Is Congress irrelevant in U.S. foreign policy? Is bipartisanship a myth? And what happens when the biggest threat to a NATO ally might be the United States itself?

This week on The Next Best, I'm joined by Elizabeth Saunders, professor at Columbia University and author of The Insider's Game: How Elites Make War and Peace. We unpack how American foreign policy really works — not in theory, but in practice.

From the slow erosion of congressional war powers after World War II to the sweeping authorities passed after the September 11 attacks. From Harry S. Truman and the myth of Cold War unity to Donald Trump threatening Greenland.

This conversation cuts through nostalgia and looks at the raw politics of power.

We discuss:

• Why Congress keeps giving away authority — and why it can't claw it back

• The structural political advantage of "hawks" over "doves"

• Whether Trump has fixed foreign policy beliefs (spoiler: he does)

• Why Trump and Greenland may have been a turning point for NATO

• The internal camps shaping Trump's decisions — and what a President JD Vance might mean for Europe

• Whether congressional Republicans would ever break with him

• Will Europe's rearmament outlast Trump?

One key argument: Trump isn't a "peace president." He's comfortable with force — drones, bombing, special operations — but reluctant to launch large-scale wars with U.S. casualties. That distinction matters.

If you care about how war powers actually function, why sanctions are easy to impose but nearly impossible to remove, and whether Europe's rearmament will outlast Trump — this episode is for you.

The Next Best with Marcel Dirsus offers deep dives into geopolitics and international relations. We provide serious political commentary on foreign policy challenges, modern warfare, and global security.🔔 Subscribe for more analysis: https://www.youtube.com/@TheNextBestPod📺 Watch our most popular video: https://youtu.be/OhI17ztUvzY

Apple doesn’t just manufacture in China. It helped build the system that now holds it hostage.

In this episode of The Next Best, I speak with Financial Times journalist Patrick McGee, author of Apple in China, about one of the most important – and least understood – geopolitical entanglements of our time.

• How did Apple become dependent on the Chinese Communist Party?

• Why can’t it simply move production elsewhere?

• And what does this tell us about authoritarian leverage in a globalized world?

We explore the rise of China’s manufacturing dominance, the scale of Apple’s exposure, and why decoupling may be far harder than many policymakers assume.

The Next Best with Marcel Dirsus offers deep dives into geopolitics and international relations. We provide serious political commentary on foreign policy challenges, modern warfare, and global security.

How powerful is propaganda—really?

In this episode of The Next Best, Marcel Dirsus speaks with Gavin Wilde, a former White House official and U.S. intelligence analyst, about why we consistently overestimate the impact of fake news, disinformation, and "information warfare."

From World War I and Edward Bernays to Russian hybrid warfare, social media bots, and AI-generated deepfakes, Wilde argues that propaganda is far less decisive than we like to believe.

We discuss:

• Why democracies struggle with persuasion and media literacy

• How Russia exploits existing social fractures rather than creating them

• Why calling out disinformation can sometimes backfire

• Why "ignoring it" might be a more rational strategy than constant outrage

The conversation also explores AI, deepfakes, hybrid warfare, and the limits of deterrence in the information age—challenging many of today’s dominant assumptions.

Timestamps:

00:00 — Why ignoring propaganda might be the most rational response

00:29 — Introduction: Gavin Wilde on propaganda, Russia, and hybrid warfare

00:53 — What propaganda actually is (and how it differs from persuasion)

01:04 — World War I, democracy, and the birth of modern propaganda

03:40 — Edward Bernays, psychology, and “torches of freedom”

05:10 — Propaganda as belonging, not mind control

06:29 — Propaganda in democracies vs. autocracies

06:50 — Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and reinforcing existing beliefs

09:18 — The internet, bots, deepfakes, and how the game supposedly changed

09:57 — Computing, social science, and the myth of predictable persuasion

12:20 — Why propaganda and advertising oversell their own effectiveness

13:50 — Russia, hybrid warfare, and election interference

14:17 — Do we know Russia interferes in Western elections?

15:30 — Soviet history and the roots of Russian information warfare

17:32 — Opportunism vs. grand Kremlin strategy

18:58 — The risks of overestimating foreign interference

19:28 — Why blaming propaganda undermines democratic agency

21:35 — Exploiting existing divisions & the Doppelgänger operation

23:10 — When exposing disinformation backfires

24:40 — Policy takeaway: why “ignore it” may be the best option

25:58 — Should democracies fight back with information warfare?

26:11 — Why information warfare is fundamentally autocratic

27:30 — Telling a better democratic story (not just better facts)

29:24 — Kinetic hybrid warfare: sabotage, terrorism, and fear

31:34 — Attribution, deterrence, and why resilience matters more

34:10 — Artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and the “dog that didn’t bark”

36:51 — What we still get wrong about human behavior and propaganda

37:54 — Closing remarks

The Next Best with Marcel Dirsus offers deep dives into geopolitics and international relations. We provide serious political commentary on foreign policy challenges, modern warfare, and global security.