Welcome to the President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boyes Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the Eurasia Challenge.

With me to discuss how the struggle to dominate the Eurasian landmast in the past and today has and will challenge the United States is Hal Brands. Hal is the Henry A. Kissinger

distinguished professor of global affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International

Studies. He is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a columnist for Bloomberg

opinion. He is a prolific writer on foreign policy and international affairs with nine books to his

name. His latest book, The Eurasian Century, Hot Wars, Cold Wars,

and the Making of the Modern World, hit bookstore shelves last week. This episode of the

President's inbox is the fifth in my series on U.S. Grand Strategy. Hal, thank you for joining me

on the President's inbox.

And congratulations on the publication of the Eurasian Century,

which Kirkish Reviews made a starred review

and called Thoughtful and Disturbing.

Thanks, Jim.

It's great to be here.

Howe, I want to begin with the point you make

very early on in your book that we often think of the modern era as the age of American power.

In reality, we are living in a long, violent Eurasian century since the early 1900s. Eurasia has been the cockpit of global rivalry.

Tell me what you mean.

Eurasia has really been the strategic center of the world for a long time, mostly because

that's where most of the people are.

It's where most of the economic resources are. And thus, it is where

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