Tectonic Plates

Episode 5: Back to the Future

Episode 5, ‘Back to the Future’, addresses two fundamental questions: firstly, are we witnessing the coming of a New World Order? and secondly, are the US and China locked in or headed towards a New Cold War? The international order is undoubtedly accelerating back to a kind of multipolarity which interpolates increasingly more elements of the Yalta world—of great powers and spheres of influence—and lesser elements of the Helsinki world—of cooperation and peaceful resolution of conflict, but where globalisation traits like powerful non-state actors and advances in cyber and artificial intelligence are a prominent feature. The question is, will the world slip back fully to a Yalta-style system? And if only in part, what other features will define this emerging order?

Episode 4: Trump's World Continued

The fourth episode, Trump’s World Continued, is about the foreign policy strategies, beliefs, and power plays shaping the US Republican camp and the second Trump Administration.  As mentioned previously in this podcast, President Trump’s first mandate was formally guided - at least initially - by what he called ‘principled realism’, which emphasised a foreign policy driven by outcomes, not ideology, yet balanced by Western and Republican principles. By contrast, his second mandate appears to be void, at least for now and on the surface, of any attempt at wrapping his foreign policy with any grand theories. Instead, President Trump invokes ‘America First’ as his only guiding principle, yet this only tells us so much, so this episode looks closer into the competing schools of thought within the Republican camp and within Trump’s second administration,and at the President himself, to try and explain the drivers behind his first 100 days in office and what may come next.

Episode 3: Trump's World

President Trump has demonstrated time and again that he values unilateralism over multilateralism, coercion and threats over inducements and persuasion, economic warfare over militarism, and a strange mix of social media and now TV diplomacy over traditional diplomatic channels. The question is: does all this amount to a carefully designed foreign policy? Is there such a thing as a Trump world view of sorts? This matters a great deal because, although US unipolarity is certainly over, in many respects Washington continues to lead the way and so just as the US was the main architect of the order that emerged from WWII, so too it will now be at the centre of whatever comes next. To address these questions, this episode introducesthe topic and explores the main underpinnings of President Trump’s foreign policy during his first administration, while the next episode will explore the emerging traits of President Trump’s world vision during this second mandate.

Episode 2: Game of Theories

You are listening to the second episode, Game of Theories, which is about the study of international relations and the theories that seek to explain the behaviour of states when they interact with each other, with a particular focus on great power conflict and US-China relations. The first part of the podcast provides a brief overview of the history of International Relations as a distinct political science, and the main theories that have sprung out of the discipline, while in the second, more practical part, I make use of these theories and other considerations to explain US-China relationsand explore if the two nations are headed towards violent conflict.

Episode 1: History Marches On

The geopolitical order of the world is changing, and just as tectonic shifts happen all the time below our feet, so our international order experiences constant change. This change is typically gradual and slow, but just like big earthquakes make our very own foundations shake, sometimes to devastating effect, when the plates that make up the international order cannot find the right accommodation, they too can unleash violently. Are we living through one of those moments? Whatis the state of our international order, and where is it headed?