FDD's Foreign Podicy

FIFA’s World Cup of Soccer is a version of the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Stanley Cup – all rolled into one very international extravaganza. This year, the games have been hip-deep in controversies that have nothing to do with athleticism. Declan Hill is an is an associate professor of investigations at the University of New Haven, and the head of its Sports Integrity Center. He is the...

Israel is the world’s only Jewish-majority state and the only surviving and thriving Jewish community that remains in the Middle East. Despite that — or, maybe, because of that — Israel has many enemies.  You may think you know how this unique nation-state was born, but history, like science, is never settled.  Jeffrey Herf, a Distinguished University Professor of Modern European History at the Un...

Richard Landes is an historian and author who specializes in  medieval millennial thinking . His interests include media manipulation intended to defame, demonize, and de-legitimize the Jewish state. He joins host Cliff May to discuss his new book: "Can The Whole World Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad.”

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Wagner Group? They’re Russian mercenaries. They claim they’re not taking orders from Vladimir Putin, but you should be skeptical. At this moment, the Wagner Group is fighting on Putin’s side in Ukraine — but not as effectively as many expected. Less well known is the Mozart Group, which consists mostly of special operations soldiers from 11 countries who are training, a...

Refusing to be silenced, even by brutal crackdowns, the freedom-seeking people of Iran have now surpassed six weeks of nationwide protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman murdered by the so-called "morality" police. Filling in for host Cliff May, FDD Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht is joined by Mariam Memarsadeghi — founder of Tavaana and the Cyrus Forum — to discuss why this ro...

Americans must be prepared to defend themselves from hostile armies, navies, air forces – and, not least, soldiers in cyberspace. With that in mind, in 2019, Congress created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, the CSC. Its mission: “to develop a strategic approach to defending the United States in cyberspace against cyber-attacks of significant consequences.” The CSC operated successfully for two...

North Korea is again launching missiles, Iran continues inching towards a nuclear weapons capability, Russia is escalating its aggression in Ukraine, and China is sprinting to field a military capable of invading Taiwan and defeating any effort by Washington to intervene. Considering these extraordinary threats, what kind of Air Force does the United States have — and what kind of Air Force does i...

The Inter-American Development Bank, the IDB, says its mission is to “improve lives in Latin America and the Caribbean,” support countries “working to reduce poverty and inequality,” and “achieve development in a sustainable, climate-friendly way.” For the past two years, for the first time in its 62-year history, the IDB has had an American president: Mauricio Claver-Carone. His goals have includ...

Since 1989, Ali Khamenei has been the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has outlasted and outplayed everyone else within the first revolutionary generation. His men now control all the critical institutions in the state. He out-negotiated the United States and western Europe in nuclear talks despite severe sanctions. He has pushed Iran's atomic program ever closer to a bomb. He de...

Washington and Beijing are engaged in an increasingly intense contest spanning nearly all domains of power — and the stakes could not be higher. It’s a competition between the world’s leading constitutional democracy and the world’s leading authoritarian power. While this contest between the U.S. and China is a global one, it’s most acute in Taiwan where the free people there are confronting the v...

Ilan Berman is Senior Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington. He’s an expert on regional security in Russia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He’s consulted for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense, and for the intelligence community. He’s the author of quite a few books, most recently:  Wars of Ideas :  Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World . H...

Host Cliff May says  Wall Street Journal ‘s Michael Gordon is, “without a doubt, one of the best reporters I’ve ever known — and I’ve known many reporters over many years.” Decades ago, they sat in the same bullpen at  The New York Times’  Washington bureau, where Cliff says Michael, “covered defense, national security, and international affairs better than anyone else in town.” Michael has report...

One year ago, the U.S. military, under orders from the White House, allowed the Taliban to re-take control of Afghanistan. The withdrawal was poorly planned. The evacuation of Americans and American allies was chaotic and, for some — including 13 American service members — fatal. One year later, what’s the status of Afghanistan? What’s the status of the Taliban’s ally, al Qaeda? What lessons have...

Israel’s latest armed conflict was with a group that calls itself Islamic Jihad, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or PIJ. It’s supported, armed, and trained by the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran. To learn more about this American-designated terrorist organization, how badly it was set back by the missiles of August, and what Iran’s rulers might do to build it back better, host  Cliff May  is...

The United States has vital economic and national security interests in deterring aggression and maintaining peace and security in Europe. But almost six months ago on February 24, a clearly undeterred Vladimir Putin launched the largest invasion on the European continent since WWII. As the Ukrainian people continue the fight to defend their country, the war grinds on with no end in sight. Meanwhi...

Ayman al Zawahiri, emir of Al Qaeda, is no more. He was reportedly on the balcony of what he thought was a “safe house” in one of Kabul’s more upscale neighborhoods when two missiles fired by the CIA from a Hellfire drone ended his life — almost 21 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and almost one year after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and capitulation to the...

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden went to Israel and Saudi Arabia. This was not a summer vacation. The president had goals. Did he achieve any? Did he set any back? Foreign Podicy host Clifford D. May poses these and other questions to Michael Singh and Hussain Abdul-Hussain. Michael Singh Michael is the Managing Director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute. From 2005 to 2008, h...

Great Britain is in the midst of a leadership crisis. The decline and fall of the always-entertaining Boris Johnson has led to a stormy contest among Conservative Party politicians to replace him, and the Labour Party now has a chance to replace the Conservatives. It’s complicated as are the consequences of Brexit, the separate Brexit of Harry and Meghan and their transformation into the Duke and...

In addition to following Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine, host Cliff May has also been trying to understand what’s going on in "the lands between" – the lands between Russia and Western Europe; lands that Vladimir Putin would like also to include in his empire or, failing that, in his sphere of influence. And this just in: The Islamic Republic of Iran, just south of what were the borders of th...

Professor Waller R. Newell is a political theorist and historian of ideas. He specializes in the history of tyranny from ancient times to the present. He’s written about Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. He’s studied the French Revolution, Communism, National Socialism, and contemporary Russian Eurasianist nationalism. His many books – which have been translated into Italian, Portuguese, T...

Decades ago, Richard Bernstein opened Time magazine’s first bureau in Beijing. He was later New York Times bureau chief at the UN, in Paris, and in Berlin. He spent a few years as the Times ’ National Cultural Correspondent and as a Times book critic. He’s also the author of a list of incisive books including on China and France. He recently wrote a provocative op-ed for the Wall Street Journal ....

Not so long ago, Turkey was widely regarded as the bridge between the Occident and the Orient, between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. Turkey separated mosque and state. Turkey was a NATO member. Turkey was economically dynamic despite not having oil. Turkey seemed to be democratizing. That’s not how many of us see Turkey today under the increasingly authoritarian President Recep Tayy...

Jackie Wolcott previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna and as U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Anthony Ruggiero is the former White House National Security Council Senior Director for Counterproliferation and Biodefense. Together, they are behind the wheel of FDD’s newly launched Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program — serving as Cha...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, better known by its acronym, NATO, was founded in 1949 to contain Soviet expansionism. President Truman told a joint session of Congress: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This was the essence of the Truman Doctrine. Adopted on a bipartisan...

FDD experts have worked for more than a decade on the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. As part of a multi-pronged strategy, FDD has shared nonpartisan research and analyses with policymakers, lawmakers, and the business community. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is slated to hold its first public hearing on the theocratic regime in more than two years with administration offici...