Historian and geopolitical analyst Walter Russell Mead is a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, the Wall Street Journal’s Global View columnist, and the author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. His “Jacksonian America” thesis predicted the rise of Trump-style populism fifteen years early.
He caught up with The Oracle to discuss Ukraine endgame scenarios, the key drivers of Trump’s Iran strategy, and why Putin is watching the French polls.
The following interview has been edited for length. All answers are his own.
How much should someone in the world of geopolitics be trying to make forecasts?
Especially in wartime, if you go back and look at the history of punditry, what you’ll find is that people are almost always overwhelmingly wrong at every moment of a war. In the U.S. Civil War, both sides at the beginning think the Battle of Bull Run is going to be it, that it’s going to be 90 days. Half of Washington is out there with picnic