Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

➡️ 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/

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/

➡️ Get Arne's book: The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from History

This is a conversation with Odd Arne Westad, a professor of modern history at Yale University. He recently wrote a book called the Coming Storm which is essentially a very direct and urgent warning - that we are almost to the letter following the exact same geopolitical patterns and trajectories that a more than a hundred years ago led to the the first world war - the greatest and most destructive conflict that the world has ever seen at the time. And that just like then, we are are sleepwalking into another world war, only this time, even more destructive.

We talk about how the exact same conditions that fueled the conflict back then are increasingly emerging today - from the global hegemon dismantling the world order it itself once built, a rising power that doesn't want to be contained, its reckless, declining junior partner risking to drag it into a bigger conflict, old alliances falling apart and new ones forming and a global situation filled with an increasing amount of volatility and unpredictability that only needs a spark to start a fire. And about whether and how it can be prevented or whether it’s already too late to do that - 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/

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/

This is a conversation with general Ben Hodges, the former commander of US Army Europe and one of the most well informed observers of the war in Ukraine. Ben has always been extremely optimistic when it comes to Ukraine’s chances in the war with Russia - often going against what everyone was saying at the moment - but today, it seems that he was right all along - as Russia is getting into more and more trouble in its war in Ukraine. 

And so we talk about what has changed in recent months that allowed Ukraine to seize the momentum and stop Russia’s territorial push or what’s the reason why is Ukraine’s campaign of long-range strikes against Russian strategic targets having such a massive impact. About how Ukraine dealt with its manpower problem, what would allow it to go back on the offensive and why is that so difficult or about what will happen in the war this year - 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/

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/

➡️ Get Sean's book: Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War

This is a conversation with Sean Wiswesser, a veteran CIA operations officer who spent almost three decades working for the agency deployed in various places around the world. And a majority of his career was working on and in - Russia - and in particular on Russian intelligence services - basically he was a spy, recruiting other spies.

He recently wrote a book detailing what he has learned about how Russian intelligence actually works, including everything from the Russian illegals and assassinations program, their preparations for invasion of Ukraine, their many failures and what almost everyone fails to understand about them - or what does someone with decades of experience of working on Russia think about the stability of the regime and where the country is going.

➡️ 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/

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/

Over the past year, something has been happening inside the Russian military that received very little attention but that will have - and is already having - pretty significant consequences. While the world has been focused on casualty numbers and frontline movements, Russia has been building an entirely new kind of army - one based on drones, autonomous weapons, and AI. It has been pouring enormous resources into it - and it's not a project for some distant future - it's already being widely used by Russia in Ukraine right now and it’s already changing how the Russian military fights a war. And even more importantly, it’s putting Russia way ahead of most NATO members in ways that should be setting off alarm bells in European capitals - but largely isn't. 

My guest today is Kateryna Bondar, a fellow at the CSIS Wadwhani AI Center who just wrote a major new report on exactly this - detailing how Russia is building this new military ecosystem, how far it's gotten, what will be the consequences of and how The West is mostly failing to notice and react to 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

➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/

➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/

This is a conversation with Jack Watling, a Senior Research Fellow at RUSI and one of the most brilliant defence analysts in Europe. He is the author of Statecraft — a book about how the rules of global powers have radically changed over the last decade and what the West needs to do to survive what’s coming next.

We get into why a beaten-down and much weaker Iran may end up coming out of its current war with the much more powerful United States in a stronger position than before, and what that says about American power. We talk about Taiwan, and why Jack's assessment of what's coming there is much darker than what you usually hear. We talk into Russia and Ukraine — why the West has consistently misunderstood about Moscow’s behavior and what are the costs of that, and why 2026 is the inflection point of the war and where will we go next - and much more.