I'm John Batchler, and I welcome my colleague colleague and mentor Gregory Copley, editor and publisher of

Defense and Foreign Affairs, to reflect upon a book he published some years ago that now looks

to have secrets that we need to unlock about the present world affairs. The book, Sovereignty

in the 21st Century and the Crisis for Identity, Cultures, Nation States, and Civilizations.

Gregory, a very good evening to you.

It is unorthodox of me to be going back to a previous publication, but I must because the suggestive language that you published in is reveals some of itself here in 2026.

The word sovereignty is dominant because of questions raised by the world affairs these last years.

Perhaps since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it became more obvious to me.

And more alarming now that the U.S.

is in action under Donald Trump in the Western Hemisphere, in the Middle East, certainly in the

Eurasian continent. So I begin with a quote that you point to in the book as a matter of irony

about sovereignty in the 21st century.

You write, we had forgotten the demonstration by King Canute, 995 to 1035, of Denmark, Norway, and England, to his courtiers.

He rebuked them for insisting that he could, quote, turn back the ocean tied by his power as sovereign.

He could not.

There are limits to sovereignty.

You cannot turn back the tide.

You can't make the heavens not cough up another asteroid.

But not yet.

Not yet.

Here we are in the early stages of the 21st century trying to guess ahead, trying to see the next iteration.

So we begin with the need for definition and now we're going to apply it to four once upon a time empires that may be becoming empires again, maybe not.

...