Is Central Asia the Next Front Line of Global Power? with Peter Frankopan
The David McWilliams Podcast
David McWilliams
4.5 • 692 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Leaving the US after weeks on the road, we zoom out from New York and Washington and asks a question we almost never ask in Europe: what if the real future of geopolitics isn’t in Brussels, Beijing or DC, but in Central Asia? To get there, we bring in historian Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads, to map the region we lazily call “the Stans”; Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, plus Afghanistan, Iran and their neighbours. Together we unpack why this vast strip of land, once the beating heart of the Silk Roads, is suddenly back at the centre of the global game: home to huge reserves of oil, gas, uranium, rare earths and critical minerals, a young and growing population, and wedged between Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran. We hear how Central Asian states are learning to play everyone off against everyone and why the new Great Game isn’t a neat East vs West story at all. If the world is getting more dangerous, more digital and more fragmented, what does it mean that Ireland is the EU’s weak link on defence, with tiny cyber budgets, under-protected seabed cables and a very cosy version of neutrality?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature. |
| 0:07.8 | This podcast is powered by ACAST. |
| 0:14.0 | How are you doing there? |
| 0:15.3 | It is time for the podcast, and you will know that I have been traveling all around the place and I am now |
| 0:23.7 | leaving the United States. And bizarrely, one of the strange, strange feelings you get from being |
| 0:32.6 | in the United States is, A, how remote America is, but also B, how America's role in the world is changing, |
| 0:40.9 | what it means to be a superpower is changing, what it means to being able to project your military |
| 0:46.4 | and economic prowess is changing, and how the world is receiving American technology, |
| 0:53.3 | American influence is changing. |
| 0:55.7 | And many Europeans suggest, oh, the Americans are not that interested, but I can tell you |
| 1:00.8 | the conversations I was having in the States and even looking at who was visiting the White |
| 1:05.1 | House when I was over there, suggests the Americans are not only not disengaging from the |
| 1:09.9 | world, but in the fact, this Trump White House is actively engaging with the world |
| 1:14.6 | on a much more significant way than you could argue other White House's have. |
| 1:22.1 | So, John, I think today, this is a final piece in an American jigsaw, |
| 1:27.4 | is we going to talk about a part of the world |
| 1:30.7 | that very few people mention, but it's very, very clear that on the basis of resources, on |
| 1:39.1 | rare earths and mineral wealth, is going to become again, and the reason I say again, because it was for many |
| 1:46.5 | years the center of the Silk Roads, but again, a significant part of the world, which is Central |
| 1:50.9 | Asia. But the reason I was thinking about... A place toast to my heart, Mac, as you know, |
| 1:56.8 | that was my section when I worked in World Service. So like you say, it's one of these kind of places that not many people know about, |
| 2:04.6 | but it really opened my eyes to the global geopolitics of that region. |
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