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DOAC Podcast: Geopolitical Strategist Dr. Sarah Paine (Transcript) 

In this Diary of A CEO interview, geopolitical strategist and historian Dr. Sarah Paine joins Steven Bartlett to explain the clash between continental and maritime world orders, the Iran War, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and why she believes the world may be barreling toward World War III. Drawing on decades of studying Russia and China, she breaks down concepts like pivotal errors, negative objectives, and “death ground,” the collapse of the post-World War II rules-based order, and what the next generation can do about it. Read the full transcript of this interview which was premiered on October 29, 2026 below:

Where Does It All Start?

STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:01:37 – 00:02:39): Dr. Sarah Paine, you might be one of the most knowledgeable people that I think I’ve ever spoken to on the subjects we’re going to speak about today. And they are subjects that I think are incredibly timely based on everything that’s going on in the world.

What I see is war over here, war over here, conflict over here, Putin invading this place, Trump’s gone into Iran. What I see on the streets of Paris where we were yesterday is rioting and I see disorder, but I don’t know where what the first domino that fell that caused everything that we’re seeing now occurred or what the sort of background context is. So I’m going to ask you, where does this all start?

DR. SARAH PAINE: (00:02:39 – 00:04:33): Well, history doesn’t start. It’s a long continuum, but I’ll try on some concepts that might be helpful. The way countries used to organize themselves, and often they were empires, was by land was the currency of power. So the continentalist world is all about taking territory for others, right? And when you’re doing that, you’re burning wealth because you’ve watched it in all these places.

Then later, an alternate possibility came. It originated from maritime powers, but ultimately it becomes a maritime world order to something different. Britain is a maritime power, but then you get to the Industrial Revolution where suddenly you can compound wealth. And that’s a game changer because it changes the currency of power, which formerly in that continental world I’ve just described, it’s all about land. It’s changing the currency of power to industry, commerce, and trade. That if you do those things, you get compounded wealth. And with that, you can buy your armies or do whatever you want.

And then the maritime order is about compounding wealth from just having universal rules. You’ve been traveling all over, your little piece of plastic works everywhere, right? That’s based on rules-based order. And then you’ve got a small company and you operate in various countries. No one’s taking you down for money that you’re making, right? All your transactions are working across the world. This is the rules-based order.

If it goes away, the billionaires who’ve been funneling their money into the continentalists, their world will disappear too. They will become casualties of it. And then when I think about what’s important on this planet, it would be you, the young. Please tell me what is more important than the generations that follow. Just tell me, what is it? Nothing.

“We’re Potentially Barreling Our Way Into a World War”

STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:04:34 – 00:04:35): Are you concerned about the next generation?

DR. SARAH PAINE: (00:04:35 – 00:04:36): Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:04:36 – 00:04:36): Why?

DR. SARAH PAINE: (00:04:37 – 00:04:58): We’re potentially barreling our way into a world war. We have reckless people running some very large and important countries around the world. And as you’ve noticed, once wars start, easy to do that part, really hard to end them. Why? Because whoever’s losing doesn’t want to lose. So they keep doubling down long after they’ve lost.

STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:04:59 – 00:05:08): You made a comment there. You said you think we’re sort of barreling towards a world war. People have probably said that every year since World War II.

Negative and Positive Objectives

DR. SARAH PAINE: (00:05:08 – 00:06:45): Ah, do you have negative and positive objectives here? Oh yeah, here we go. Negative and positive objectives. So a positive objective, you make something happen like, I don’t know, I want to snatch Maduro and put him in a New York prison. We can verify that the guy’s in a New York prison. You snatched him. That’s a positive objective.

A negative objective would be preventing something from happening. And how can you prove how many times a world war was avoided in the last whatever years? You can’t. And it’s also controversial on deterrence because you can say, “Ah, I’ve invested in whatever it is and this has deterred everybody.” Then it’s, “Prove it.” Well, you can’t prove it.

And yet, the example I use as a parent, if you have a little kid, a lot of it’s negative objectives, preventing the little kid from getting run over. You hold their hand on the street. If you’re living in New York, how many times in a day just walking up the street did you save that child’s life because you were hanging onto their hand before they took off into traffic? So negative objectives are incredibly important.

And since I’m on this topic, governments, I believe, are primarily about negative objectives, preventing disasters. So disaster number one would be foreign invasion, but other things, preventing bridges from collapsing, we inspect them, preventing all kinds of malpractice across professions, we license people, having everyone be illiterate, you have education. And so governments don’t actually get credit for what they do because on a normal day it’s normal. So you think, “Well, my government hasn’t done anything for me lately.” Untrue.

STEVEN BARTLETT: (00:06:45 – 00:06:57): And that applies here to the idea that people have probably through history said that there was going to be a war a lot. And so is there particular writing on the wall at this moment in the time?

DR.