#94 Gabrielus Landsbergis: Europe Is Being Humiliated By Everyone. This Might Be Our Last Warning.
âĄïž Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsâĄïž Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Gabrielus Landsbergis. Gabrielus is a visiting fellow at the Stanford Universityâs Institute for International Studies and former minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania - a role that he held between 2020 and 2024. Like many of his Baltic colleagues he held and holds a very hawkish view on Russia, on supporting Ukraine and on European defense and security.But what makes him unique is that heâs also extremely openly critical of European leadership on all these issues - criticizing what he calls Europeâs appeasement of Trump, weak lack of support for Ukraine and indecisiveness in facing Russia - all the while he has personal first-hand experience with the same leadership heâs criticizing. He has been in many of the rooms where the decisions and policies were made and he knows the leaders taking them. And so we discuss the ongoing negotiations over the U.S. 28 point peace plan proposal, the European response to it, whatâs going to come out of it and what Europe should be doing instead. And we also talk about Europeâs geopolitical strategy or the lack thereof in general - why does Europe seem to be stuck in a strategic impotence unable to take the lead or responsibility for itself, whether itâs starting to change or how it should be dealing with America led by Donald Trump and much more.
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#93 Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Is Westâs âTragic Heroâ. He's Bad News for Russia and a Hope for Europe.
âĄïž Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsâĄïž Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Victor Davis Hanson - a classics professor, military historian, a Senior Fellow at the Stanfordâs University Hoover Institution and one of the most prominent advocates and supporters of Donald Trump, especially within the academic think-tank world. If youâve listened to this podcast before, you probably noticed that I am pretty critical of Donald Trumpâs foreign policy. While I donât reject everything he does, I have some pretty fundamental issues with how he treats Europe, NATO or Americaâs allies and its international commitments in general. And you also might have noticed that many of my guests are very critical of Donald Trumpâs foreign policy as well - just in recent months I spoke with John Bolton, Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama all of whom have been even more critical than me. However, I don't want to close myself off in my own bubble, and I think itâs good to be open to ideas of people with other views, especially if they argue in good faith and if we agree on some basic values.And thatâs why I'm speaking with Victor today. He is a pretty staunch Trump supporter but he also has many views that are not typically associated with Trump - he strongly supports NATO, he is a major supporter of Ukraine, he is hawkish on Russia and advocates for the U.S. to arm and he is overall the type that most Donald Trump supporters might call a âneoconservativeâ with views that Donald Trump himself has frequently criticized.And so we speak about how all those things go together. How does protecting the postwar-liberal order go together with Trump talking about annexing Greenland and Canada, why didn't Trump end the war in 24 hours as he promised or whether he was naive in his plan for how to do that, how can Europe be in an alliance with a U.S. president who doesn't believe in alliances or why he thinks that Trump is the most pro-European U.S. president in history.To clarify, I don't agree with many of the views that Victor has talked about on European or Americans domestic politics but thatâs not what the podcast is about and I didn't want to focus on. And Iâm still not sure whether I agree with anything that he said - but despite that, I think that itâs a fascinating conversation that I was really glad to have. And I heard a perspective that might not be the same as mine but that I still found to be really interesting - I hope youâll feel the same way.Â
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#92 Francis Fukuyama: Why the âEnd of Historyâ Never Happened - And Why Global Order Is Breaking Down
âĄïž Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsâĄïž Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Francis Fukuyama, a professor and research fellow at Stanford and one of the most famous and influential scholars of political science and international relations of our time. Although he has decades of scholarship behind him, he is by far most well known for one book, titled the âEnd of History and the Last Manâ which is both highly influential and highly misunderstood and in which he argued that following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, humanity has reached the final stage of human government in the form of liberal democracy. We talk about what the argument of the book actually was, why it is so often misunderstood, and why the End of History did not happen. About why history seems to have taken a turn backwards and why we are witnessing democratic backsliding and return of large scale wars and conflicts, why democracies everywhere seem to be going through major crises and how to fix that, or what - if the history is not ending - is ahead of us now. And what still gives him hope that liberal democracy is not going anywhere just yet.
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#91 Nigel Gould-Davies: Why Russia Is Running Out of Time in Ukraine
âĄïž Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsâĄïž Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/You can access Nigel's analysis at: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2025/10/the-russiaukraine-war-has-entered-a-new-phase/This is a conversation with Nigel Gould Davies - a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and an expert on Russian politics and strategy. Heâs also a former British diplomat who worked in Russian and served as UKâs ambassador to Belarus. And heâs also a brilliant analyst and recently wrote a very interesting piece in which he basically argued for two main things. First, that because of several crucial factors that have quite dramatically changed over the recent months, the Russian strategic position and calculus has now changed as well - since Russia, according to him, no longer has time on its side and itâs becoming aware of this. And second that as a result, Russia will inevitably become much more aggressive and confrontational and it will escalate its actions both in Ukraine and in Europe. Itâs a really and though-provoking analysis and this was a chance into a lot more detail about what is happening and what it might lead to.Â
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#90 Marcel Dirsus: Why Dictators Always Seem Unstoppable - Until Theyâre Not
âĄïž Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopoliticsâĄïž Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist whose research focuses on the fascinating topic of âsurvivability of dictatorshipsâ - figuring out how and why some autocratic regimes fall while others survive and remain stable for generations. Itâs a fascinating topic, and the discussion is roughly split into three parts. First, we talk the theory: What factors make some regimes weak and fragile, while others are strong and stable? How do regimes typically fall? What follows next after that happens? Or what are the key warning signs that things are about to go downhill? Second, we talk about the history and we apply the theory on the case of the downfall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. And finally, we talk about the present, and we use Marceauâs theory to stress test how stable or fragile, or several of the key autocratic regimes of the world today.
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