The Second Cold War Observatory

Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic with Mia Bennett

Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. In this episode, Mia Bennett—co-author with Kalus Dodds of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780300259995] (Yale UP, 2025)—discusses the state of the Arctic today, highlighting the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition, as well as how the region is becoming a space for experimentation in everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption. Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building. The consequences of this emerging Arctic Anthropocene are truly global, from rising sea levels due to melting glaciers to tensions between great powers determined to protect their territory and resources, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples who have fought for centuries for rights and recognition. If you are to read one book to understand the Arctic today, from its history to global stakes, this is the one. — Mia Bennett [https://www.cryopolitics.com/mia-bennett/] is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. She is a 2025-26 British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Outer Space Studies at University College London and a Fulbright Arctic Initiative scholar. As a political geographer with geospatial skills, she traces, maps, and critiques processes of Arctic frontier-making from the edges of settler-colonial states and orbits of space powers like China to the depths of Indigenous lands. She is currently examining how the frontiers of the Arctic and outer space are intersecting through case studies involving the rise of Starlink satellite internet and the development of commercial spaceports and ground stations in places like Kodiak, Alaska and Svalbard, Norway. She has done fieldwork on bridges, both real and imagined, in the Russian Far East, on a new highway to the Arctic Ocean in Canada’s Northwest Territories, atop the melting Greenland Ice Sheet, and inside air-conditioned offices in Singapore. Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300259995/unfrozen/] (Yale University Press 2025) Cryopolitics [https://www.cryopolitics.com/] (started by Mia) A complete list of Mia’s publications on GoogleScholar [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XQS-vU4AAAAJ&hl=en]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism with Thea Riofrancos

Lithium, a crucial input in the batteries powering electric vehicles, has the potential to save the world from climate change. But even green solutions come at a cost. Mining lithium is environmentally destructive. We therefore confront a dilemma: Is it possible to save the world by harming it in the process? Having spent over a decade researching mining and oil sectors in Latin America, Thea Riofrancos is a leading voice on resource extraction. In this episode, we discuss her 2025 book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, in which she draws on groundbreaking fieldwork on the global race for lithium. Taking readers from the breathtaking salt flats of Chile’s Atacama Desert to Nevada’s glorious Silver Peak Range to the rolling hills of the Barroso Region of Portugal, the book reveals the social and environmental costs of “critical minerals.” She takes stock of new policy paradigms in the Global South, where governments seek to leverage mineral assets to jumpstart green development. Zooming out from lithium, we also discuss the evolving geopolitics and geoeconomics of energy transition, critical minerals, and green technology supply chains. — Thea Riofrancos [https://www.theariofrancos.com/] is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her research focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She explored these themes in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020), peer-reviewed articles in Cultural Studies, World Politics, and Global Environmental Politics, and her coauthored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her essays have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, and more. Thea’s latest book, which we discuss on this episode, is Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton 2025). Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism [https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324036760/about-the-book] (W.W. Norton 2025) The Security–Sustainability Nexus: Lithium Onshoring in the Global North [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53e8fd0ee4b065351ce13257/t/63e5beb17cec867b1030ddb0/1676000945789/riofrancos+-+security+sustainability+nexus+-+GEP+final+.pdf] in Global Environmental Politics 2022 Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador [https://www.dukeupress.edu/resource-radicals] (Duke University Press, 2020) A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal [https://www.versobooks.com/products/2546-a-planet-to-win?srsltid=AfmBOooxHW23vlhQ4GUPyzOj2UlHiAytPLlmhZ3AUWKbbuiMT6c-bmi2] (Verso Books, 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Weila Gong, "Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities" (Oxford UP, 2025)

This episode explores what China’s subnational climate experiments tell us about the possibilities and limits of climate leadership in an era of intensified geopolitics. We discuss how China’s domestic governance dynamics matter for international climate cooperation and competition, especially as Chinese actors become central in the global low-carbon transition. Thus, we turn our attention away from headline-grabbing climate summits and national pledges to examine the less visible, but often decisive, actors shaping China’s low-carbon transition. Implementing a Low-Carbon Future: Climate Leadership in Chinese Cities (Oxford University Press, 2025), a new book by Weila Gong [https://www.weilagong.com/book.html], opens the black box of subnational climate governance in China and asks: who actually makes low-carbon policy work on the ground? Our guest, Weila Gong, is a visiting scholar at UC Davis’s Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior and a nonresident scholar at UC San Diego’s 21st Century China Center. She has held fellowships at Georgetown, Harvard, and UC Berkeley School of Law, and brings more than a decade of experience studying the politics and policies of low-carbon energy transitions in China. Her work is timely. Despite being the world’s largest carbon emitter, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, commitments that place it at the center of global climate cooperation and competition. We’re recording this episode in November 2025 as COP30 unfolds in Brazil, and at a moment when China is stepping into a more assertive role as a climate-technology power. Chinese officials and firms increasingly frame the country’s dominance in renewables, electric vehicles, and clean-energy supply chains as central to the global transition. Yet, as Gong’s book shows, climate leadership is not only forged through clean technologies or in international negotiating rooms and national policy announcements. It is also built, often unevenly, across hundreds of cities and counties within China. At the heart of this variation, Gong identifies a pivotal group of actors: mid-level local bureaucrats. These officials function as “bridge leaders,” translating national directives into locally workable policies, mediating between political leadership changes, and sustaining experimentation over time. In doing so, they challenge top-down views of China’s climate governance and reveal how bottom-up dynamics shape both domestic outcomes and China’s role as a global climate leader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

The end of aid? US, China, and the future of development

In early 2025, headlines announced that the Trump administration would move to dramatically slash USAID—the United States’ flagship development agency. For many, the move was surprising, even self-defeating: why would a president so focused on countering China weaken one of Washington’s most effective tools of soft power? At the same time, China’s development finance continues to expand, and geopolitical competition over infrastructure intensifies, raising alarm bells across Washington and beyond. To help us make sense of this moment—and the broader politics of foreign aid—we’re joined by Jack Taggart, an expert on global governance and development, who discusses what these cuts mean for U.S. strategy, China’s rise, and the contested terrain of development and aid in today’s world. BIO: Jack Taggart [https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/happ/find-a-phd-supervisor/dr-jack-taggart.html] is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at Queen’s University Belfast. His research spans international political economy, global governance, and global development, focusing on shifting dynamics in development cooperation, such as the rise of new state and private actors, aid financialization, and development finance transformations. He also examines global governance institutions and the growing role of “multistakeholderism” in areas ranging from economic policy to environmental treaties. Links: * The Second Cold War and Demise of the Western Foreign Aid Regime [https://www.secondcoldwarobservatory.com/dispatch-2025-2] by Jack Taggart, SCWO Dispatch * How to DOGE USAID [https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/how-to-doge-usaid/] by Daniela Gabor in Phenomenal World * Industrial Policy and Imperial Realignment [https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/industrial-policy-and-imperial-realignment/] by Ilias Alami, Tom Chodor, Jack Taggart in Phenomenal World * Rethinking d/Development [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03091325211053115] by Emma Mawdsley and Jack Taggart in Progress in Human Geography * Fictions of Financialization [https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745348896/fictions-of-financialization/] by Nick Bernard * Rendering development investible: the anti-politics machine and the financialisation of development [https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/10.1177/03091325241240741] by Jack Taggart and Marcus Power in Progress in Human Geography Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Seeing China’s Belt and Road with Ed Schatz and Rachel Silvey

EPISODE SUMMARY: What becomes visible when you shift the lens away from Beijing to how China’s Belt and Road projects unfold on the ground? Seeing China’s Belt and Road, edited by Edward Schatz and Rachel Silvey, answers this question by reorienting conversations on China’s global infrastructure development to their “downstream” effects. Instead of analyzing the BRI through grand geopolitical narratives or a national strategic lens, the book draws on fieldwork across Asia, Africa, and Latin America to show how local actors—mayors, contractors, migrant workers, and residents—shape and contest projects in practice. Contributing authors challenge simplified portrayals of the BRI as either neocolonial domination or benevolent development, instead revealing its fragmented, improvised, and negotiated nature. Our conversation touches on themes including the visual politics of infrastructure, how power flows through projects, and the agency of local people in shaping global connectivity. We also look ahead to emerging frontiers of China’s influence, including digital corridors and cleaner energy, offering a view of China’s evolving global presence. GUEST BIOS: Dr. Edward Schatz [https://www.politics.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/edward-schatz] is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is interested in identity politics, social transformations, social movements, anti-Americanism, and authoritarianism with a focus on the ex-USSR, particularly Central Asia. His publications include Slow Anti-Americanism (Stanford UP, 2021), Paradox of Power (co-edited with John Heathershaw, U. Pittsburgh Press, 2017), Political Ethnography (edited, U. Chicago Press, 2009), Modern Clan Politics (U. Washington Press, 2004), as well as articles in Comparative Politics, Slavic Review, International Political Science Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and other academic journals. Current projects include a collaborative effort (with Rachel Silvey) to understand the downstream effects of China’s Belt & Road Initiative, as well as a book about the rise of shamelessness in global politics. Dr. Rachel Silvey [https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/person/rachel-silvey] is Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute and Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning. She is a Faculty Affiliate in CDTS, WGSI, and the Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies Program. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a dual B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in Environmental Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. Professor Silvey is best known for her research on women’s labour and migration in Indonesia. She has published widely in the fields of migration studies, cultural and political geography, gender studies, and critical development. Her major funded research projects have focused on migration, gender, social networks, and economic development in Indonesia; immigration and employment among Southeast Asian-Americans; migration and marginalization in Bangladesh and Indonesia; and religion, rights and Indonesian migrant women workers in Saudi Arabia. LINKS TO RESOURCES * Seeing China’s Belt and Road: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-chinas-belt-and-road-9780197789261?cc=us&lang=en& [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/seeing-chinas-belt-and-road-9780197789261?cc=us&lang=en&] * Overview with contributing authors on Seeing China’s Belt and Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULuHvAhUV_4 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULuHvAhUV_4] * The Rise of the Infrastructure State How US–China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-rise-of-the-infrastructure-state [https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-rise-of-the-infrastructure-state] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]