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The Dialectic is the flagship podcast of Fair Observer, an independent nonprofit that publishes nearly 3,000 authors from over 90 countries, including former prime ministers, retired diplomats, professors, noted authors and bright young minds from different fields.
Hosts Atul Singh, the editor-in-chief of Fair Observer, and Glenn Carle, a senior partner at the geopolitical risk advisory firm FOI, dive into some of the most important issues of our times. Atul is a Rajput who grew up in India and debated for Oxford while Glenn is a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) who grew up in Boston and played ice hockey for Harvard. Atul comes from the Gaharwar (or Gahadavala) clan while Glenn’s ancestors arrived in Plymouth in 1620 on the Mayflower.
Atul served as an officer doing counter-insurgency in India’s volatile border regions (Nagaland and Kashmir) and as a lawyer in the City of London. As editor-in-chief, he predicted Brexit, Donald Trump’s two election victories and the global rise of the far right. Glenn served the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in both strategic and operational roles. He also negotiated trade deals for the US, served in the White House and authored The Interrogator, a book about how he opposed torture as a CIA officer during the global war on terror.
The Rajput and the WASP are caricatures of stereotypes, and both are preparing to be mummies in the British Museum. These quirky characters examine issues through historical, economic and cultural lenses. Both of them have a passion for geopolitics and for making sense of the world.
Atul and Glenn seek to both inform and entertain. Let us know what you want them to cover. Join our community, and share this podcast with friends and family!
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Episodes
Sunday Nov 02, 2025
Sunday Nov 02, 2025
In this episode of The Dialectic, Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh and FOI Senior Partner Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer who now advises companies, governments and organizations on geopolitical risk, turn their attention to Germany and ask a fundamental question: What has gone wrong with the engine of Europe?
The conversation begins with Nazi Germany’s total defeat in 1945 and the country’s partition into East and West Germany. Under the American security umbrella, West Germany rebuilt itself through an export-led economic model that came to define postwar Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of the two Germanies brought both triumph and strain.
Atul and Glenn explore how Germany’s success story has stalled. The German economy is now struggling, its population is shrinking, its workforce is aging, and its dependence on Chinese markets and Russian energy has become a strategic weakness. German bureaucracy has become infamous, and excessive regulation is inhibiting economic activity. The country’s famed automobile industry is losing ground to Chinese electric vehicles, German innovation capacity has waned and the country is missing in the fast-growing high-tech sectors of the global economy. Meanwhile, rising immigration has caused social division and political polarization. Support for the far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), is surging and it is now beating traditional parties in opinion polls. Clearly, Germany is in crisis.
Atul and Glenn place Germany’s crisis within a wider European story. They consider how demographic decline, economic fatigue and strategic hesitation are eroding Europe’s global influence. Germany is the EU’s economic engine. It is the heart of Europe that looks both west and east. This episode of The Dialectic asks whether Germany can renew itself in an age of global competition or whether its decline mirrors the broader malaise of Europe itself.
Read About Vladimir Putin's Long Game - https://www.fairobserver.com/politics/making-sense-of-vladimir-putins-long-game/
Read About Germany's Economy - https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/is-the-german-economy-now-destined-to-decline/
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