Dr. Sarah Paine: Why The World Is Turning Away From America

Steven Bartlett opens by describing a world filled with conflict: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States’ war in Iran, riots in Paris, and growing disorder. He asks Dr. Sarah Paine where the chain of events began. Paine rejects the idea that history has one starting point and instead explains a long competition between two models of power. Continental empires traditionally treated land and territory as the currency of power, often burning wealth to conquer and hold territory. Maritime powers, especially after the Industrial Revolution, shifted power toward industry, commerce, trade, and rules that allow wealth to compound across borders. Paine says the rules-based maritime order is visible in ordinary things: a credit card working in different countries, or a small company being able to operate internationally without having its money seized. She argues that billionaires who funnel money into continentalist systems will also become casualties if that order collapses. She is especially concerned because wars are easy to start but difficult to end: the side losing refuses to accept defeat and keeps escalating. She introduces “negative objectives”—preventing disasters rather than achieving visible victories—as a central responsibility of government. Just as a parent holding a child’s hand prevents the child from running into traffic, governments prevent invasions, bridge collapses, professional malpractice, and illiteracy. These successes usually go unnoticed because nothing happens.

Bartlett asks whether the United States’ war in Iran was a mistake and why it appears to have damaged the American economy and alliance system. Paine calls it one of the most incompetent wars in human history. In her framework, a country entering a war should impose costs on its opponent while minimizing its own. Instead, she says Iran is suffering but the conflict has also harmed the United States and the wider global economy, turning America into an economic threat to many of its own adversaries. Paine argues that American planners assessed Iran’s weaknesses but failed to consider Iran’s strengths, the reactions of other countries, and the importance of the Strait of Hormuz. A narrow waterway can be shut during wartime by mines, shore artillery, and other means. That would make it difficult to supply the major U.S. naval base in Bahrain and could force reliance on Diego Garcia, roughly 2,500 miles away. She criticizes the decline of dissenting expertise in Washington, contrasting former Defense Secretary General James Mattis with Major Pete Hegseth, whom she mocks for focusing on firing minorities and women and testing testosterone rather than strategic competence. Her broader explanation is “Type A” American hubris—the belief that every important decision happens in the United States—and “Type B” hubris, common among some technology leaders: being excellent at one thing does not make someone excellent at everything. Leaders need humility, divergent opinions, and a willingness to identify their blind spots.

Paine defines a pivotal error as a decision that permanently removes better options that were previously available. She calls Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine a pivotal error. Putin could have continued destabilizing Ukraine gradually after taking Crimea and parts of Donbas, but the invasion instead strengthened Ukrainian national identity and created a far more unified opponent. Paine compares this to Britain’s role in creating a stronger American identity during the Revolutionary War. She says Russia appears to be pursuing an unlimited objective: restoring the former Soviet empire, rather than containing a specific threat. That objective is paired with a failing economic model based largely on primary goods and territorial seizure. She jokes that it is difficult to name a Russian manufactured product one would want to buy, adding that Smirnoff is British-owned. Russia’s continentalist approach, she argues, repeatedly turns toward stealing other people’s resources rather than developing its own economy. The interview introduces “death ground.” When an adversary believes that surrender means being killed or having its society destroyed, it has no alternative but to fight. Paine says Putin’s treatment of Ukraine has placed Ukrainians on death ground, while the possibility of regime change and cultural destruction makes them willing to resist at enormous cost. She warns that the same logic may be radicalizing Iran: if leaders believe they face destruction while Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu remain in power, they are more likely to seek nuclear weapons and fight indefinitely.

Paine argues that the post-World War II rules-based order is collapsing because norms—not just formal laws—are being abandoned. She compares international rules to traffic rules: society works because most people follow them, not because enough police exist to punish every violation. In politics, one such norm is accepting an election loss and congratulating the winner rather than claiming fraud indefinitely. She says the United States is now violating the same norms that made it a trusted partner. Bartlett describes European unrest and economic pressure, including riots in France and a British newspaper headline warning that the country is “going broke” with three trillion in debt and £110 billion in annual interest. Paine replies that the immediate challenge is also an opportunity. After World War II, Europe was devastated and indebted, yet within a decade its leaders built institutions that sustained peace for three generations. She says Europe is now rapidly building new security arrangements, including cooperation among Nordic and Baltic countries, remilitarization, spaceports, and locally controlled payment and satellite systems. She cites a European app that identifies whether products are American and describes an emerging boycott of U.S. goods. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, she says, is organizing middle powers. Paine’s conclusion is that America’s threats against Canada, Greenland, and other countries have pushed partners toward self-protection. She supports helping Ukraine with weapons and other resources but rejects sending American combat troops everywhere, calling support for Ukraine the cheaper alternative to destroying the alliance system.

Paine distinguishes between trying to solve a problem and managing a situation. During the Cold War, she says, the United States understood that the Soviet Union was a lethal threat it could not simply eliminate. The feasible strategy was to contain it, use sanctions to depress its growth, strengthen allied economies, and distribute accurate information in the hope of eventual generational change. Sanctions do not remove a threat, she says, but can act like chemotherapy by shrinking the opposing “piggy bank” while allies grow. She applies this logic to current economic pressure. An economy growing at 1% takes roughly 69 years to double, while one growing at 3% doubles in about 23 years. Policies that reduce growth by two percentage points therefore create a decades-long penalty. She blames tariffs and the Iran war for higher prices and rejects claims that Russian diesel exports explain the spike in fuel prices, saying Russia lacks the capacity to make a meaningful difference and that the energy shock correlates with the Iran war. She also points to Russian refinery damage, frozen reserves, labor shortages, inflation, and interest rates above 20% as evidence of the war’s cost. When Bartlett asks what people should do if they want prices to fall, Paine answers: vote. She says one-third of Americans voted for the current direction, one-third voted against it, and one-third did not vote. She urges Americans to stop treating party loyalty as an identity, reassess policies by asking whether they protect national security and prosperity, and elect the other party when a government has failed.

Paine says Ukraine can defeat Russia and is already winning in important ways. Ukrainian forces have developed drones, ballistic missiles, and attacks capable of disabling Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries. She says Russia has lost up to 50% of its operating refinery capacity at points, while its war economy consumes about 40% of the national budget and drains health, education, and civil infrastructure. She expects Ukraine to become an important defense supplier because it is developing effective systems at lower cost than some American equivalents. She rejects the argument that Ukraine should surrender territory to stabilize energy prices. Russia’s history of territorial expansion offers no evidence that it will stop voluntarily, she says, and Ukrainians who have seen massacres and torture cannot simply abandon the desire for justice. She describes Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero and a great statesman because he stayed in Ukraine after being offered evacuation and asked for ammunition instead of a ride. Ukraine, in her view, is doing the dangerous work of resisting Russia on behalf of Europe. Paine says China supports Russia because it benefits from discounted Russian resources while weakening a historic rival. Her research on the Russo-Chinese border showed that Russia took territory from China’s sphere of influence larger than the United States east of the Mississippi. Putin’s war has squandered Russian military strength and made Russia more dependent on China. After Putin dies, she expects no orderly democratic succession: Russia lacks institutions for a peaceful transfer, so rival networks around the “mafia don” could create a free-for-all, possible civil conflict, loose nuclear weapons, and a decade-long effort to rebuild the state.

Paine says the central global contest is not simply between America, Russia, or China, but between democracies and continentalist dictatorships. Democracies generate wealth because they provide legal protections, allow people to start businesses and retain what they earn, and make cooperation broadly win-win. China itself became wealthier when it participated in the maritime, rules-based order. Paine argues that China’s hostility toward Taiwan is partly ideological: Taiwan disproves the claim that the Han Chinese and democracy are incompatible. She rejects the claim that NATO expansion caused Russia’s invasion. Eastern European countries sought NATO membership because they remembered Soviet domination, including political purges, murdered leaders, forced collectivization, and the suppression of uprisings such as Hungary’s in 1956. Paine recalls living in the Soviet Union in 1988–89, seeing a grocery store with only 77 items and rotting meat, and says these experiences explain why former Soviet-bloc states feared Russia and wanted NATO protection. Bartlett asks what young people who have grown up far from war should do. Paine apologizes for the mess older generations are leaving them, then recommends reading history, learning continuously, speaking across political silos with civility, checking disinformation, and voting. She says the few dark personalities who run countries are outnumbered by ordinary people who can improve their own spheres. Her closing emotional concern is the suffering of children caused by adults who choose power and grifting over the interests of future generations.