Podcasts - 04.03.2026 - 08:00
The President who had promised an end of “forever wars” and of unnecessary entanglements has greenlit strikes against Iran. Since February 28, Iran is under US and Israeli attack; Ayatollah Khamenei was among the first of the Irani leadership to be killed. President Trump has called on the Iranian people to “take back their country” and has promised the operation to be concluded within five weeks. While few observers mourn the possible demise of the Islamic theocracy, many fear that the US and Israel might have unleashed a regional conflict with a more than doubtful ending. How do the strikes fit into the security strategy as it had been outlined by the Trump Administration? How does Trump’s war put “America First” and fit into “MAGA”? And can we make out a Trump doctrine after all? In this episode we are dissecting these questions with St.Gallen’s security policy expert and Professor of International Relations, James W. Davis.
Professor James Davis has been a fixture for HSG students in International Affairs since 2005 when he left Munich to take on St.Gallen’s Chair in International Relations. Originally from Michigan, he first studied at Michigan State University and then went on to obtain both his Master’s and his PhD from Columbia. He has held positions at various leading research institutions, for instance at Harvard’s John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, and he has received numerous awards and accolades for his work, including the 2011 Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching, Awarded by the Student Union of the University of St.Gallen. Prof. Davis bridges research and practice, as he has most recently demonstrated by co-initiating the European Nuclear Study Group (ENSG) which he is co-chairing alongside Dr. Tobias Bunde (Munich Security Conference & Hertie School), and Dr. Claudia Major (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin).
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