Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl
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.
Margaret MacMillan Warns: The World Order Is Collapsing - And What's Coming Is Far Worse
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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 signific...
Ex-CIA Covert Ops Expert: What Europe Gets Wrong About Russia’s Hybrid War
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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...
Russia Expert: The Real Reason Why Putin Needs the War - And Why It Won't Stop in Ukraine
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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 co...
Imperial Collapse Expert: The Real Reason Empires Fall - And Why America Is Next
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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 h...
NATO's Ex-Military Chief: War With Russia Is Coming - And We're Running Out of Time
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➡️ 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...
Ukraine War Expert: The War Just Entered a New Phase - And It's About to Get Really Dangerous
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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 an...
Dalibor Rohac: Something has changed about America. It Will Reshape the World - And There’s No Going Back
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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 th...
The Professor Who Predicted the Iran War: This Is How America's Era Ends - And It’ll Only Get Worse | Robert Pape
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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 imp...
Ex-CIA Analyst: America Is Choosing to Self-Destruct. And It Will Only Get Worse
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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 de...
Ukraine's Top Drone Expert: This War Is Not What You Think - And The Reality Is Far Worse
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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 comb...
Military Intel Officer: Russia Is Losing Crimea - And There's No Way Out
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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...
This Is What Happens if Russia Invades the Baltics - And America Refuses to Help
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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 Sta...
Thomas Eder: China Doesn't Need to Fight America. It’s Preparing for Its Collapse Instead
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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...
Most Replayed Moment: Yale Historian on Why 2026 Is Eerily Similar to 1914
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Eric Heginbotham: How China Could Take Taiwan Without Firing a Shot - And Why It Could Catastrophically Backfire
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➡️ 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 likel...
Most Replayed Moment: Ben Hodges Explains How Ukraine Turned the Tide of War
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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 kno...
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 an...
Most Replayed Moment: Michael McFaul on Why the Iran War Is Such a Huge Blow to America’s Credibility
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Mark Galeotti: Why Russia Is Finally Starting to Crack - And Kremlin Is Running Out of Options
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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 sharpes...
Most Replayed Moment: John Bolton on The Real Reason Why the Iran War Became a Such a Disaster
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Nigel Gould-Davies: Russia’s War Is Becoming Unsustainable. Now The Real Crisis Is About to Begin
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➡️ 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 ec...
Ravi Agrawal: The Iran War Is Trump's Biggest Failure Yet. The World Is Watching America Lose
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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 peop...
Sam Greene: Why Russia’s Elite Is Growing Anxious - And Why Something Is About To Break
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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 reache...
Reinier von Lanschot: Europe Has Reached a Breaking Point. The Race to Build a European Army Has Begun.
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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...
Henrietta Levin: Something Huge Just Shifted Between The U.S. And China - And It's Very Bad News For The West
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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 thin...
Yale History Professor: We Are Sleepwalking Into The Next World War - And We’re Running Out Of Time To Stop It
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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 cal...
Ben Hodges: Russia's War Is Collapsing. They’re Running Out of Men and Bleeding Everywhere
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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...
CIA Russia Expert on What the West Gets Wrong About Putin's Russia | Sean Wiswesser
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➡️ 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...
Kate Bondar: Russia Is Quietly Building a New Army - And NATO Is Completely Unprepared
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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 c...
Jack Watling: The Next Great War Is Already Taking Shape. What Happens Next Decides Everything
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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 powe...
Michael McFaul: America Is Burning Down Everything It Built. Its Enemies Can't Believe Their Luck
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This is a conversation with Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and a special advisor on Russia to president Obama, professor of international relations at Stanford University and one of the most respected American exp...
NATO Information Warfare Chief: Russia's Plan to Defeat Europe Without Firing a Shot | Janis Sarts
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For over 4 years, Russia has been fighting its full scale war in Ukraine and despite all its efforts it’s not particularly successful at it. But for much longer than that, Russia has been fighting a second war i...
John Bolton: Trump Is Heading For Failure in Iran. This Could Be a Disaster For American Power
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This is a conversation with John Bolton - a former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump in his first administration, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and one of the most hawkish public figures in t...
#115 Ali Ansari: Iran Has Nothing Left To Lose. And They'll Burn the World Down With Them
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In all the analysis of the war with Iran, most of the focus has been on the American side - on what Donald Trump might want or what’s his next move. And somehow, we focus a lot le...
#114 Janis Kluge: Russia Can't Afford This War Anymore. And The Real Crisis Is Just Beginning
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The Russian economy is in trouble and the trouble is getting bigger - but its problems are different than what most people imagine them to be. Usually, the arguments tend to be that the Russian economy is e...
#113 General H.R. McMaster Warns: The Wars Are Just Getting Started. And Time Is Running Out
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This is a conversation with General HR McMaster - one of the most experienced, respected and impressive military and national security thinkers and practitioners of our time. He is a military historian, Senior Fellow at Stanford Uni...
#112 Nigel Gould-Davies: Something Is Breaking Inside Russia's War Machine - And It's Quickly Getting Worse
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➡️ Take a look at Nigel's IISS analysis here: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2026/02/russiaukraine-war-escalation-not-stalemate
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For a long time, the war in Ukraine resembled a bit of a stalemate. Russia gradually pushed...
#111 Mujtaba Rahman: Why Iran War Exposed Europe’s Biggest Weakness
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This is a conversation with Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director of Eurasia Group Europe and an insider and one of my go to sources on European politics. It has been a very dramatic year for Europe and it only seems to get more dramatic - and so we go through how has Europe been holding so far a...
#110 Jeremy Schapiro: The Real Reason Why Trump Attacked Iran - And Why It Won’t End Well
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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 mo...
