My guest today is Walter Russell Mead. Walter is a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and the author of Special Providence and God and Gold, two of the best books written on American power.
He has spent decades studying how the United States came to dominate the world, and our conversation is about whether it can keep doing so.
Walter lays out the five step playbook that carried the Dutch, then the British, then America to global leadership, and why the same pattern keeps beating centralized continental powers.
We discuss how Trump turned fame into power, the four schools of American foreign policy and the rise of the tech Hamiltonians, what the drone war in Ukraine means for the Pentagon, and why the erosion of deterrence is the deeper story in the Middle East.
Please enjoy my conversation with Walter Russell Mead.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.
Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best
(00:02:16) America and the World Today
(00:05:34) Trump’s Method of Power
(00:09:43) Why America Keeps Winning
(00:12:25) The Five-Point Plan for Global Dominance
(00:20:11) China and American Power
(00:22:10) The Risk of American Isolationism
(00:25:50) Technology and Global Power
(00:28:42) Riding the Technological Wild Horse
(00:34:29) Four Schools of American Foreign Policy
(00:40:22) The Rise of Tech Hamiltonians
(00:43:51) India and the Next Great Powers
(00:48:54) The Risks of the Information Revolution
(00:51:30) How Technology Is Changing War
(00:55:06) Taiwan
(00:57:20) The Future of American Society
(01:00:44) What It Means to Be American
(01:03:25) Iran and the Middle East
(01:06:28) The Erosion of Deterrence
(01:08:53) America’s Role in the Next 20 Years
(01:12:08) AI and Global Power
(01:14:26) Reasons for Optimism
(01:16:33) The Kindest Thing