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/

This is a conversation with Jeremy Schapiro - the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, focused on US foreign policy. We talk about one thing - Trump’s war in Iran - one of the biggest US military operations in two past two decades which - the longer it goes on and the more we find out about it - seems to get more and more confusing.

We talk about what was the primary reason to start the war and why now and how to make sense of the variety of contradicting reasons that Trump and his team gave on this and about the equally confusing war aims of this operation and whether this is a regime change or not .

About whether the U.S. was just following Israel in its decision and if that’s the case why, what are the chances of success of this operation and what does success actually mean, or whether Trump will now seek to de-escalate and retreat or whether he will double down - 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 James D Lindsay, a Research Fellow at University College London and an author of a book on what’s called a Madman theory - a foreign policy strategy in which a leader attempts to present himself as completely irrational and willing to inflict great damage on themselves and the others in order to improve their negotiating position and create fear around possible escalation - even if in reality, they are actually a lot more restrained and not as mad as it may seem. The pioneer of this theory was Richord Nixon but the person who is often speculated to truly master the theory is Donald Trump - although there is a big debate over whether he is playing a madman to get what he wants - or whether that’s just really who he is.

With James we talk about how Nixon tried and failed to use this strategy and pioneering this approach but we mostly focus on Donald Trump - about his first term and threatening North Korea with fire and fury, assassinating the Iranian general Qaseem Soleimani and threatening to leave NATO and his second term and his tariff war and attempt for Greenland takeover.

To be honest, I don’t actually agree with most of James’s conclusions. I’m not nearly as sure that Donald Trump is just playing a madman and that it’s all part of a rational, negotiating tactic as he is - I can think it could just as well be a genuine chaos and irrationality. And even if it is a rational strategy, I really don’t think that it has been nearly as successful as James argues, especially in Trump’s second term. And that - whether it is a rational strategy or not - it causes more damage to US interests than it helps them. And so in the podcast, we disagree and argue about both of those things. But nevertheless, I do think that the theory and the concept, the arguments and this whole conversation is really interesting.

➡️ 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 Dalibor Rohac - a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a long-time observer of European and transatlantic politics, and someone who is living intellectually and professionally between the United States and Europe. He’s originally from Europe, specifically Slovakia but he has worked in Washington for well over a decade - and so he has a unique view into a relationship in which the two sides are increasingly failing to understand each other.

We recorded this a few days after the Munich Security Conference, where this year the crisis in transatlantic relations became by far the most dominant topic even as we have the war in Ukraine still going on right here in Europe. And so we talk about what did the conference tell us about where we are - what was the point of Marco Rubio’s speech and his visit to Hungary right after, why did Europeans give him a standing ovation and whether Europe now believes that everything is fine again - or to what extent does it actually even matter what the US Secretary of State says in an administration where everything is decided by Donald Trump anyway. 

And we take a step back and talk about the bigger picture as well - whether Donald Trump is more a historical aberration and in 2028 everything will go back to normal or whether he is the start of a bigger systemic change in America - and why this question is fundamentally important to Europe and the rest of the democratic world. About whether the US is now trying to dismantle the European Union and how Europe should react or about the fundamental contradictions at the center of US foreign policy - 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 John Foreman - someone with a fairly unique background to talk to on the Russian war in Ukraine. John spent several decades as an officer in the British military but more importantly he served as the British defence attache first in Kyiv and then in Moscow where he witnessed Russia first preparing and then launching the war in 2022 up close - both of which gives him a unique insight into both the Ukrainian and Russian military, political strategic thinking - and in this conversation we talk about all of that.

We talk about what have the four years of war actually done to the Russian military. Is it broken? Is it adapting? Is it hollowed out and beaten down by the years of war - or is it battle hardened with unique combat experience and more dangerous than before?

And then we move to the underlying question of where is this war going: whether the current Ukraine negotiations are actually leading anywhere or are they are simply diplomatic theater, what is the fundamental flaw at the center of Trump’s approach to the negotiations, and whether Moscow is - with increasing casualties and economic pressure -  starting to actually look for a deal or whether it’s just pretending and dragging out the negotiations indefinitely.

➡️ 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 Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and an excellent analyst of transatlantic relations and European security - both of which are undergoing some pretty fundamental shifts. 

We talk about Greenland and why Trump’s attempt to annex it will be remembered as the beginning of a historic rift between Europe and the United States, why do MAGA Republicans seem to have so much vitriol against Europe and insult and berate it at every opportunity they have, about what should be Europe’s takeaway from this whole episode or about if after all this has happened, does NATO now only exist on paper - and if in practice, it isn't already dead.

And about the concrete things that Europe needs to do to get ready to defend itself without the U.S. - and about the historic and completely transformational shift in European security and politics that’s still largely ignored - but that is now already happening.