Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

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It seems that something is changing in Russia and quite a lot. With Ukrainian strikes on Russian cities, the economy under a growing strain and the war increasingly being felt by regular Russians, it’s harder to pretend like everything is normal. And at the same time, the approval ratings of the Russian president has reached lowest numbers in years, we have previously unseen signs of public discontent and reports of a growing anxiety among Russia’s elites. 

But what will all of this lead to? Are we entering a new era of Russian politics and what will that mean for the stability of the country, its future trajectory and what the country will look like in this new era? To answer all that I am speaking with one of the greatest Western experts on Russia’s politics and society, professor at King’s College London - Sam Green.

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This is a conversation with Reinier Von Lanschot - a Dutch member of the European Parliament - who is a leading figure of a new recent and potentially groundbreaking initiative. He has helped to form a group of European parliament members who are all calling and lobbying for one thing - creation a European Defence Union - basically, the European version of NATO, without the United States. Built so that Europe can fight and defend itself on its own - in the case that the U.S. would not come to its aid when necessary. 

This is something that many experts have theorized and called for before, but this is the first time someone in Europe is really trying to turn it into reality - which is why it’s both a fascinating and exciting but also extremely complicated and difficult endeavor - but if they succeed, it would have immense consequences, for Europe and for the world. And so we talk about what a European Defence Union is and how they want to turn it into reality, whether they can succeed or who is doing its best to stop them and much more.

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This is a conversation with Henriette Levin, a senior fellow in China Studies at CSIS. She argues that something very very important has changed in the relations between China and the US - or actually several things - over the past 2 years since Trump returned to the White House. And that those shifts will have - and are already having - enormous geopolitical consequences - even almost no one has realized this change just yet. And that this change will mean pretty bad news for the United States and very good news for China.

We talk about what those changes are, which ones we have already seen at the latest China-US summit, why people in Taiwan might have a good reason to start getting pretty nervous and how all that might increase the risk of a potential conflict. And much more.

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➡️ 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.

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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.