraft, put together a patchwork of defenses that shot down Russian missiles throughout most of this war. Russia held back, experimented, figure-probed Ukrainian defenses. And what made that attack so significant? They gave you, that attack was what you might call an ala carte version of an air attack. Drones, hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles,

coming in different waves, designed in effect to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. And that's what it did. That's a game changer for Ukraine, if Russia is able to do that. Ukraine needs additional missiles. It needs additional ammunition. It will not be able to sustain the front line. That's why you're seeing the heavy fighting along the front line. The Russians have not advanced on that front line,

but if Ukraine has to operate without a capacity shield in cities and even to shield this fighting forces that will pose the most significant challenge to ukraine that it's faced in the war up to now right from the word go you remember that early attack on the airport in those first three days ukraine never never shield never yielded air supremacy entirely to the russians so ukraine has the zolensky and solution these people are very very worried at this point but it's not a stable front that's not what's happening but at the same time the ukrainians have made headway in areas, certainly the use of drones and their attacks on certain Russian installations, and in particular on the Russian Navy.

Yeah. So both sides have broken through in different ways, right? Right. So Ukraine has managed to clear the Russian blockade. It is now, again, shipping grain through the Black Sea. Russia's had to pull back its famous fleet from Sevastopol, which is, again, huge humiliation. So in a way, what are we seeing? Peter, we are seeing what you often see

when you think that some sort of negotiations are going to happen, when there may be some kind of ceasefire. You push hard. You go all out to improve your position on the battlefield in the expectation that there will be some sort of political negotiation. I'm reasonably cautious about this because I think that Vladimir Putin is gaining

the U.S. election. He will wait it out because, again, think about it. If there is a Trump presidency, what he will be able to get at the table will be so much better than if there's a Biden

presidency. Why would you go to the table before be so much better than if there's a Biden presidency. Why would you go to the table before November the 5th? And, you know, when Trump says that, you know, I would wrapped up in 24 hours. So you don't even need a table. You just, you know, he'll be on the phone and that'll be it. The war will end. You know, as we watch the Middle East, we watch the role that Qatar played. The talks in Doha and the support of the Qatari government in doing those talks. Is there a Qatar in the Ukraine-Russia story?

There is. The question is whether Xi Jinping wants to pick up that ball and play the role, right? Because I know many, many people think that Xi Jinping was such a disappointment when this war broke out that he didn't use all the influence he has, which is enormous with Putin, frankly, to get Putin to stop the fighting. But he remained the world leader

with the best relationship with Vladimir Putin and with a significant relationship with the United States where he to decide, and that's not completely out of the question. This is not a mad fantasy because he wants to position China

as the peacemaker. He, you know, he got the Iranians and the Saudis together to resume diplomatic relations. So this is a role that Xi Jinping would like for China. And if anybody's positioned to do this in 2024, it will be Xi Jinping. Score huge and if anybody's positioned to do this in 2024, it will be Xi Jinping. Scores huge points in Washington. And in that relationship between Putin and Xi Jinping, it is so unbalanced.

Putin needs him so badly. And Xi Jinping only needs Putin because they're joined in their dislike of domineering the United States that tries to export its global values. That's what brings those two together. Not much more. You know, I hear you suggesting how this would be a smart thing, a good thing for him to do. Xi Jinping. Is there any indication that he is? No, no, no, no, nothing. Nothing. He sent no signals.

There's no back channel stuff that I'm aware of that's going on. OK, you got us all excited there for a minute. Okay. Last question. And this is the question that deals with one of your pet issues, pet peeves, pet projects, which is what are we missing? What are we missing today with our focus as it has been just as it's been in the last half hour on those two areas of the world? What are we missing? So one of the stories, Peter, that we're missing is this incredible intensification of a civil war inside Sudan. It's a remarkable story that most of our listeners will remember because they will remember Darfur when that was in the headlines.

We've had the complete breakdown of a relationship between two generals. There are now something like, you can't put a real number on it, but hundreds of thousands of dead in the Civil War. Hundreds of thousands. No cameras there, no eyes on it. The Janjaweed, which we all remember, went into Darfur at that time and frankly committed genocide.

Their successors, the rapid support forces are back in Darfur. There is intense killing going on, not much humanitarian aid. And, you know, if you're in that part of the world and you look at the media attention, that has gone rightly so to Gaza, for sure. But functionally, there's the equivalent and greater immiseration and death and killing in that war. And you get a squib of a paragraph on the back page of our newspapers. Yeah. I know we've tried to touch on this at times, both with you and with Sam Nutt, who's been in there with War Child. But, you know, what's the bottom line, Janice? Why do we ignore it?

Is it as simple as, gee, they're black, and the other areas that we're focused on are white? I think that's a real element. I think there's a real element of that. And take that up a level, Peter. There's, oh, another civil war in Africa, right? We're doing it again. There's a coming famine now in ethiopia uh well you know how brian uh intervened and played a role uh in that but so there's a sense

of 40 40 years ago 40 years ago 84 in ethiopia right so is that. And then I think there's a third element to this. If you look at the two that we paid so much attention to, Ukraine is Europe, right? And so it's easy for people in Europe and North America to identify. And Russia's been such a longstanding preoccupation. And then there's the Middle East. You know, from all your years, you know we never take our eyes off the Middle East. It's not because it's the intersection of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, that we pay as much attention to it disproportionately

in comparison, literally to what's happening next door. It's hard to explain, but it's a long standing practice that we, the cameras are there. The eyes are there. The pictures are always there. And the pictures can,

can govern conversation, you know, so much in our world today. Listen, you know, I'm glad you raised it again, Janice, and governed conversation so much in our world today. Listen, I'm glad you raised it again, Janice, the Sudan situation, and we will come back to it. And we'll come back to you again. Another fascinating conversation.

What a conversation to begin yet another year with. God, let's hope that by the end of this year that we're not talking about these two areas in particular, plus Sudan. Anyway, for now, that'll be it, but we'll talk to you again in a week's time. Thanks, Janice. Pleasure, Peter, and Happy New Year to you and to everyone who's listening.

And you too. Well, there you have it, our first conversation of 2024 with Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Dr. Stein's take on where we are as this new year begins. And it's, you know, we tended to focus on two areas and adding Sudan as well. But we tried to put it in the perspective of we're looking at a global situation here because as these wars expand, we are getting into a more and more difficult situation. So the question was, are they expanding?

Well, you heard Dr. Stein's answer on that. All right. I'm always glad to hear your thoughts on these conversations that we have. We're trying to have them once a week. They will be on Mondays once we get back to a normal schedule. So next week, Mondays, with Dr. Stein. And I think we're going to try and include one element of this, what are we missing, in each of our discussions this year, because there are lots of other places as well where there are issues that could have an impact globally, and some already are.

So we'll have that discussion with Dr. Stein in the weeks ahead. So we'll try to always include a what are we missing element. Okay, I want to clear up one thing that I might have left a little clouded earlier, and that's about tomorrow. As we move forward, Wednesdays will be a kind of best-of edition, except this week, because we're already in a shortened week. So tomorrow we will have something. What it'll be, I'm not sure.

But we'll try to find something that you may find of interest to think about, to discuss. And then Thursday, once again, I just remind you now, because I'm sure some of you were writing as you were listening here, to enter that contest for your turn this week. And so the Your Turn angle this week, the question for your turn this week, is if you had the chance, if you had the ability to change one thing about our political system, what would that change be?

All right. And once again, this is not an opportunity to sort of go personal, you know, get rid of this person or get rid of that person. It's not about people as much as it is about the process, about the system. If you could change one thing, what would that one thing be? We're not looking for like a radical, you know, end of capitalism. You know, let's do that. Let's go to a dictatorship.

Well, I don't know. You tell me. What is the one thing you would like to change about our system? Okay? So we'll see what you have to say on that front. And this is the opportunity for those who've never written before to jump in and write. We have a lot of repeat writers every week. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But we like to see new ideas, new thoughts, new people in this process of your turn as well. So, start writing. TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com.

TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com. That's it. Our first show of 2024. Lots more to come as we venture into a year. Who knows what's going to happen in this year as it unfolds. Okay, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in a mere 24 hours.