Former U.S. Ambassador David Shinn offers rare insights into the shifting dynamics of the Horn of Africa.
In this exclusive podcast interview, he unpacks U.S. policy, regional rivalries, and the road ahead.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

From nuclear red lines to backchannel diplomacy, Eyal Hulata was at the heart of Israel’s national security strategy during some of its most delicate moments.

In this episode of The Diplomat, Hulata speaks openly about covert strikes on Iran, the maritime deal with Lebanon, and the sentence that made him a political target. From secret mediation between Moscow and Kyiv to standing in Bahrain and reciting “Women. Life. Freedom.” in three languages—this isn’t just a conversation about security. It’s about message discipline in a region where silence is sometimes the loudest statement. Joe Kawly pulls back the curtain on the hidden messages behind official statements—and what it means when Israel chooses to speak first.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

“We were not careful in Lebanon.” With that quiet indictment, former U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker begins a story that doesn’t read like memoirs, but like real lessons from the heart of war.

In this episode of The Diplomat, Crocker recounts surviving the 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, exposing how Syria used terror as a foreign policy tool, and warning why Bashar al-Assad was never the reformer the West wanted to believe.

From the disillusionment in Iraq—“We weren’t seen as liberators”—to the chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Crocker draws a map of where American strategy unraveled. His lesson? Wars begin in politics. And they end in politics.

This is a story about what it means to stay when others leave, speak when others fall silent, and learn from failure without flinching.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

Behind every nuclear crisis is a pattern of overlooked loopholes, ignored warnings, and political blind spots. From civilian cover stories to strategic exceptions, Henry Sokolski has spent four decades warning about the cracks in the global nonproliferation system.

In this episode of The Diplomat, Sokolski explains how enrichment and reprocessing became normalized under the guise of peaceful energy, and why those loopholes remain the greatest threat to nuclear restraint today. He challenges the double standards applied to Israel and Iran, dissects the illusions of deterrence in a multipolar world, and warns what it would really mean for the Middle East to go nuclear.

This episode doesn’t predict war… it warns of the quiet road that leads to it.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

In December 2010, a fruit vendor’s act of protest sparked a revolution. Weeks later, Tunisia’s longtime dictator fled the country—and at the center of it all was Gordon Gray, the U.S. ambassador whose private cables pulled no punches about what was really happening on the ground.

In this third episode of The Diplomat, Gray reflects on the moment when honesty turned explosive, what it means to listen instead of impose, and why diplomats today should be more careful with words like “red line” than ever before.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

When former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone spoke up about freedom of expression in 2013, it wasn’t meant to ignite a firestorm. But the backlash was swift, and the accusations - explosive. In this premiere episode of The Diplomat, we explore the thin line between diplomacy and provocation, and how one sentence turned into a geopolitical flashpoint. Amb. Ricciardone opens up about Gezi Park, the weight of words, and why empathy, not just strategy, might be diplomacy’s most underused tool.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.

From the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000 to the looming famine in Gaza in 2024, Ambassador David Satterfield has been in the room where decisions are made—but rarely discussed. In this first episode of The Diplomat, Satterfield reveals how Hafez al-Assad tried to sabotage Israel’s withdrawal by leveraging Hezbollah, how Syria blocked Lebanese cooperation with the UN, and why the crisis in Gaza is not just humanitarian—but political.

• Joe Kawly brings extensive experience from conflict zones in the Middle East to the power corridors of Washington. As a journalist, he’s seen how words can escalate a crisis or open the door to peace. A Georgetown graduate and former CNN Journalism Fellow, he’s known for connecting the dots others miss, so people don’t just hear what happened, they understand why it matters. As producer and host of The Diplomat, Joe brings clarity to diplomacy and politics, one conversation at a time.