➡️ 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://stationzero.substack.com/

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 powers have radically changed over the last decade and what the West needs to do to survive what’s coming next.

We get into why a beaten-down and much weaker Iran may end up coming out of its current war with the much more powerful United States in a stronger position than before, and what that says about American power. We talk about Taiwan, and why Jack's assessment of what's coming there is much darker than what you usually hear. We talk into Russia and Ukraine — why the West has consistently misunderstood about Moscow’s behavior and what are the costs of that, and why 2026 is the inflection point of the war and where will we go next - and much more.