Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl
- Episodes
- 165
- Released
- weekly
- Latest episode
- Nov 7, 2026
About the podcast
Decoding Geopolitics is a podcast that tries to make sense of today's dangerous world by talking with real experts on international relations, strategy and security.
Episodes 165
CIA North Korea Expert: Kim Jong Un Is Pulling Off Something Impossible
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with Dr …
Show notes
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➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Dr. Jung Pak - a former senior analyst at the CIA where she specialized on North Korea and who later served as the Special U.S. Representative for North Korea in the Biden Administration. Today she is a Distinguished Associate Fellow at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy at Vrije Universiteit Brussels, and author of the book “Becoming Kim Jong Un and someone with more insight into the country than almost anyone in the world.
Which is why it’s kind of incredible what she argues today: that North Korea is winning. In just a few years, North Korea went from a basket case to a country that’s never been wealthier with an army and military industry that’s never been more dangerous, fighting a war in Europe in which it plays an increasingly crucial role and a country that’s being courted by Russia, China and maybe even the U.S. to get Kim on their side.
With Dr. Pak we talk about how and why did that happen, what is North Korea really doing in Ukraine and what both Russia and North Korea get out of it, why is North Korea’s military so much more capable today than a few years ago, why is the Trump administration cancelling exercises with South Korea to not provoke North Korea or why are North Korea concerned about what Kim Jong Un might do with all this newly found power he now has. And much more.
Michael Clarke: Russia Is Making Its Final Desperate Move - And This Winter Will Decide Everything
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Show notes
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➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Michael Clarke, a military analyst, a visiting professor of Defence Studies at King’s College London and Defence Analyst at SkyNews - and this episode is a deep dive into all the chaotic developments happening around the war in Ukraine - and what will they mean going forward.
We talk about the United States cutting of intelligence and starlink for Ukraine - why was it taken away and why was it now restored. About the strange and sort of shady negotiations happening, why does Kremlin now says it wants Europe to be a part of it and why are European leaders starting to call Putin on their own, about whether it will lead anywhere and if it’s not exactly what Russia wants and what does the fact the United States seems to have switched sides mean for Ukraine and its military strategy.
And about who is winning the war at the moment, whether the long-range strikes, the movement on the frontline or something else is what really matters the most - and why Michael believes that the war is quickly approaching a breaking point.
Timothy Snyder: America Has Chosen to Self-Destruct - And Russia’s Real Problem Is Just Beginning
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Timothy Snyder - a historian working on Central and Eastern Europe, politics of Russia and Ukraine and democracy and the threats it faces.
We talk about the spectacular shift of the United States to align with Russia against Ukraine, about what is real reason behind it, how far it can go and what it can lead to or about the future of Russia, Europe and the United States - and much more.
Iran Expert: The Next Round of War Is Coming - And It Will Be Far Worse This Time
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with Dr …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Dr. Vali Nasr, a Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in Iran’s foreign policy and grand strategy.
Seven months in we are at a strange point of the war that Vali calls a holding pattern and which seems like things are kind of stuck. But my guest argues that this status quo is not sustainable - that it doesn't work for either side and that very soon this phase will end - and that and that a next round of war is coming after - one that will be far more destructive than anything we’ve seen before.
In this conversation, we talk about the theories of victory and strategies to win against both the United States and Iran, why they are mutually exclusive and why there can't be a negotiated deal. Why the American strategy to starve Iran out will not work, why this war is bound to expand and why Donald Trump has found himself in a similar quagmire as Vladimir Putin in Ukraine - and much more.
Margaret MacMillan Warns: The World Order Is Collapsing - And What's Coming Is Far Worse
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Margaret MacMillan, a historian and emeritus professor at the University of Oxford, whose latest work is focusing on the changing of the world order - the collapse of the rules based order that we used to live in and its replacement with something much more chaotic, unstable and dangerous.
We talk about why today is as significant as the biggest milestones of the 20th century, like the world wars or the collapse of the Soviet Union, if current American foreign policy is here to stay or if it’s a period of momentary insanity, if there ever was a case of a superpower voluntarily destroying its own alliances and why is she increasingly concerned about America’s future, what will be the long term consequences of the war in Ukraine and what is the future of Europe, or why we are living in a time before a major - and what will that storm look like when it hits.
Ex-CIA Covert Ops Expert: What Europe Gets Wrong About Russia’s Hybrid War
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with David Gioe - a Professor of Intelligence and International Security at King’s College London and a former member of the US intelligence, serving in the CIA and specializing in clandestine operations and covert action. And one of the most qualified people in the world to speak on the increasingly important question of Russia’s campaign of asymmetric warfare in Europe, ranging from sabotage to assassinations and gradually intensifying further and further.
We speak about what is Russia’s real strategy behind these attacks, what is it actually planning to achieve and whether it’s working, what has been Europe’s response and why does it seem so limited. About the risks and benefits of what Europe can do to stop Russia’s campaign, what happens if Europe hits back and Russia just keeps doubling down - and how do you escalate to de-escalate if your opponent is willing to take things much further than you are. And about what is actually going to happen - whether Europe will do something or not, whether the United States will join and how far exactly is Russia going to take all this.
Russia Expert: The Real Reason Why Putin Needs the War - And Why It Won't Stop in Ukraine
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Michael Kimmage, a Russia expert, the director of the Kennan Institute who previously served at the US Department of State, where he was responsible for the Russia/Ukraine policy planning. And although he is a big supporter of Ukraine, he has quite a different view of the war and where it is going than most Western analysts.
The conventional wisdom is that although the end of the war is not around the corner, we are getting to a final stage - since Russia is coming under an increasing economic and political strain, its military progress is slow and the costs and the pain are growing. But according to Michael, none of that matters because even though the war is damaging Russia, it’s actually making its leader and his position stronger rather than weaker as the war and what he calls Putinism are now the same thing.
And the logical conclusion that he argues is that the war is not going to end this year, the next or the one after - but that it’s likely to turn into a generational conflict and one that is unlikely to stay isolated to Ukraine.
Imperial Collapse Expert: The Real Reason Empires Fall - And Why America Is Next
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Peter Heather - a professor of history at the King’s College London and the world’s leading authority on the fall of the Roman Empire. Now this might sound a bit random since this is a podcast about contemporary geopolitics but Peter has recently written a book that takes his expertise much further. He makes an argument that all great empires of history go through the exact same cycle of rise and fall - including the present day American empire.
And that just like Rome it’s fall is caused by the same thing that made it a superpower in the first place - and that just like for Rome, it’s now on a swift and inevitable fall down. It’s a fascinating argument and one of my favorite discussions that provides a great framework for how to think about today - and what it is that we are - unfortunately - heading towards.NATO's Ex-Military Chief: War With Russia Is Coming - And We're Running Out of Time
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/➡️ Check out Adm. Bauer's book …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
➡️ Check out Adm. Bauer's book: https://www.amazon.nl/You-Want-Peace-Prepare-War/dp/9046833992
This is a conversation with Admiral Rob Bauer, a former Chief of Defence of the Dutch Armed Forces and until last year, the Chair of the NATO Military Committee - the most senior military officer role in NATO and one of the leading roles in the organisation.
In that role, he has seen the secret intelligence on the Russian build up in 2021 and their invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He has been in the rooms where world leaders discussed the invasion and he was responsible for the Alliance’s response.
All that makes this a unique conversation but today, he warns about a different war - a war between Russia and NATO. A war that he believes is likely coming - and that as he believes - we should all immediately prepare for.
Ukraine War Expert: The War Just Entered a New Phase - And It's About to Get Really Dangerous
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with George Barros, director at the Institute for Study of War and a long time Russia analyst with a deep insight into the war in Ukraine.
He and his team believe that over the past 3 years, the war has essentially looked exactly the same with only minor changes - but that has now changed and after 3 years, we have now entered a new and very different phase of the war. And after 3 years of relative stability, things are now quickly becoming a lot more volatile, unpredictable and potentially a lot more dangerous.
From the frontlines where both sides are increasingly pushing forward and using new tactics, the long-range campaigns are becoming increasingly destructive and intense to Russia, potentially preparing to attack a NATO member in the coming months and throw hundreds of thousands of new soldiers on the battlefield. And as the final limits that the war seemed to still have so far are increasingly coming off - it seems that things are about to get really out of control.Dalibor Rohac: Something has changed about America. It Will Reshape the World - And There’s No Going Back
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
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This is a conversation with Dalibor Rohac - former fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, now Director of Research at Globsec, and the author of a new book called Unshackled - in which he puts out a pretty serious warning about the future of America, of its geopolitical power and its foundations - and what it means for the world.
He argues that more than a military, what makes America a superpower is something else - its alliances, institutions, its soft power, the system of carefully balanced international institutions and relations - and especially its vast economic strength. And that while America still has the military muscle, it’s increasingly losing all the other sources of it - not because of its adversaries but because it is destroying them itself. He thinks this is bigger than Trump - it started before him and it’s not going to go away with him and while it’s already having serious consequences - it’s still just the beginning. And American geopolitical power, its role and influence abroad and in the end, the world without America as we know it, is about to significantly change.
The Professor Who Predicted the Iran War: This Is How America's Era Ends - And It’ll Only Get Worse | Robert Pape
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/➡️ Check out Professor Pape's …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
➡️ Check out Professor Pape's newsletter:https://escalationtrap.substack.com/This is a conversation with Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who spent the bulk of his career studying exactly the kind of wars that the United States is now waging against Iran, including why they usually fail and what they typically lead to - which makes him one of the most important people to listen to today.
But this is about more than just that.He argues that this war isn't just a random blunder by a chaotic president, but instead, that it’s a result of deeper, systemic changes that were long playing underneath the surface without anyone noticing - from a military revolution that flipped the global balance of power to the end of the global dominance of the United States.
He explains why the likely outcome is Iran emerging as the world's fourth great power, why China's lesson from this about Taiwan is exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks and why history will see the Iran war as the time when geopolitics fundamentally changed.
Ex-CIA Analyst: America Is Choosing to Self-Destruct. And It Will Only Get Worse
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Julia Curlee, who spent 25 years in U.S. national security, including 20 years as a CIA analyst, serving at the National Security Council and briefing senior U.S. officials. She recently left government and is now speaking publicly about what she believes is happening inside the system she spent her career working in.
The United States has spent decades building an extraordinary system for having the best possible intelligence and using that to make the best possible decisions which was always a big part of what made the U.S. as powerful as it is. But Julia thinks that this system is now breaking down and when that happens, even a superpower with enormous resources can become unable to recognize reality, anticipate the consequences of its own actions and can start to increasingly make self-destructive decisions.
She argues that this is what explains the Iran war and why the US failed so badly to achieve its goals but also a lot of other foreign policy decisions - and that this is about to get a lot worse and the United States is about to make a lot more potentially catastrophic decisions.
Ukraine's Top Drone Expert: This War Is Not What You Think - And The Reality Is Far Worse
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Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1804519707
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Illya Sekirin and in my view, one of the most unique conversations I’ve had on the podcast so far. Illya is Ukrainian-Canadian who in 2022 joined the Ukrainian military and served in the war, first in infantry and later as a drone pilot, operating drones in combat in countless operations and campaigns throughout the war. Through those experiences he came up with a lot of ideas on how to use drones in the most effective and innovative way possible many of which were adopted and this later brought him to the Ukrainian General Staff, where he ended up advising the Ukrainian top leadership on drone warfare. And most recently he wrote about those ideas in a book called Rise of the Machines.
Illya has a unique and quite rare combination of several things: extensive experience on the ground in frontline combat, the perspective from the highest levels of command, knowledge of military strategy and highly analytical mind which results in a fascinating conversation - on what is it like to be a drone operator in the war today, how is the drone warfare actually organized on a tactical level, what are the actual tactics and strategies that are being used and how are they changing, what is that decides who ends up winning in drone warfare or what do Western and military experts fundamentally misunderstand about the war - and much more.
Military Intel Officer: Russia Is Losing Crimea - And There's No Way Out
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with …
Show notes
➡️ Watch the full ad-free interview on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
This is a conversation with Philip Ingram, a former high ranking officer in the British military intelligence. In his career, Philip has planned and executed countless operations around the globe and that’s why he’s the perfect person to talk about the recent changes in the war in Ukraine.
We talk about Ukraine’s campaign of long-range strikes on targets in the Russian rear, from refineries to warehouses, about the campaign to cut off Crimea and about what are these operations really about - whether their desired effect is psychological or it’s about something else, how do strikes on a warehouse effect what’s happening on a frontline 1000 miles away and what’s the bigger Ukrainian plan and thinking about all this. And we talk about Russia’s growing problems - from the impact to the public morale or whether it will be forced to declare a mobilization in the fall - and much more.
This Is What Happens if Russia Invades the Baltics - And America Refuses to Help
➡️ Watch the full interview ad-free, join a community of geopolitics enthusiasts and gain access to exclusive content on PATREON: https://dub.sh/Patreon-Ruben-Stewart➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics …
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This is a conversation with Ruben Stewart, Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the IISS, about a a single question: what would happen if Europe had to fight Russia tonight, as it is, entirely without the United States. It’s a question that is both an increasingly likely possibility given the continuous withdrawal of the United States from Europe - but that also almost no one has really seriously modelled so far.
And so we get into how deep Europe's hidden dependence on America actually runs, how much it would constrain Europe if it had to fight alone and what would that actually look like - from the satellites and intelligence that would leave it half-blind, to the fact that NATO’s leadership is by definition mostly made up of American officers. Into why Europe would be forced into a completely different way of fighting than what most European commanders and officials envision or whether it could overcome its own political disunity fast enough to actually put up a fight.
Thomas Eder: China Doesn't Need to Fight America. It’s Preparing for Its Collapse Instead
➡️ 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 …
Show notes
➡️ 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/
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This is a conversation with Thomas Eder, Research Fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs, about how China actually sees the world - and why Beijing is increasingly confident that America is a superpower in decline. We get into this worldview - that the East is rising as the West unravels, and that China is on the way to take the top spot the way the US once took it from the British Empire - and why this belief is now driving Chinese strategy.
But we also dig into why China's own deep economic and demographic problems complicate that confidence - and why the conclusion Beijing seems to be drawing isn't to fight America, but to outwait it, using patience, pressure and incentives to win the contest, and even Taiwan, without a war.
Most Replayed Moment: Yale Historian on Why 2026 Is Eerily Similar to 1914
➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Odd Arne Westadt. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter …
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➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Odd Arne Westadt. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
Eric Heginbotham: How China Could Take Taiwan Without Firing a Shot - And Why It Could Catastrophically Backfire
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➡️ 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://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/This is a conversation with Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT's Security Studies Program, about a scenario that’s often sold as China’s safer, lower-risk alternative to an invasion of Taiwan - and one that’s also increasingly likely to happen. Eric and his colleagues ran a major war-gaming study on exactly this - what would a blockade actually look like and whether it would be successful.We get into why the war games suggest that an easy win is a dangerous illusion: how a blockade would be more likely to spiral into a full US-China war rather than remain controlled, why China may not actually be able to coerce Taiwan to a surrender, and what everyone misunderstands about what would it actually look like.
Most Replayed Moment: Ben Hodges Explains How Ukraine Turned the Tide of War
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➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Ben Hodges. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
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The Reporter Embedded with Zelensky: This Is His Real Plan to End the War
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This is a conversation of Simon Shuster, a journalist and an author of The Showman, a biography of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Over the past years, Simon has a unique opportunity - he spent years in close vicinity of Zelensky, including weeks when he was embedded with him inside the presidential compound. And so he got to know him better than almost anyone else except for maybe a few people in Zelensky’s family and inner circle - giving him unique insight into the mindset, ideas and personality of Ukraine’s leader.
In this conversation we get into who Zelensky really is behind the wartime image, what four and a half years of war have done to him, his dramatic relationship with Donald Trump, and most importantly how is he actually thinking about ending the war: whether he's holding out for total victory or quietly looking for a way out and what’s his plan and strategy to achieve that - not what he says publicly but what he really believes in the privacy of his own mind.
James Paterson: Why a New Islamic State Is Silently Rising in Africa - And Why Europe Will Pay the Price
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This is a Conversation With James Paterson, a research associate at the Lowy's Institute, focusing on terrorism and jihadist organisations, about a new threat that is almost entirely ignored by the entire world but that is increasingly tearing through large parts of Africa - a growing jihadi insurgency, that is the fastest-growing terrorist threat in the world and that is threatening to literally overtake entire states in West Africa - and establish a new terror empire, overshadowing even the Islamic state.
We get into how the leading organisation and al-Qaeda affiliate, has built a shadow state across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and grown strong enough to strike the capital and kill a sitting defence minister, why the region is now sliding toward outright state collapse, and how the West got pushed out only for Russia's mercenaries to move in and then fail - and why Europe is directly exposed to the fallout from all of this - from spreading instability to a new wave of migration.
Most Replayed Moment: Michael McFaul on Why the Iran War Is Such a Huge Blow to America’s Credibility
➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Michael McFaul. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter …
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➡️ This is a clip from an interview with Michael McFaul. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
Mark Galeotti: Why Russia Is Finally Starting to Crack - And Kremlin Is Running Out of Options
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➡️ 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 Mark Galeotti, director of Mayak intelligence and one of the greatest living experts on modern Russia - and we talk about why, after years of remarkable stability, a lot of things in Russia are now beginning to crack.
We get into what’s behind the sharpest fall in Putin's approval since 2022, why is there an increasing public criticism of the war and debate over whether it’s time for it to end or why the Kremlin's attempt to seize control of the internet triggered the biggest popular backlash of the entire war - and what's left holding the system together now that the old social contract between Putin and the Russian people is gone.
Most Replayed Moment: John Bolton on The Real Reason Why the Iran War Became a Such a Disaster
➡️ This is a clip from an interview with John Bolton. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter …
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➡️ This is a clip from an interview with John Bolton. You can access the entire interview ad-free on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingGeopolitics
➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
Nigel Gould-Davies: Russia’s War Is Becoming Unsustainable. Now The Real Crisis Is About to Begin
➡️ 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➡️ Full Nigel's report …
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➡️ 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
➡️ Full Nigel's report: https://www.iiss.org/research-paper/2026/05/the-coming-crisis-in-russias-political-economy/
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This is a conversation with Nigel Gould Davis - a Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the IISS. Nigel recently published a really interesting report about why Russia's war, on its present course, has reached a breaking point - when it is no longer economically and demographically sustainable.
What Nigel argues is that this will almost inevitably result in a major crisis, both political and financial, that is about to hit Russia within about a year from now - and why in order to keep fighting, the Kremlin will be forced to strip away the last freedoms Russians have and drag the country back toward a Soviet-style governance and economy, with all the social upheaval that it would bring. It’s a fascinating analysis that follows a clear logic and a chain of events - and it’s definitely worth listening to.
Ravi Agrawal: The Iran War Is Trump's Biggest Failure Yet. The World Is Watching America Lose
➡️ 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➡️ Check out Ravi's FP Live …
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➡️ 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
➡️ Check out Ravi's FP Live: https://open.spotify.com/show/4pbzJRK0uPozoTxxSZhpQS
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It’s now been a year and a half since Trump returned to the White House and in that short time, he managed to turn decades of U.S. foreign policy on its head - although differently than what people maybe expected. And so in this conversation with with Ravi Agraval - the editor in chief of the Foreign Policy, the host of the FP Live podcast and someone who has as they say the finger on the pulse of the U.S. foreign policy - I wanted to take a look at how is he doing at this point, what will be the consequences of his policies - and what might come next.
We speak a lot about Iran and about why it is Trump’s biggest failure yet and why it might be the most important mistake of his presidency, what options Trump has at this point to get out of this and why even the best ones are still really really bad or about how this war will fundamentally change the U.S. relations with Israel. But also about the big picture - about the ways in which the impact of his decisions will be around much longer than him - or about why at the same time the changes in the U.S. foreign policy are much bigger than just him alone - and why the whole world should realize that very fast. And much more.
Sam Greene: Why Russia’s Elite Is Growing Anxious - And Why Something Is About To Break
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➡️ 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/
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.
Reinier von Lanschot: Europe Has Reached a Breaking Point. The Race to Build a European Army Has Begun.
➡️ 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 …
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➡️ 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 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.
Henrietta Levin: Something Huge Just Shifted Between The U.S. And China - And It's Very Bad News For The West
➡️ 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 …
Show notes
➡️ 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/
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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.
These are the latest 40 of 165 episodes. You’ll find older episodes in the podcast’s feed.
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