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This is a conversation with Olivier Schmidt, head of research at the Institute for Military Operations at the Royal Danish Defence College and expert on military strategy. As you might have noticed, especially if you listen to this podcast, Europe is not having the easiest time when it comes to geopolitics - it’s trying to support in its Ukraine with Russia, rebuild its militaries after decades of hibernation, deal with increasingly unpredictable and sometimes openly hostile United States, all while trying to understand and adapt to the entirely new geopolitical reality we find ourselves in. And from the European perspective, understanding where are we going and how to best adapt to it is both really important and really difficult.
And that’s why I’m speaking with Olivier today. He recently wrote an academic paper that basically lays out the 4 different scenarios that Europe might experience in the coming years - based on how hostile the United States will get and how united Europe manages to stay. It’s an extremely interesting and helpful approach that moves away from abstract anxieties and towards tangible realistic scenarios that help us understand what’s ahead and how to prepare for it. In this conversation we talk about all of them as well as what each of them would mean and what would be the best course of action in each of the four different futures we might find ourselves in.
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➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/This is a conversation with Andrew Badger - a former human intelligence officer at the DIA - the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, a lecturer at Oxford University, an advisor on geopolitics for some of the world’s largest corporations, and an author of an upcoming book on what I think is mostly overlooked but an extremely interesting topic - of how China in the past decades managed to mobilize its vast intelligence apparatus, its citizens living abroad, its private companies and basically everything it has at its disposal to covertly obtain some of the most advanced technology belonging to American companies.
And how this technology helped China to massively develop its economy, its private companies and its military in an extremely short timespan and basically catch up to the United States in a way that otherwise might not have been possible. We talk about how China actually does that on a practical level and why is it so good at it, even though it’s not at all the country doing that or how is the intelligence competition shaping the race for AI dominance and much more.
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This is a conversation with Shashank Joshi, the chief Defence Editor at the Economist and one of the best geopolitical and defence analysts out there.
We discuss one thing in this conversation - the new United States National Security Strategy - that was publicly announced in December 2025, that is in many ways completely unprecedented and that has triggered an immense wave of attention, backlash and worry among U.S. allies as well much more positive reaction from U.S. adversaries like Russia.
We talk about why that is - what is actually included in the strategy and what makes it such a big departure from the previous decades of US foreign policy and why it is such a big deal. How to read it between the lines in not just what it says but how it says it or what it doesn't say - and what it tells us about the foreign policy priorities of this US administration.
About why this document is bad news for Europe and why it should genuinely be concerned or about the reports that there is another version of this document - a not public one - that is significantly worse for Europe and why it might not be just rumours. What it means for the rest of the world - for China, Taiwan, Asia, Latin America, Middle East and what this document tells us about what the next years will look like - and much more.
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This is a conversation with Steven Everts, a former EU diplomat and the director of the EU Institute for Security Studies. Steven recently wrote a really interesting article that went sort of viral in European policy circles where he argued that at the heart of Europe's geopolitical problems is what he calls its "Psychology of Weakness” and called out what he says is the failing strategy of European leaders.
I thought it was really interesting since it managed to cut to the core of the chaos, uncertainty and anxiety that dominates Europe these days as we find ourselves stuck between pressure from Donald Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia. But since it only touched on many things that deserved more more attention, I wanted to have a proper discussion about it.
And so we talk about all of it: about what is Europe’s Psychology of Weakness and why it’s putting Europe in such an uncomfortable spot. About why there is often a big difference between what European leaders say and what they actually do. About what is Europe going to do with the frozen Russian assets, how it should and could stand up to the US or what could change the failing strategy and psychology it has today.
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This is a conversation with Chun Han Wong, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, author of the book Party of One covering how Xi Jinping transformed China and its political system and an expert on China’s internal insider politics. Few people understand what actually goes on inside China’s politics better than him - how decisions and policies are made and what drives those who make them.
We talk about what does Xi and other people in the communist party leadership actually believe in, what do they want, what are their deepest fears and what do they really want to achieve. About how China changed by Xi dismantling the collective decision making system, about whether China has a grand strategy to become the number one superpower or whether it’s just improvising, how Beijing thinks about confrontation with the United States or what the purges in the Chinese military reveal about its confidence and preparedness to take military action - and much more.
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This is a conversation with Linas Kojala - the director of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Center - and an associate professor of international relations at Vilnius University. Linas is from Lithuania and an expert on Baltic security among other things - and so this is what we talk about.
About what have the past 4 years looked like from the perspective of NATO’s frontline states - three countries with small populations that are often spoken about as the primary and most likely target for any potential Russian escalation towards NATO. How much more real does that threat feel here compared to Western Europe, how have they spent the 4 years since the war in Ukraine began to prepare and how prepared are they today. How do they view the possible departure of United States from Europe and why Germany is starting to become an alternative security provider in the region instead - and much more.
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This is a conversation with Gabrielus Landsbergis. Gabrielus is a visiting fellow at the Stanford University’s Institute for International Studies and former minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania - a role that he held between 2020 and 2024. Like many of his Baltic colleagues he held and holds a very hawkish view on Russia, on supporting Ukraine and on European defense and security.But what makes him unique is that he’s also extremely openly critical of European leadership on all these issues - criticizing what he calls Europe’s appeasement of Trump, weak lack of support for Ukraine and indecisiveness in facing Russia - all the while he has personal first-hand experience with the same leadership he’s criticizing. He has been in many of the rooms where the decisions and policies were made and he knows the leaders taking them.
And so we discuss the ongoing negotiations over the U.S. 28 point peace plan proposal, the European response to it, what’s going to come out of it and what Europe should be doing instead. And we also talk about Europe’s geopolitical strategy or the lack thereof in general - why does Europe seem to be stuck in a strategic impotence unable to take the lead or responsibility for itself, whether it’s starting to change or how it should be dealing with America led by Donald Trump and much more.
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This is a conversation with Victor Davis Hanson - a classics professor, military historian, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford’s University Hoover Institution and one of the most prominent advocates and supporters of Donald Trump, especially within the academic think-tank world.
If you’ve listened to this podcast before, you probably noticed that I am pretty critical of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. While I don’t reject everything he does, I have some pretty fundamental issues with how he treats Europe, NATO or America’s allies and its international commitments in general. And you also might have noticed that many of my guests are very critical of Donald Trump’s foreign policy as well - just in recent months I spoke with John Bolton, Anne Applebaum, Francis Fukuyama all of whom have been even more critical than me. However, I don't want to close myself off in my own bubble, and I think it’s good to be open to ideas of people with other views, especially if they argue in good faith and if we agree on some basic values.
And that’s why I'm speaking with Victor today. He is a pretty staunch Trump supporter but he also has many views that are not typically associated with Trump - he strongly supports NATO, he is a major supporter of Ukraine, he is hawkish on Russia and advocates for the U.S. to arm and he is overall the type that most Donald Trump supporters might call a “neoconservative” with views that Donald Trump himself has frequently criticized.
And so we speak about how all those things go together. How does protecting the postwar-liberal order go together with Trump talking about annexing Greenland and Canada, why didn't Trump end the war in 24 hours as he promised or whether he was naive in his plan for how to do that, how can Europe be in an alliance with a U.S. president who doesn't believe in alliances or why he thinks that Trump is the most pro-European U.S. president in history.
To clarify, I don't agree with many of the views that Victor has talked about on European or Americans domestic politics but that’s not what the podcast is about and I didn't want to focus on. And I’m still not sure whether I agree with anything that he said - but despite that, I think that it’s a fascinating conversation that I was really glad to have. And I heard a perspective that might not be the same as mine but that I still found to be really interesting - I hope you’ll feel the same way.
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This is a conversation with Francis Fukuyama, a professor and research fellow at Stanford and one of the most famous and influential scholars of political science and international relations of our time. Although he has decades of scholarship behind him, he is by far most well known for one book, titled the “End of History and the Last Man” which is both highly influential and highly misunderstood and in which he argued that following the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, humanity has reached the final stage of human government in the form of liberal democracy.
We talk about what the argument of the book actually was, why it is so often misunderstood, and why the End of History did not happen. About why history seems to have taken a turn backwards and why we are witnessing democratic backsliding and return of large scale wars and conflicts, why democracies everywhere seem to be going through major crises and how to fix that, or what - if the history is not ending - is ahead of us now. And what still gives him hope that liberal democracy is not going anywhere just yet.
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You can access Nigel's analysis at: https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2025/10/the-russiaukraine-war-has-entered-a-new-phase/
This is a conversation with Nigel Gould Davies - a senior research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and an expert on Russian politics and strategy. He’s also a former British diplomat who worked in Russian and served as UK’s ambassador to Belarus. And he’s also a brilliant analyst and recently wrote a very interesting piece in which he basically argued for two main things.
First, that because of several crucial factors that have quite dramatically changed over the recent months, the Russian strategic position and calculus has now changed as well - since Russia, according to him, no longer has time on its side and it’s becoming aware of this.
And second that as a result, Russia will inevitably become much more aggressive and confrontational and it will escalate its actions both in Ukraine and in Europe. It’s a really and though-provoking analysis and this was a chance into a lot more detail about what is happening and what it might lead to.
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This is a conversation with Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist whose research focuses on the fascinating topic of “survivability of dictatorships” - figuring out how and why some autocratic regimes fall while others survive and remain stable for generations. It’s a fascinating topic, and the discussion is roughly split into three parts.
First, we talk the theory: What factors make some regimes weak and fragile, while others are strong and stable? How do regimes typically fall? What follows next after that happens? Or what are the key warning signs that things are about to go downhill?
Second, we talk about the history and we apply the theory on the case of the downfall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. And finally, we talk about the present, and we use Marceau’s theory to stress test how stable or fragile, or several of the key autocratic regimes of the world today.
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This is a conversation with Paul Scharre - a senior researcher at Center for Naval Analyses and probably the world’s number one expert on the increasingly important topic of autonomous weapons - machines that are able to operate completely on their own, hunting down and eliminating enemies without being remotely controlled by anyone - and that make life and death decisions without any human input.
As sci-fi as it sounds, this technology already exists - it is slowly being tested in conflicts like Ukraine and it will almost certainly completely transform how warfare and war itself looks and works. And so we talk about all of that - from autonomous drones in Ukraine, the challenges and risks of giving up control over life and death decisions to how much longer do human soldiers actually have left on the battlefield before becoming completely replaced.
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This is a conversation with John Bolton - a former US ambassador to the United Nations and a former U.S. National Security Advisor in the first Donald Trump administration. He has held some of the highest and most important roles that anyone can achieve and had direct influence on some of the most important national security and foreign policy decisions. And he has also worked extremely closely with Donald Trump - and he knows how he thinks about foreign policy and national security better than almost anyone else.
And so we talk about all of that. About how Donald Trump actually thinks about foreign policy. How does he make decisions, who does he listen to? Why does he like Putin so much and why does it seem he changes his Ukraine policies every 5 minutes? What advice he would give to European leaders for the next 4 years or is he very worried about the fate of Taiwan in the near future and what would Donald Trump do in case of a military conflict with China - and much more.
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This is a conversation with General Ben Hodges - a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe and one of the most respected commentators on defense and strategy today.
He was kind enough to come back on the podcast to talk about the strategic shifts in the war in Ukraine - about whether Ukraine is starting to turning the tide in the war, why are policymakers in Europe and the US becoming much more confident about Ukraine’s chances, about the impact of Ukrainian new strategies and tactics. Or why he believes that Russia is increasingly bleeding out and might not be able to wage the war beyond next year.
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Probably the biggest trend defining geopolitics today is the global competition between two superpowers: the United States and China. And despite America having many major advantages, China is increasingly managing to catch up with the US - and it has been able to do that from basically nothing and in a record time.
My guest today - Dan Wang - explains why was China able to do that and what that means for who will end up winning in the future. He is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and author of the book Breakneck, where he argues that while the United States is led by lawyers, China is led by engineers. And that as a consequence China is able to build with speed and scale that the US is struggling to catch up - but it’s also why China tends to make pretty catastrophic decisions just as often as it makes the brilliant ones.
It is a fascinating explanation of both of these two countries and their global competition and we talk about what it means for their respective futures, who is better positioned to win the new Cold War and much more.
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This is a conversation with Michael Hirsh, columnist for Foreign Policy and one of the most experienced observers of U.S. foreign policy and national security in Washington. In this episode, we look at a big claim he’s been making: that realism has quietly become the dominant way of thinking about America’s role in the world.
We talk about what that actually means, why realism has become so popular, and whether the Trump administration really reflects a realist approach or something closer to chaos and isolationism. We also get into the views of figures like J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio or Elbridge Colby, or why Democrats are adopting their own version of realism as well.
And finally, we look at what all this means in practice - for U.S. policy toward Ukraine and Europe, for NATO and alliances more broadly, and for China and the Indo-Pacific - and how this shift could shape the next decade of U.S. foreign policy and the world with it.
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This is a conversation with Jaak Tarien about two pretty big things that happened recently - the incursion of Russian drones that were shot down by Poland in its airspace and an incursion of Russian fighter jets into Estonia that were escorted by Italian F-35s out of the country.
Jaak is a former Brigadier General in the Estonian Armed Forces who served in several high ranking roles in both the Estonian military and in NATO and finished his career as the Commander of Estonia’s Air Force. He retired in 2018 and today he is an executive in an Estonian startup developing military drone technology and so he is the perfect guest to talk to today.
With Jaak we discuss what both of those incidents mean - what was his view on how Poland dealt with the Russian drones in its airspace and what’s a better and more sustainable way to deal with that than deploying extremely expensive guided rockets against much much cheaper drones. We talk about how should Estonia and NATO deal with Russian jets flying into its territory - whether they should be shot down like some people argue, who would be actually doing that and how if it were to happen, what does the example of Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet in 2015 in its airspace tell us about it or why is Russia actually doing these incursions - what is it trying to achieve and whether NATO shooting its down its jets could be exactly the reaction that Russia is trying to provoke.
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This is a conversation with Francis Farrell - a reporter for Kyiv Independent and someone who spends a good amount of time directly on the frontline in Ukraine, embedded with various Ukrainian military units. And who, because of that, has a unique, first-hand perspective about what the war on a tactical, ground level actually looks like today and how is it changing day to day.
We talk about who’s actually winning today, what is the trajectory of the war and how has that trajectory been evolving. We talk about a number of new tactics and tech that have appeared on the frontlines over the past months and how they have been fundamentally changing the fighting and what new tactics are both Ukrainians and Russians adopting right now. And also about Ukraine’s manpower issues, whether they are being fixed and how much they affect the Ukrainian war effort or what impact the events of this year had on public opinion in Ukraine - and much more.
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This is a conversation with Patrick McGee, and it’s perhaps a bit of an unusual episode. Patrick is an author of a book called Apple in China tells the story of how the world’s most valuable company came to China to use it for its own benefit—only to discover, over time, that it was Apple being used, trapped, and effectively working for the Chinese state instead.
But despite the title, this isn’t just about Apple. It’s really a story of how China changed over two decades - how it gained leverage over Western corporations, squeezed them for everything from know-how to capital, and used them to build homegrown rivals now competing globally. It’s a story about how China uses economic dependency to build political influence and uses political influence to create economic dependency. And about how aggressive, smart and strategic China can be when pushing for its interests and how the West to its own detriment often fails to see that until it's too late.
Even though the story is from the perspective of a private company, the story is just as much about China, the West, and their relationship—which is why I think it’s deeply relevant for geopolitics.