Decoding Geopolitics with Dominik Presl

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➡️ Geopolitics of The Western Pacific Limited Edition Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/products/geopolitics-of-the-western-pacific-limited-edition-map-print ➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with General Ben Hodges - a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe and one of the most respected commentators on defense and strategy today. He was kind enough to come back on the podcast to talk about the strategic shifts in the war in Ukraine - about whether Ukraine is starting to turning the tide in the war, why are policymakers in Europe and the US becoming much more confident about Ukraine's chances, about the impact of Ukrainian new strategies and tactics. Or why he believes that Russia is increasingly bleeding out and might not be able to wage the war beyond next year.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Probably the biggest trend defining geopolitics today is the global competition between two superpowers: the United States and China. And despite America having many major advantages, China is increasingly managing to catch up with the US - and it has been able to do that from basically nothing and in a record time.My guest today - Dan Wang - explains why was China able to do that and what that means for who will end up winning in the future. He is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and author of the book Breakneck, where he argues that while the United States is led by lawyers, China is led by engineers. And that as a consequence China is able to build with speed and scale that the US is struggling to catch up - but it's also why China tends to make pretty catastrophic decisions just as often as it makes the brilliant ones. It is a fascinating explanation of both of these two countries and their global competition and we talk about what it means for their respective futures, who is better positioned to win the new Cold War and much more.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Michael Hirsh, columnist for Foreign Policy and one of the most experienced observers of U.S. foreign policy and national security in Washington. In this episode, we look at a big claim he's been making: that realism has quietly become the dominant way of thinking about America's role in the world.We talk about what that actually means, why realism has become so popular, and whether the Trump administration really reflects a realist approach or something closer to chaos and isolationism. We also get into the views of figures like J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio or Elbridge Colby, or why Democrats are adopting their own version of realism as well.And finally, we look at what all this means in practice - for U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Europe, for NATO and alliances more broadly, and for China and the Indo-Pacific - and how this shift could shape the next decade of U.S. foreign policy and the world with it.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Jaak Tarien about two pretty big things that happened recently - the incursion of Russian drones that were shot down by Poland in its airspace and an incursion of Russian fighter jets into Estonia that were escorted by Italian F-35s out of the country. Jaak is a former Brigadier General in the Estonian Armed Forces who served in several high ranking roles in both the Estonian military and in NATO and finished his career as the Commander of Estonia's Air Force. He retired in 2018 and today he is an executive in an Estonian startup developing military drone technology and so he is the perfect guest to talk to today.With Jaak we discuss what both of those incidents mean - what was his view on how Poland dealt with the Russian drones in its airspace and what's a better and more sustainable way to deal with that than deploying extremely expensive guided rockets against much much cheaper drones. We talk about how should Estonia and NATO deal with Russian jets flying into its territory - whether they should be shot down like some people argue, who would be actually doing that and how if it were to happen, what does the example of Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet in 2015 in its airspace tell us about it or why is Russia actually doing these incursions - what is it trying to achieve and whether NATO shooting its down its jets could be exactly the reaction that Russia is trying to provoke.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Francis Farrell - a reporter for Kyiv Independent and someone who spends a good amount of time directly on the frontline in Ukraine, embedded with various Ukrainian military units. And who, because of that, has a unique, first-hand perspective about what the war on a tactical, ground level actually looks like today and how is it changing day to day. We talk about who's actually winning today, what is the trajectory of the war and how has that trajectory been evolving. We talk about a number of new tactics and tech that have appeared on the frontlines over the past months and how they have been fundamentally changing the fighting and what new tactics are both Ukrainians and Russians adopting right now. And also about Ukraine's manpower issues, whether they are being fixed and how much they affect the Ukrainian war effort or what impact the events of this year had on public opinion in Ukraine - and much more.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Patrick McGee, and it's perhaps a bit of an unusual episode. Patrick is an author of a book called Apple in China tells the story of how the world's most valuable company came to China to use it for its own benefit—only to discover, over time, that it was Apple being used, trapped, and effectively working for the Chinese state instead. But despite the title, this isn't just about Apple. It's really a story of how China changed over two decades - how it gained leverage over Western corporations, squeezed them for everything from know-how to capital, and used them to build homegrown rivals now competing globally. It's a story about how China uses economic dependency to build political influence and uses political influence to create economic dependency. And about how aggressive, smart and strategic China can be when pushing for its interests and how the West to its own detriment often fails to see that until it's too late. Even though the story is from the perspective of a private company, the story is just as much about China, the West, and their relationship—which is why I think it's deeply relevant for geopolitics.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Nick Hare, a former defense intelligence analyst in the UK government and a founder of a forecasting company Aleph Insights. But more importantly, he is what's called a superforecaster - someone who is exceptionally successful in consistently predicting the future and far better at it than the average population or even government agencies and subject matter experts. It's not about magic, instead it's about mastering the science of forecasting based on filtering out the noise, choosing the correct information to focus on, correctly analyzing historical trends, avoiding biases and a lot more, to predict stock markets, global geopolitical events or basically anything else. It's a fascinating field and we explain how it works, how he forecasted the Russian invasion of Ukraine or why governments and intelligence agencies fail to use these methods and tend to rely more on vibes rather than data. But more importantly, I take Nick's exceptional forecasting skills and get him to forecast some of the key geopolitical events of the coming years that will end up shaping the world - from whether China will invade Taiwan or how will the war in Ukraine end. It's a fascinating discussion and statistically, his answers are more accurate predictions of how these things will play out than you can find anywhere else in the world. 

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Sergey Radchenko. Sergey is one of the most insightful historians of the Cold War and Russian history. He grew up in the USSR, has spent years combing through Soviet archives, and his latest book offers a rare inside look into how Soviet leaders actually made decisions about war, diplomacy, and the use of power. But this isn't just about history because the past in Russia is still very much alive - and understanding what drove Soviet foreign policy shines a light on what drives Russian foreign policy today.And so we talk about why Russia's obsession with being seen as a great power still drives its decisions today, how Vladimir Putin's worldview was shaped by Soviet collapse, and how much of his strategy mirrors what Soviet leaders did during the Cold War. We look at why Russia keeps acting like it's still a superpower, whether Vladimir Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet Union or what lessons policymakers can actually learn from how the West handled the USSR during the Cold War and much much more.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Robert D Kaplan - a legendary journalist, academic, and one of the most influential thinkers on US foreign policy and geopolitics of the past decades. This year, he published a book called Wastelands in which he portrays a pretty grim diagnosis of why the world is increasingly becoming more and more unstable and dangerous, why is the United States but also Russia and China in decline that is only getting faster and why what's coming is more chaos, more instability, violence and danger - as well, as what can we do to avoid it. We talk about all of that and much more - in what I think is pretty fascinating conversation.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Gregory Smith, a policy analyst at Rand focusing on the influence of AI and emerging technologies on geopolitics. And this was - and I hope I don't offend any of my other guests by saying - one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever had on the podcast.Today, we are at a point when there's a realistic chance that in the next decade or so we might get an AGI - artificial general intelligence or even ASI - artificial superintelligence: a next stage of AI that would be able to do everything that humans can and possibly even significantly better. If that happens it will radically transform every aspect of our lives but while the impact on other areas is widely discussed - how it might reshape geopolitics is largely ignored - even though its impact would be absolutely transformational. Greg and his colleagues at Rand recently published an extremely interesting paper where they for the first time try to explore what that might look like - and they present 8 different scenarios of how AGI can transform the global world order. Most of them are pretty bad but all of them are fascinating - leading to a rise of new superpowers, fall of the old ones and a fundamentally different world. And in this conversation, we discuss what that world might look like.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Anne Applebaum -  a historian focusing on Russia and Eastern Europe and one of the most respected thinkers on international relations, democracy and foreign policy in the world. I used the opportunity to speak with her to make sense of what's going on and where are we heading - from the US foreign policy and whether Trump is really turning on Putin, the future of US-Europe relations and about Russia and Ukraine: what's driving Putin and what we still fail to understand about him, what can convince him to stop the war and how that might happen or what does the future of Russia look like.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Jakub Jajcay. Jakub has a very unique experience and perspective. He has served in several elite units in the Slovak military, once the Ukraine war started he volunteered and joined the Ukrainian military, serving as an infantry soldier and later in a drone unit on several combat tours. And today, he uses his own experiences from combat in Ukraine to draw analytical insights - about the war itself, about the changing character of warfare or about the lessons that NATO should be learning from it. The combination of his highly analytical mind and experience is quite special and it makes for a very rare and fascinating conversation.We talk about why he thinks that FPV drones are overrated as someone who actually worked with them, how the reality of war differs from the media perception and what misconceptions most analysts have about what the war looks like, what's the real level of quality of both Ukraine and Russian militaries, how would a typical NATO military perform if it was forced to fight in Ukraine against Russia, the real reason for why the Ukrainian big counter-offensive in 2023 failed and much, much more. 

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with John Dotson, director of the Global Taiwan Initiative,  former U.S. Navy officer and an expert on Taiwanese defense and security policy. There are a lot of discussions on Taiwan and its role in a potential conflict with China but quite often in these discussions, Taiwan actually is seen as a passive actor. We talk about a potential war between China and the U.S. over Taiwan - and overlook what role would Taiwan actually play - but its role and its decisions would be pretty fundamental. I wanted to explore it in more detail and so with John, we talk about how Taiwan is preparing for a war with China, why do people in Taiwan seem a lot less concerned about this than policymakers in the U.S., why is Taiwan criticized for not doing enough or for doing the wrong things or how likely is it that China could get Taiwan without actually needing to fight for it.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Ali Ansari, a professor and a founding director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.Professor Ansari has incredible insight and views on Iranian foreign policy, its domestic politics and the future trajectory of the Islamic Republic. And so we talk about how the 12 Day War changed the country, how will Iran change its grand strategy after the approach that it has pursued for three decades seems to have failed, whether it will now race to get a nuclear weapon or why he believes that a fundamental change of the Iranian regime has already started - and why the coming years will see the end of the regime as we know it.

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Szabolcs Panyi, a Hungarian investigative journalist. I wanted to talk to Szabolcs because something remarkable has been happening in Hungarian politics. Viktor Orban, the prime minister who has ruled Hungary for over almost two decades is now for the first time ever, losing by a large margin in the polls to a new challenger. The elections are less than a year from now and it's starting to look more and more likely that Viktor Orban's rule might be coming to an end. And so we discuss why - who is Orban's new challenger, why is he able to succeed where so many before failed, and what would his victory mean for Hungary but also for Russia, Ukraine and European politics at large. 

➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Fabian Hoffman, a Doctoral Research Fellow at the University who's focusing on missiles of all kinds and he's been doing a fantastic job popularizing and explaining this quite niche topic on his Twitter and Substack. It's quite a sobering conversation. Missiles in general are becoming increasingly important part of warfare in conflicts from Ukraine to the Middle East and their importance is only gonna grow - and Fabian talks about why he believes that Europe is extremely unprepared for this - why it lacks both air defensive and offensive capabilities, why its falling miles behind Russia which has drastically increased its production and why he believes that Russia is actually stockpiling their missiles for a contingency of a war with NATO, rather than just using them in Ukraine. We also talk about how Israel's Iron Dome actually performed in its war with Iran, whether the plan for a golden dome that the Trump administration is planning to spend hundreds of billions of dollars makes sense, why Europe's air defense policy is completely wrong and it's never gonna work and much, much more. 

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Sir Lawrence Freedman, a legendary British historian of war, strategy and foreign policy and a frequent commentator on war and strategy of today, as well. I took this opportunity to sort of pick his brain on the main conflicts - starting in the Middle East and trying to understand whether Israel can consider the 12 day war against Iran a success, whether it made sense for the US to join in or what would he do now if he were the supreme leader in Tehran. And then we talk about the big picture in Ukraine. About why Russia is stuck fighting the war with no real good way out, whether we will see a negotiated settlement and what it might look or whether the result will be decided on the battlefield, how long can the war possibly go on or why drones are not really the future of war the way we think they are. 

➡️ The Substack post I mentioned: https://stationzero.substack.com/p/why-dictatorships-actually-fall-and?r=568dwe➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

Watch the full episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4vQiQmqq38Ymia0LYZiAzs?si=qkL_PYGkTvSYzVz98wZTNw➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Sarah Paine discussess what is actually China's Grand Strategy - and what it means for the rest of the world.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with George Barros from the Institute for the Study of War who leads a team that has been monitoring and reporting on the war in Ukraine every day for the past 3 and half years. I freely admit that I did not expect the war to last nearly as long as it has and so we talk about how long it can realistically go on, when does George expect it end and what is the most likely scenario in which that happens. We talk about what reaching 1 million casualties actually mean for Russia, how sustainable is for Russia to keep this rate of losses, what are the main pressures on its war effort and what's likely to break first - or why the narrative of the Russian infinite manpower pool is a myth. Or how sustainable all of this is for Ukraine and whether Ukraine can afford to fight this way for years to come. 

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a second part of the conversation with Sarah Paine, a professor of History and Grand Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. You can find the first part on Youtube and other podcasting platforms.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Zineb Riboua, a Middle East expert and a research fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East - about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran. We talk about what are really the Israeli goals with this operation, whether they can succeed in completely destroying Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions or how much damage they already did. About what has been the role of the Trump administration and whether Trump was in on this from the start or if he's now just trying to take credit - whether Israel is really pursuing a regime change and how likely that is or how vulnerable is Iran to a domestic coup, revolution and what the most likely scenarios are. And about much, much more.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Christopher Kirschoff. Chris founded and led the Defense Innovation Unit, also known as Unit X - an organisation within the Pentagon tasked with finding the most innovative emerging technology - anything from flying cars to microsatellites - and implementing it into the military. That makes him a unique person to talk to about where this innovation is going but also about why is it often so hard for governments to keep up with pace of technology and why organisations like governments and militaries often fight against innovation rather than embracing it - or how do the United States, Europe, China or Russia compare in their ability to innovate and who's winning the new tech race of today.

The theory goes: China's in decline, so if it ever wants to invade Taiwan, it has to do it soon.But what if that theory depends on the wrong assumption? And who does Beijing actually see as the declining power?

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThere's probably no other bilateral relationship in global politics today that is as significant—and draws as much speculation—as the partnership between Russia and China. Together, these two countries might be capable of reshaping the global order, challenging the U.S. dominance, and influencing almost every global geopolitical issue. But there's still a lot of questions about what actually drives their cooperation, how deep or shallow their partnership truly is, and whether it's more likely to grow even closer or fall apart in the future. And so in this conversation, I speak with Elizabeth Wishnick, an expert on Sino-Russian relations and a researcher at the Center for Naval Analyses and at Columbia University. I try to understand how do the two countries actually see each other: what does China think about the war in Ukraine, whether Russia was expecting more help from China in the war, what would Russia do in case of a war over Taiwan, or  whether the West can succeed in driving a wedge between them and much more.

The age of human infantry is slowly inching to its end. And it's closer than you might think.Ukraine is already running drone-only assaults. Commercial sector is quickly ramping up development and production of sophisticated humanoid robots. And when the next major war breaks out, the first thing to disappear might be human soldiers on the front line.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comWith the war in Ukraine still ongoing, it's not surprising that conventional warfare usually dominates the headlines but underneath this traditional battlefield there are other types of conflict taking place as well that are a lot more quiet but just as consequential. From covert influence operations, proxy militias to economic pressure and cyberattacks, countries like Iran, Russia, and China have become extremely good at waging wars that don't look like wars in the traditional sense. But that can be just as powerful and sometimes even more effective. And while this kind of warfare isn't new, it feels like we've entered a golden age of it.And so in this conversation, I spoke with Seth Jones, Director of the International Security Program at CSIS, and one of the leading experts on irregular warfare on the different tactics and strategies of the three leading hybrid warfare powers —Iran, Russia, and China. We discuss the strengths and vulnerabilities of each country's approach, the effectiveness of their influence operations, why the U.S. seems to lag behind in this area or what role hybrid warfare plays in the war in Ukraine and much more.

Viktor Orbán, Hungary's Prime Minister, has a big problem.After dominating Hungary for the past 15 years, unchallenged, unbothered, and admired by populists everywhere, polls now show that he's losing to a new opponent, with elections less than a year away.And it looks like his challenger found a strategy that - if successful - many European politicians might be tempted to try as well.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comIn the current war in Ukraine, there is likely no other topic that would be both so important and so wildly misunderstood as the issue of the Russian economy. The importance is quite obvious - without a functioning economy, Russia wouldn't be able to finance the war. But in terms of how the economy is actually doing and how will it do in the future, that's much less clear - and the views range from Russian economy being an unstoppable juggernaut with sanctions only making it stronger to the Russian economy collapsing since the first day of the war - neither of which are actually accurate. After all, most people are not economists and this is largely an unprecedented situation.And so, I decided to speak with someone who both knows more about this than anyone else and who is able to give a very pragmatic and objective view of where we stand: an expert on the Russian economy Janis Kluge, from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. And so in this conversation, we talk about how the Russian economy is actually doing. How long can Russia actually afford to finance the war, what kind of economic damage it would take to force to rethink its plan for Ukraine and whether that is likely to happen, whether the Russian economy is overheating and what does that really mean or what would happen if the war ends and the money stops flowing into the economy - and whether the Russian government can afford that.

This is a conversation with Mujtaba Rahman. Mij is what you would call an insider of European politics. He leads the European section of the Eurasia Group and a big part of his job is to know what is going on behind the scenes, not just what you can read in the news but what European leaders really think, say and do when there are no cameras. And so it was a perfect opportunity to dive deep into European politics. We talked about whether Europe has a strategy for what do with Ukraine and Russia, what do European leaders really think about Donald Trump behind closed doors and how are they already preparing for Europe without the U.S. Or how likely is it that anti-establishment politicians in France, UK or Germany will dominate elections in the coming years and completely turn all those policies upside down. I think it's a fascinating conversation and it's always a pleasure to talk to someone who knows so much. ➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Anschel Pfeffer, a veteran journalist and the correspondent for the Economist based in Israel. And in this conversation, we talk about two things. About Israel's changing foreign policy - why is it growing increasingly expansionist, how has it fundamentally changed since the October 7th, whether Israel will attack Iran, why the Israeli military is starting to be dangerously overstretched or why the Trump-Netenyahu bromance is already over.But before we get to that, we dive quite deep into what's increasingly shaping Israel's foreign policy - its domestic political crisis, growing societal polarization and what Anschel calls an "existential crisis". 

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Justin Bronk - a military aviation expert and a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI. We dive deep into the recently revealed American and Chinese 6th generation fighter jets - how will they change warfare and who's ahead in this race for air dominance, and whether Europe and Russia could catch up. And how other technologies like collaborative combat aircraft - basically swarms of drones flying together with planes piloted by humans - are going to change what air combat has looked like for decades.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Professor Sarah C.M. Paine—one of the sharpest minds on grand strategy and on how great powers rise and fall. We talk about why Russia, China, and even the U.S. often misunderstand their own strengths, repeat the same strategic mistakes, and ultimately sabotage themselves from within. If you want to understand why grand strategy fails, and what that means for the next decade of global competition, this one's worth your time.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Mark Galeotti - a Russia expert and one of the most respected and interesting voices to listen to when it comes to anything Russian. In this conversation, we talk about the ongoing U.S.-Russian negotiations - whether Putin would actually accept a peace deal, what do Russian want to actually get out of it and why are they able to manipulate their American counterparts. And also, why 2026 will be a very painful year for Russia or why the Russian sabotage campaign in Europe might backfire.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Edward Arnold, a Research Fellow at RUSI and one of the clearest voices on European defense today. For decades, Europe's security has relied on the assumption that the United States would always be there to lead, to help, and to fight if needed. But that assumption is quickly eroding and regardless of who sits in the White House, it's becoming clear that Europe will have to rely more on itself.In this conversation, I wanted to explore what that actually means in practice. I asked Ed three big questions: First, what's broken in Europe's current defense architecture that prevents it from standing on its own? Second, what would a credible, self-reliant European defense actually look like? And third, what kinds of reforms and political will would be needed to get there and whether we are on the right path.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Keir Giles, one of the leading experts on Russia and European security, and a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House. Keir has spent decades studying Russia, its military strategy, and how Europe has responded - or failed to respond - to the growing threat from the East.In this episode, I wanted to explore three main questions: First, how grave and imminent the Russian threat to Europe actually is. Second, whether Europe is truly prepared for war if it comes to that. And third, what happens if the U.S. pulls back from European defense and Europe has to fend for itself.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Kateryna Bondar, a Ukrainian expert on emerging military technology, a former advisor of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.When people talk about the role of technology in the war in Ukraine, it usually doesn't feel like that much new development is happening - after all, we have been seeing drones in the war for over 3 years. But the reality is actually the opposite - the war in Ukraine is quickly becoming a lot more futuristic than I personally realized and technology that's already being deployed and tested on the battlefield every day, is something that most people would have probably thought is many years away. Whether that's major attacks carried out only by unmanned vehicles, fully autonomous drones or the Ukrainian ambition of fully replacing human soldiers with robots - those are things that sound unreal but already happening. War is literally changing in front of our eyes and the change is getting faster. This conversation, will hopefully make it seem a bit more real and show what the already futuristic present and very near future looks like.

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst and European security expert from the Institute for International Strategic Studies. We've had a lot to cover. From the developments on the battlefield in Ukraine and the reasons for the Ukrainian problems in Kursk to the impact of U.S. military aid cuts and how much of the U.S. aid could be replaced by Europe and what it would take. And although since Monday, March 10th when we recorded this episode, the ban on the U.S. aid has been lifted, it's still pretty interesting. Both because it explains how dependent Ukraine and Europe is on the U.S. equipment and because the American aid can be always taken away just as fast as it was now given back. But mostly we talked about Europe's security. About why Europe needs to decide how much it's actually willing to risk for Ukraine, what's the real problem with the potential European peacekeeping mission in Ukraine or why Europe is now at the beginning of a seismic shift - and why it's never going to be the same again. 

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsCheck out The Counteroffensive: https://www.counteroffensive.news/➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Tim Mak, a Ukraine-based journalist and a founder of The Counteroffensive - a new type of a media organisation trying to bring authentic reporting from the war and from Ukraine in general.  I spoke to Tim to learn about how everything that's been going on is being perceived in Ukraine - how is the Ukrainian government trying to work with the United States after they cut off its aid - what are their options and whether they have a strategy for what to do. And about the changes of the public opinion on peace deals and war negotiations or about the reality of the critical minerals deal negotiations and what is all that really about - and much more. 

This is a teaser of a Patreon-exclusive geopolitical analysis—normally available only to my Patreon members.➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Michael Beckley, a professor at Tufts University and a co-author of one the best books on China in recent years called the Danger Zone. In the book Michael made two big predictions: first, that China's economic model will run into major problems - which seems to be already happening - and result in the end of China's economic and political rise. And second, that this will make China much more dangerous and aggressive and make an invasion of Taiwan much more likely - which we still have to wait to see. In this conversation, I wanted to revisit those predictions with Michael to ask how does he see China's rise and decline today. Whether China's economic problems can be reversed, how are they changing Beijing's strategic calculus or how likely is a major war in the late 2020s. It's, in my view, one of the most interesting conversations I've had on the podcast so far - and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

This is a teaser of a Patreon-exclusive content - geopolitical analysis usually only for Patreon members.➡️ Join the community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

➡️ Help to make the existence of Decoding Geopolitics possible by joining our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Ronen Bergman. Ronen is a journalist at the New York Times based in Israel and an author of a unique book called Rise and Kill First about the history of Israeli state-sponsored targeted assassinations. Ronen spent years working on his research, digging into stuff that's almost entirely classified and he spoke with dozens of former and current members of Israeli military, intelligence services and government - getting access that is completely unprecedented despite the fact that Israeli government and Mossad tried to do everything they could to stop him from doing that. In this conversation how do you research something like that, where does the practice or state-sponsored assassinations originate, why does Israel use it more than perhaps any other nation, how do its representatives think about it, when and how did these operations literally rewrite history and whether they actually make Israel safer or not. And we also talk about the ethics and morals of all of that - because I don't want to be glorifying it and one of the reasons I liked the book was because Ronen doesn't do that either and he is an Israeli citizen who is very critical to his own country. And he, in my view, manages to stay objective, and critically analyze and evaluate what his own country does.

➡️ Help to make the existence of Decoding Geopolitics possible by joining our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

➡️ Help to make the existence of Decoding Geopolitics possible by joining our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Anne Applebaum, recorded at the Munich Security Conference. Anne is an American-Polish journalist and historian who has been writing on Russia and Eastern Europe for decades and whose insights I consider extremely valuable. In the conversation we talk about the big speech that J.D. Vance gave at the conference how Europe should respond to the increasingly unpredictable foreign policies of the United States. And we also talked about Russia and Ukraine, possible negotiations and the end of the war or if this will finally be the wake up call for Europe or whether we will remain asleep at the wheel. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.comThis is a conversation with Soner Cagaptay, the director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute and a leading expert on Turkish foreign policy.Turkey is an increasingly influential player in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe but at the same time, it's rise and its strategy are hugely overlooked and misunderstood. And so I spoke with Soner about exactly that. About what is Turkey's grand strategy and what is it trying to achieve, how it's becoming a major power in the Middle East, why is it both an enemy and a friend of Russia, why is it even in NATO when it doesn't seem to be aligned on a number of issues with the majority of its members or what's the risk of war between Greece and Turkey - and much more.

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics ➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and one of the most influential and respected thinkers on U.S. foreign policy and global power dynamics of today. In this conversation, we talk about the return of geopolitics. About why are ideas about geopolitics that dominated the world a hundred years ago and that were at the beginning of all the great wars of the 20th century now making a comeback. And threaten to start other great wars in our time and define the 21st century as well. And whether and how, can it be prevented. 

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/ Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com

➡️ If you enjoy this podcast and you want to help to make its existence possible, join our community of geopolitics enthusiasts on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics Sign up to my upcoming geopolitics newsletter: https://station-zero.beehiiv.com/subscribe Thank you Conducttr for sponsoring the podcast. Take a look at Conducttr's services and its crisis exercise software at: https://www.conducttr.com This is a conversation with Jeremy Schapiro, a Research Director at the European Council on Foreign Relations and a former advisor and policy planner at the U.S. State Department. And this conversation is about a single but extremely important question - what will the foreign policy of Donald Trump in the next four years look like. And how is it going to change the world as we know it.  We talked about how Donald Trump's foreign policies actually created and who are the different ideological groups that shape them which is something that Jeremy wrote on quite a lot. And about what his policies will look like - on Russia and Ukraine, Europe and NATO, Iran and Israel and China and Taiwan.  My goal going into this was to be as unbiased and pragmatic as possible - to try to analyze what Donald Trump's foreign policy on different issues might look like rather than to judge him as a person because there's not enough of the first and more than of the latter. Whether it was successful or not, is up to you.