I'm John Boucho with my good colleague Gregory Copley, the author of a new book, The Noble State,

Governance Options in a Noble era. And a previous era enjoyed great power politics.

The Great Game, it was called in the Middle East. Right now, if I were arriving from another star system, I would say

Washington, Moscow, and Beijing look eligible to be great powers. Note, there is reporting

routinely now that the President of the United States is making phone calls to Mr. Putin. Most

recently, a headline in Israel

said that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Putin to become a mediator between Washington and Tehran

over the suspect nuclear weapons program and the brain of the octopus attacking Israel.

It's extraordinary, however, it suggests that because Mr. Putin

wants access to European energy markets again, and Nord Stream 2 would be a way of doing that,

because Iran is now without air defenses and helpless and squeezed by maximum pressure from the

Trump administration, and because both have pressure from the Trump administration.

And because both have needs that the U.S. can satisfy, the phone call makes sense.

Does Beijing get involved?

Is Beijing watching this and narrowing its eyes, or does it welcome with its no-limits partnership with Moscow?

These are the sort of questions you entertain when you have great powers at work.

Is that what we're watching, Gregory?

I wish it was what we were watching because it would have some of the cohesiveness and logic of the great power era.

Right now, we're looking at, if you like, the United States stabilizing as a somewhat low-rent superpower

as it recovers its prestige and dignity and capabilities in a global sense and its ability

to project power more or less globally. Then we're looking at Russia, which is actually

starting to rebuild as a great power,

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