The former Portuguese government minister and writer Bruno Maseas has written a book.

It was published in 2018 called The Dawn of Eurasia.

It's a book that the American economist Tyler Cowan called the best book he'd read that year,

and that the investor Peter Thiel described as announcing

a New World Order for the 21st century. The core argument of the book is that it's not possible

to understand European politics without understanding Asia, and it's not possible to understand

Asia without its customers and trading partners in Europe. He suggests that the very distinction

between Europe and Asia has

lost much of its former significance. On today's podcast, we talk about a nation that sits at the

nexus of Europe and Asia, the one nation that borders Iran and Russia, that sits at the very center

of global energy. Curiously, a Muslim nation, whose relationship with Israel is about 30 years old.

Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. Today we talk about Azerbaijan

and how fixing your eyes on that country suggests a different way to conceptualize American foreign

policy and America's role in the world. My guest is Michael Duran, longtime mosaic writer and

frequent guest on the Tikva podcast. Duran is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. In his view,

nations as disparate as Azerbaijan, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, even Turkey, can all advance their

own interests in an American-led order, which reconciles their differences

within an American alliance structure.

By looking at Azerbaijan, Duran believes we can recover the geostrategic discipline we need

to counter our adversaries and strengthen our friends.

If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and

Spotify, I hope you'll leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas. I welcome

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