#90 Marcel Dirsus: Why Dictators Always Seem Unstoppable - Until They’re Not
➡️ 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 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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#89 Paul Scharre: The Real Life ‘Slaughterbots’: We're Building a Battlefield From Hell
➡️ 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 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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#88 John Bolton Warns: The System Is Breaking Down - And The World’s Out of Control
➡️ 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 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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Intelligence Brief: Why Taiwan Is Losing Its Only Way to Stop China
➡️ Geopolitics of The Western Pacific Limited Edition Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/products/geopolitics-of-the-western-pacific-limited-edition-map-print
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#87 Ben Hodges: Russian Collapse Is Coming. They’re Bleeding Out Fast And Their Time Is Running Out
➡️ Geopolitics of The Western Pacific Limited Edition Map Print: https://decoding-geopolitics-shop.fourthwall.com/products/geopolitics-of-the-western-pacific-limited-edition-map-print ➡️ 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 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.
About 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.