GeoPolitics

It's a global poker game. There are 200 players that we can see, plus dozens more that we can't see, and may never know about.

They're all cheating, and they all know they're all cheating.

At any given time, there are deals and side deals and secret deals, and deals out in the open that are intended to mask one or more of those secret deals, and everybody is watching for the opportunity to spring something on somebody.

The US tries to be everybody's friend - or tries to make it look that way - which ends up making us everybody's enemy, because if we're friends with somebody's enemy, that makes us their enemy, even though we've been friends with them for a long time.

So actually, it's a poker game inside a perpetual round of cut-throat pool where every ball can be a cue ball, and everybody can shoot at any time - and it's all going on at the Mad Hatter's tea party.

Anyway, I don't understand a whole lot of it. And that's partly because it's very hard to understand a lot of it, and I've never studied it formally, but also because (I think) there's a big bunch of people who do study it formally, and who benefit from nobody understanding it well.

So here's a lady, named Sarah Paine, who studies it very closely, and I always get a kick out of listening to her explain some of it in language that even I can understand - kinda.

Professor Sarah Paine, PhD - US Naval War College

South Asia, Cold War, Hot War - it's a FUBAR.

Part 1:

Part 2: