The Global Agora

In this episode of The Global Agora, I speak with Tom Nichols , a staff writer at The Atlantic and professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, about Russian disinformation, Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party, and the future of U.S. support for Ukraine. What does Tom predict for the upcoming midterm elections that will be held on November 3rd? Will Trump...

Is NATO ready to fight tonight? On October 12th, at the Warsaw Security Forum, SACEUR General Alexus Grynkewich unveiled his “Theory of Victory,” aimed at blocking, blunting, and breaking any attack on the Alliance. We assess this vision with John R. Deni , Research Professor of Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) Security Studies at the U.S. Army War College's Stra...

Andrei Soldatov is a leading investigative journalist, co-founder of Agentura.ru, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), and a foremost expert on Russian security services. In this episode of The Global Agora, we discuss recent warnings about targeted assassinations of Western defense executives, the growing wave of Russian gray-zone sabotage as Moscow uses fear, proxie...

It has now been more than ten years since citizens of the United Kingdom made the decision in a referendum to leave the European Union, Yet, the latest public opinion polls show that as many as 59% of Britons would support rejoining the EU. Does this mean, however, that the UK is ready to return? How is the EU viewing the prospect of renewed relations at a time of rising Chinese influence, unpredi...

Is the firewall a viable political strategy, and how could centrist parties deal with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the radical Left? Alexander Clarkson , Lecturer in European Politics and History at King's College London, has an idea. What is it? Do the AfD and the Left represent the same danger to German democracy? Could the AfD make territorial demands similar to those of...

More than two decades ago, I started my journalistic career covering the aftermath of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. My very first on-camera interview was about the Dayton Agreement. I have to say that I don't cover the Western Balkans as extensively as in the past, but it is always interesting to look at what is going on in the region. So, at the Europe Future Forum in Warsaw, I sat down with...

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, and a columnist for Foreign Policy and Politico Europe. We met at the Europe Future Forum in Warsaw and discussed her new book, The Undersea War : The Battle to Control the Cables and Pipelines That Connect Our World, Russian sabotage operations, whether the West should give Moscow a taste of its own med...

The 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks are one of the reasons why I am a foreign policy journalist. One of my motivations has been to understand the world better. In this episode of The Global Agora, I discussed what happened before 9/11, on the day of the attacks 25 years ago, and also what the legacy of Osama bin Laden is. I talked about all of this with Peter Bergen , Vice President for Global Studies and F...

Imagine a situation where Vladimir Putin wanted to attack NATO from Belarus. Would Alexander Lukashenko be willing to cooperate? "I don't think that he has a lot of choices here," said Hanna Liubakova to me. She is a Belarusian journalist, political analyst, and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Hanna has been sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison by Lukashenko's regime. We...

What is the techno-oligarchy? What roles and agendas do billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and others have? How much do the interests of the techno-oligarchy intersect with those of geopolitical actors such as Russia and China? And where does President Donald Trump fit into all of this? I discuss this with Anton Shekhovtsov , Director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity and Visiting Seni...

On August 15th last year, US President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Do we live in a different world, or does Kyiv still feel the heat from the Anchorage summit? In this episode of The Global Agora, I discuss all Ukraine-related topics – from the drone campaign and changes in leadership to the situation on the battlefield – with Volodymyr...

The midterm elections are less than three months away, and part of the American political discourse is about alleged communists taking over the country. But in fact, it seems that diseases are taking over the United States. Is the US becoming a country of measles and diarrhea under President Donald Trump?  David McCuan , a Political Science Professor at Sonoma State University, is one of The Globa...

Is Vladimir Putin's grip on power weakened amid Ukrainian strikes? Can we expect a big mobilization in Russia? Will the upcoming Duma elections be totally faked? And while it's unlikely to happen, who could get rid of Putin? In this episode of The Global Agora, I speak with Anton Barbashin , an editorial director at Riddle and a political analyst who was just recently added to Russia's wanted list...

Hariz Halilovich was born in Srebrenica. He is an award-winning social anthropologist, author, and a Professor of Global Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne. His research has focused on place-based identities, politically motivated violence including genocide, forced migration, memory studies, and human rights. I asked him whether there is anything happening anywhere in the world right now tha...

Donald Bowser helped set up the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and works as an international security and law enforcement advisor. “You want to fight Russia? Then what you need to do is fight corruption in Ukraine. Russia's greatest fear is to have a well-governed country next to it,” he told me. We also discussed the bombing in Monte Carlo targeting oligarch Vadym Iermolaie...

The NATO summit was held on July 7-8 in Ankara. The declaration from the meeting in Türkiye has six paragraphs, and in this episode of The Global Agora, I dissect them with Roger Hilton . He is a Canadian global affairs and defence analyst from GLOBSEC living in Central Europe. So, what went right and what went wrong for NATO at the Ankara summit, and will the meeting, first of all, be remembered...

The United States has celebrated its 250th anniversary. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia adopted the Declaration of Independence. Are American ideals just a political myth? Can the US truly be called an imperialist country? What would the world look like without the US? And what kind of president is Republican Donald Trump? Kurk Dorsey , a professor of history at th...

This is a special episode of The Global Agora. I was lucky enough to speak with Oana Lungescu , the longest-serving NATO Spokesperson and a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and Ben Hodges , former Commanding General of United States Army Europe. The interviews were recorded separately, but I decided to combine them because, I believe, they provide a very interesting and comprehensive preview of the u...

If 2025 had continued, Ukraine would have lost and Europe would have been at risk of a Russian attack. That is the view of military analyst Gustav Gressel . „We were actually in a very shitty phase,“ he claims. In this episode of The Global Agora, we discuss the situation on the battlefield, Ukraine's long-range strikes – or long-range sanctions as Kyiv calls them – and developments in the Cri...

There are still a lot of ifs, but if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election on June 18, he is highly likely to succeed the current Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Yet ten years after Brexit, is Britain even governable? Could the anti-migrant violence and riots – stirred up by figures like Elon Musk, as recently witnessed in Belfast – become the new normal in the UK? And could Nigel Fara...

US President Donald Trump will turn 80 on June 14. If he completes his second term, he will leave the White House in January 2029 at the age of 82, making him the oldest American president in history. Is Trump too old for the office? What does he want for his birthday? And to what extent is he trying to link his birthday and public persona with national symbols, and even with the approaching 250th...

Professor of Political Science at the University of Canterbury Anne-Marie Brady is a specialist on the Chinese Communist Party. We met in Prague at the GLOBSEC Forum 2026 and in this episode of The Global Agora we discuss the life and political endeavors of Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping. Does he prefer Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump? Could he stop the Russian war against Ukraine if he wanted...

After many years of correspondence and phone calls, I finally met Cas Mudde in person last year at the GLOBSEC Forum in Prague. Our meeting resulted in the 235th episode of The Global Agora podcast. This year, we crossed paths again. The result? Another round of conversation. This time about the sanewashing of US President Donald Trump, the threat of the far right, the normalization of Italian PM...

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree allowing Russia’s Victory Day military parade to proceed, it was clear that there would be a strong reaction from the Kremlin. “We knew there would be a response in terms of metal, as we always call it. A lot of metal flying through our skies and, of course, falling down on our heads. But it was really to the point and something very inn...

Bart Schuurman is a Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at Leiden University. In this episode of The Global Agora, we discuss his latest research article , Russia’s low-level agents: characteristics, roles and organisational structure of covert operatives in Europe, 2022–2025. So, who are these low-level agents, how is Russia using them against Europe, and how can this security threat be...