Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning - [Invest Like the Best, EP.490]

is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. We cover why the world is returning to being ruled by individuals over institutions, the fusion of trade and technology that has decided every great-power contest, and how unaffordable housing broke the ownership engine that built citizenship. This episode is brought to you by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Ramp. Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠'s mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ramp.com/invest⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. Vanta.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Vanta is trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Visit vanta.com/invest . Rogo. Rogo is an AI-powered platform that automates accounts payable workflows, enabling finance teams to process invoices faster and with greater accuracy. Learn more at Rogo.ai/invest . WorkOS. ⁠WorkOS⁠ is a developer platform that enables SaaS companies to quickly add enterprise features to their applications. Visit WorkOS.com⁠ to transform your application into an enterprise-ready solution in minutes, not months. Ridgeline. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ridgeline⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com . Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:02:16) America and the World Today (00:05:34) Trump’s Method of Power (00:09:43) Why America Keeps Winning (00:12:25) The Five-Point Plan for Global Dominance (00:20:11) China and American Power (00:22:10) The Risk of American Isolationism (00:25:50) Technology and Global Power (00:28:42) Riding the Technological Wild Horse (00:34:29) Four Schools of American Foreign Policy (00:40:22) The Rise of Tech Hamiltonians (00:43:51) India and the Next Great Powers (00:48:54) The Risks of the Information Revolution (00:51:30) How Technology Is Changing War (00:55:06) Taiwan (00:57:20) The Future of American Society (01:00:44) What It Means to Be American (01:03:25) Iran and the Middle East (01:06:28) The Erosion of Deterrence (01:08:53) America’s Role in the Next 20 Years (01:12:08) AI and Global Power (01:14:26) Reasons for Optimism (01:16:33) The Kindest Thing 09.08.2026 Hosted by Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Walter, I've been looking forward to this for many, many months. We were introduced through Jeremy Stern, who runs Colossus, who I know credits you with a lot of his skill in writing and thinking about the world. I've been so excited to do this with you. We've got such a wide range of topics that I thought it would be appropriate to begin by having you frame your view of America in the world today in very, very broad strokes. You've written a lot about how and why the UK, and then us as the successor in America, have won the last several hundred years of global affairs. I'd love you to talk about the sweep of that winning, how you conceive of us and our role in the world today.

It's a really interesting time because on the one hand, the Pax Americana that we developed after 1945 and then refurbished in 1990 at the end of the Cold War is really in crisis. But if you step back a little bit, American power is not in crisis. The networks that we built up, the way of dealing with the world, the institutionalized relations with Europe and so on — those are all burning or crumbling.