Five More Questions With Stephen Kotkin: Can America Still Lead The World?

Uncommon Knowledge

Hoover Institution

Politics, History, News, News:politics, Science

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Kotkin returns to Uncommon Knowledge for another round of five questions, this time on Iran, China, Ukraine, and the future of the American republic. Kotkin argues that America still possesses unmatched strengths — economic, technological, military, and cultural — but warns that self-inflicted political dysfunction could squander them. Kotkin dissects Trump’s Iran strategy, explains why China wants Taiwan “for free,” argues that Ukraine has already won the sovereignty war against Russia, and delivers a powerful defense of America’s founding ideals at a moment when both authoritarian regimes abroad and political extremism at home are testing them. Sharp, provocative, and deeply informed, this is classic Kotkin: history as a guide to the geopolitical storms of the present. Subscribe to Uncommon Knowledge at hoover.org/uk

Transcript

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0:00.0	Historian, author, and one of the most requested guests on this program, Stephen Kotkin on Uncommon Knowledge Now.
0:18.3	Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. The historian and author Stephen Kotkin is now completing the third and final volume of his definitive biography of Joseph Stalin.
0:30.6	A professor emeritus at Princeton, Dr. Kotkin is now a fellow here at the Hoover Institution.
0:36.6	We've done a number of programs entitled
0:38.2	Five Questions with Stephen Kotkin, and they have proven among our most popular programs.
0:44.7	Today, five more questions with Stephen Kotkin. Stephen, number one, Iran. I'll just give you
0:53.5	two quotations and see what you do with them.
0:55.9	By the way, as we sit here, I should note that as we record this show, President Trump,
1:00.6	the Trump administration is negotiating with Iran. The outcome of the negotiation as we sit here is
1:05.5	completely unclear. Two quotations. Here's the editorial board of the New York Times writing
1:10.8	recently. While President
1:12.6	Trump seems eager for negotiated truce, Iran's leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in
1:20.7	the stronger negotiating position. Here's the second quotation. This is Secretary of State Marco Rubrio
1:27.4	earlier this very month of May.
1:29.3	As President Trump has said, and as the facts clearly bear out, the United States holds all the cards.
1:36.3	Close, quote.
1:38.3	Who's really winning and how does this end?
1:41.3	Peter, it's great to be back. Thank you. It's been nine months, so both of us could
1:48.4	have had a child since the last time I was on. You've had some amazing guests in the meantime. I've
1:54.5	learned quite a bit, really big shows you've had. This is a tough one. It's where we are now. It might not be the place I
2:06.0	myself would have chosen to put us. There's this old joke that's not very funny. Someone is
2:13.2	in Ireland and gets lost, trying to get to Dublin, knocks on the neighbor's door, the neighbor
	...

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