Global Power Shifts

Andrew Henderson renounced his US citizenship in 2017. He holds six passports, owns homes on several continents, and runs Nomad Capitalist, the firm built around one line: go where you're treated best. He joins Jim Stenman with an uncomfortable argument. Countries now compete for capital and talent, American power is fading at the margins, and loyalty to where you were born is a bad trade. He...

Trump put the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam back on the table at the G7, sitting next to Egypt's President Sisi and framing the dispute around Cairo, even describing his bond with Sisi as a love affair. The US-Ethiopia relationship is warming at the same time, through a Boeing jet deal, financing for Ethiopia's new international airport, and US backing for Abiy against the Tigrayans. Cam...

If Trump's framework with Iran lands, Tehran's enriched uranium has to go somewhere. Kazakhstan keeps coming up as the credible candidate, with an IAEA uranium bank already on its soil and nearly 40% of the world's uranium production. Around that question sits a wider shift. Kazakhstan and its Central Asian neighbours are quietly reducing their dependence on Russia, hedging between Moscow and Beij...

Is the UK lost as a country in 2026? Historian and royal biographer Andrew Lownie joins Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour to take apart a Britain that has burned through six prime ministers in a decade, lost the Queen as its unbroken link to the past, and walked away from Europe with nothing put in its place. Lownie, author of Entitled , Traitor King and Stalin's Englishman , has spent his care...

Cameron Hudson has worked the Horn of Africa file from inside three branches of the U.S. government, as a CIA Africa analyst, NSC Director for African Affairs, and Chief of Staff to successive U.S. Special Envoys for Sudan. He now runs 54 Advisors, a political and investment risk firm focused on Africa, and is a non-resident senior associate at the CSIS Africa Program. He joins Jim Stenman to unpa...

The UAE just left OPEC. Weeks of Iranian missiles and drones, around 2,800 strikes absorbed by the Emirates, and a quiet realisation in Abu Dhabi that the old playbook is finished. Tareq Alotaiba, a former UAE government official now at Harvard's Belfer Center and AGSIW in Washington, joins Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour on Global Power Shifts to break down what the OPEC exit really means, why t...

Israel says it has weakened Hamas, pushed back Hezbollah, and left the Iranian regime more exposed than at any point in 47 years. So why does it feel like the country is losing ground everywhere else? Jonathan Conricus, the former IDF International Spokesperson and now Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, joins Suzanne Kianpour and Jim Stenman on Global Power S...

Sixteen years of Viktor Orbán ended at the ballot box. Ambassador Tibor Nagy, a Hungarian-born former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs and acting Under Secretary of State for Management, returns to Global Power Shifts to explain how it happened and what comes next. Jim Stenman and Nagy work through the real story behind Péter Magyar's win: the stench of cronyism that voters...

Mauritius tends to get filed under "luxury travel destination." That framing misses almost everything that matters about it right now. The Indian Ocean is becoming one of the most contested strategic spaces on the planet. Chinese naval assets, French military presence, the US base at Diego Garcia, Indian positioning, and the fallout from the Iran war are all converging in waters that run...

Seth Moulton led a platoon into Baghdad, fought in Najaf, and commanded Marines trained to recover downed pilots. He now sits on the House Armed Services Committee. When two American jets went down over Iran, he said what most in Washington wouldn't: Iran is winning this war. In a conversation with Suzanne Kianpour and Jim Stenman, Moulton makes the case that tactical success in the air is conceal...

When Rouzy Vafaie tried to cross the border into Armenia during the war with the United States, he was looking for a way out. Instead, he was intercepted by the IRGC. In this episode of Global Power Shifts , Suzanne Kianpour speaks with Rouzy about the reality of his detention, the beatings, the threats, and the unexpected reason he was finally let go. It turns out his release came with a price. H...

What happens when the guardrails of Middle East diplomacy finally snap? In this episode, we are joined by Jon Finer, former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor and host of the Vox Media podcast ⁠The Long Game⁠ . Finer joins Global Power Shifts to break down the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal and the regional chaos that followed. Having sat at the table during the original JCPOA negotiations,...

Sir Bill Browder joins Global Power Shifts to discuss what his experience inside the Kremlin teaches us about the current state of global instability. Once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, Browder has undergone a profound transformation. Following the death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in a Moscow prison, he abandoned his career in finance to become a leading human rights acti...

In this emergency episode of Global Power Shifts, Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour speak with award-winning journalist Tracey Holmes about the extraordinary story of Iran’s women’s football team at the Women’s Asian Cup. After refusing to sing the national anthem, several players were granted asylum in Australia, while others chose to return home amid fears for their families. We discuss how the s...

In a special edition of Global Power Shifts , Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour unpack the fast-moving crisis around Iran, one week after the latest U.S. and Israeli strikes. Suzanne, an Iranian-American journalist who has covered Iran for most of her career, reflects on the deeply personal reality of watching her two countries move closer to open conflict. Together, they examine the fallout across...

From refugee camps to the highest levels of U.S. diplomacy, Ambassador Tibor Nagy has spent decades at the center of America’s engagement with Africa. In this episode of Global Power Shifts, Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour sit down with the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs to examine Africa’s role in a world where the rules-based international order no longer operates...

In our first episode of 2026, Jim Stenman speaks with Dr. Mohamed Hagi , Somaliland’s Presidential Advisor on Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, days after Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland. Hagi argues recognition changes the operating reality of diplomacy, from trade and finance to security cooperation. We discuss what Somaliland says it wants from Isra...

Authoritarian politics is rising, not just in the U.S., but across the West. In this episode, Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour sit down with Saikat Chakrabarti , a Silicon Valley tech millionaire turned progressive strategist who is now running to replace Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. He is the son of an Indian immigrant who grew up in poverty, and he argues that the American Dream has been break...

Eritrea is often described as “Africa’s North Korea” – a closed dictatorship where indefinite conscription, disappearances and repression push people to flee, feeding one of the world’s most desperate migration routes. In this episode of Global Power Shifts, Jim Stenman and Suzanne Kianpour sit down with Vanessa Tsehaye, a Swedish Eritrean human rights activist, founder of One Day Seyoum , 2025 Ma...

Exiled Venezuelan politician Armando Armas joins Suzanne Kianpour and Jim Stenman to talk about life after a brutal attack that nearly killed him — raids, arrests, and a family split across borders. He traces Venezuela’s slide from oil boom to repression, the networks propping up Maduro, and the personal cost of opposition. Armas still backs peaceful resistance, and he spells out what meaningful o...

Getachew Reda, Tigray’s former president and Ethiopia’s Minister of East African Affairs, joins host Jim Stenman (formerly CNN and Reuters). They discuss Tigray’s fragile peace after Pretoria, tensions inside the TPLF, Eritrea’s role, the push for Red Sea access, and the GERD’s regional impact. A grounded look at what comes next for Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

In this special episode of Global Power Shifts, Jim Stenman and co-host Suzanne Kianpour sit down with Lithuania’s former Foreign Minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis , to explore how a small nation on NATO’s eastern flank is navigating an uncertain era. Born under Soviet occupation and shaped by his family’s role in Lithuania’s fight for independence, Landsbergis guides us through: •⁠ ⁠The echo of Kr...

🎙 This week on Global Power Shifts , we turn our focus to one of the world’s most overlooked yet strategically vital regions: the South Caucasus. Our guest is Emil Avdaliani — Georgian analyst, university professor, Oxford graduate, and contributor to the Carnegie Endowment and TRENDS Research. He specializes in Eurasian connectivity and the evolving role of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in a s...

What does Vladimir Putin really want — for Russia, for himself, and for the post-Soviet world? In this episode of Global Power Shifts , Jim Stenman and co-host Suzanne Kianpour sit down with Christopher Steele , the former head of MI6’s Russia desk and the man behind the now-infamous Steele Dossier, to decode the Russian president’s strategy — from Ukraine to Eurasia to the global stage. Steele, a...

BRICS is often misunderstood — especially in Western capitals. In this episode, Gustavo de Carvalho joins Global Power Shifts to unpack what the BRICS grouping is really about. We trace its evolution from an economic acronym to a political force, explore tensions between member states (think India vs. China, Egypt vs. Ethiopia), and ask whether expansion strengthens or stretches the bloc. We also...