Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

Epizode

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  Ex-CIA Analyst: America Is Choosing to Self-Destruct. And It Will Only Get Worse 15.08.2026 34min

  ➡️ 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. 
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  Ukraine's Top Drone Expert: This War Is Not What You Think - And The Reality Is Far Worse 08.08.2026 35min

  ➡️ 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.
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  Military Intel Officer: Russia Is Losing Crimea - And There's No Way Out 01.08.2026 33min

  ➡️ 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.
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  This Is What Happens if Russia Invades the Baltics - And America Refuses to Help 25.07.2026 32min

  ➡️ 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 newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/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.
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  Thomas Eder: China Doesn't Need to Fight America. It’s Preparing for Its Collapse Instead 18.07.2026 34min

  ➡️ 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 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.
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  Most Replayed Moment: Yale Historian on Why 2026 Is Eerily Similar to 1914 15.07.2026 9min

  ➡️ 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/
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  Eric Heginbotham: How China Could Take Taiwan Without Firing a Shot - And Why It Could Catastrophically Backfire 11.07.2026 38min

  ➡️ 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.
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  Most Replayed Moment: Ben Hodges Explains How Ukraine Turned the Tide of War 08.07.2026 9min

  ➡️ 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➡️ Sign up to my geopolitics newsletter: https://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/
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  The Reporter Embedded with Zelensky: This Is His Real Plan to End the War 04.07.2026 38min

  ➡️ 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://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/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. 
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  James Paterson: Why a New Islamic State Is Silently Rising in Africa - And Why Europe Will Pay the Price 01.07.2026 35min

  ➡️ 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://decodinggeopolitics.substack.com/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.
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  Most Replayed Moment: Michael McFaul on Why the Iran War Is Such a Huge Blow to America’s Credibility 29.06.2026 10min

  ➡️ 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/
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  Mark Galeotti: Why Russia Is Finally Starting to Crack - And Kremlin Is Running Out of Options 27.06.2026 32min

  ➡️ 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.
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  Most Replayed Moment: John Bolton on The Real Reason Why the Iran War Became a Such a Disaster 24.06.2026 5min

  ➡️ 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/
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  Nigel Gould-Davies: Russia’s War Is Becoming Unsustainable. Now The Real Crisis Is About to Begin 20.06.2026 32min

  ➡️ 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/➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/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.
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  Ravi Agrawal: The Iran War Is Trump's Biggest Failure Yet. The World Is Watching America Lose 13.06.2026 34min

  ➡️ 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➡️ Sign up to my free geopolitics newsletter: https://stationzero.substack.com/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. 
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  Sam Greene: Why Russia’s Elite Is Growing Anxious - And Why Something Is About To Break 08.06.2026 29min

  ➡️ 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. 
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  Reinier von Lanschot: Europe Has Reached a Breaking Point. The Race to Build a European Army Has Begun. 01.06.2026 28min

  ➡️ 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.  
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  Henrietta Levin: Something Huge Just Shifted Between The U.S. And China - And It's Very Bad News For The West 23.05.2026 33min

  ➡️ 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/➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/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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  Yale History Professor: We Are Sleepwalking Into The Next World War - And We’re Running Out Of Time To Stop It 16.05.2026 30min

  ➡️ 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/➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/➡️ Get Arne's book: The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict and Warnings from HistoryThis 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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  Ben Hodges: Russia's War Is Collapsing. They’re Running Out of Men and Bleeding Everywhere 09.05.2026 24min

  ➡️ 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/➡️ Buy your own Geopolitics of the Western Pacific Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/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.