Hello everyone, I met Mr. Walter Russell Mead at a dinner party in Washington.

He's a prolific author and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal, a very astute commentator

on foreign affairs.

I'm talking to him today about the situation, the international situation in the world,

as experienced by the United States and its Western allies, let's say.

We're going to talk about Russia and China and Iran and Israel and Palestine, all the,

what would you call it?

Predictable villains.

So, Mr. Walter Russell Mead is a writer, professor and academic, focusing his efforts, as I

said, on international policy and foreign affairs.

He is the James Clark Chase professor of foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College and

taught US foreign policy at Yale.

Mead has worked as a columnist for publications such as the Wall Street Journal and was editor

at large for the American interest.

His books include Martel Splendor, Special Providence, Power, Terror, Peace and War, God

and Gold and most recently, 2022, the Ark of a Covenant.

So Mr. Mead, you've spent an awful lot of time thinking about foreign policy in very

many different aspects, not concentrating necessarily on any particular part of the

world, but taking as much as it's possible a relatively global view.

And so, maybe we could start our discussion by having you summarize what you think are

the most important, what are the most important issues that confronted the United States and

the Western world more generally on the foreign relations front in 2022.

...