https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/sarah-paine (WW2, Taiwan, Ukraine, & Maritime vs Continental Powers)
https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/sarah-paine-india
There's also Decoding Geopolitics Podcast (full content is paywalled) since he talks with actual experts. There's ofc US bias in experts, and usually actual experts can be kinda boring to listen to initially.
But experts in international politics seems to disagree on a lot of stuff, and when one big thing happens it seems like a new face always momentarily pop up (John Mearsheimer, Peter Zeihan etc, for Ukraine war). A good rule of thumb seems to be to not get too fixated by one voice.
Its refreshing to hear some experts being able to healthily disagree, such as Mearsheimer & Sach in this[1] for example. That should be the take away from Sarah Paine interview too, she's good at making clear what she can & can't say for sure. Contrast that with say Zeihan. [1] https://youtu.be/uvFtyDy_Bt0?feature=shared
Then there are the kinds of experts like Mearsheimer and Zeihan, who are little more than avid book readers. They are often wildly off track without understanding it, because they have no real experience to ground them.
The second kind is best avoided.
Professor Paine has never "actually worked as foreign ministers, presidents, chiefs of armed forces, heads of intelligence services, and in other similar positions", but she has studied the Russian language and Russian culture, and has made a career at the Naval War College in studying and writing on Russia's security policy and situation.
Should we avoid her, too?
Oh, and thank you both.
But this is a wide topic, I suppose various biographies would help. Older books could help, e.g. “Prince” is old but a classic.
You could also lookup reading lists in best known universities under political science and international relations.
That's how politics was done before WW2.