Decoding Geopolitics Podcast with Dominik Presl

#92 Francis Fukuyama: Why the “End of History” Never Happened - And Why Global Order Is Breaking Down

➡️ 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 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.

#91 Nigel Gould-Davies: Why Russia Is Running Out of Time in Ukraine

➡️ 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/ 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.

#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.

#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.

#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.