For more than 100 years, the continent of Eurasia has played a central role in global geopolitics. In the 20th century, numerous authoritarian powers from Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Soviet Union aimed for primacy through control of this vast landmass and its resources. Today, command of Eurasia is once again essential to understanding a key geopolitical trend, the intensifying challenge of this axis of upheaval to the Western-led international order. On this week’s episode of Brussels Sprouts, Hal Brands joins Andrea Kendall Taylor and Jim Townsend to discuss all of this and the findings of his new book, The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World. 

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is also a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.