FDD's Foreign Podicy

The U.S. is in a decisive moment. Harried by turmoil and challenges at home, many Americans look overseas and see a world on fire. Ukrainians are fighting for their lives against Putin, wondering whether the west will abandon them; Beijing is undertaking an unprecedented military expansion in preparation for potential aggression in the Taiwan Strait; Iran-backed terrorists are attacking U.S. troop...

Jeffrey Herf has a new and timely volume on the current moment. It’s title: “Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left and Islamist.” He joins host Cliff May to discuss the multiple manifestations of Jew-hatred – a growth industry since the terrible pogrom of October 7, 2023. 

Colonel Richard Kemp has spent three decades fighting terrorists and insurgents around the world, including as commander of British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has been present during each conflict between Israel and Hamas since 2008 and has been in Israel since the beginning of the current Gaza war.    Col. Kemp joins Cliff to discuss why Israel is not guilty of genocide and why Hamas, Hez...

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Senator Roger Wicker (R-MI) are the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Armed Services Committee. On January 11, they issued a noteworthy joint statement after receiving a briefing from Admiral John Aquilino, the commander of all U.S. military forces in the Indo-Pacific. The briefing’s topic? The threat from China and how we should respond.  The tw...

Host  Cliff May  is joined by FDD experts  Jonathan Schanzer  and  Richard Goldberg  to discuss Qatar donning the facade of ‘mediator’ and ‘peacemaker.’ The reality is rather different. They unpack Doha's bad behavior, including how a plethora of bad actors — e.g., Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Islamic Republic of Iran (or, as Jon calls it, “the cantina scene...

The October 7 attack against Israel was carried out by Hamas with support from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Other Tehran proxies include Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Yemen-based Ansar Allah, better known as the Houthi rebels. Although President Trump designated them as a foreign terrorist organization, President Biden removed them from that blacklist. Since November, the Houthis have used Tehran-s...

Dr. Nadia Schadlow previously served as the U.S. national security advisor for strategy, and she led the drafting and publication of the 2017 National Security Strategy (and in record time). She shares what it was like to formulate such a strategy while in the Trump White House and while her predecessors rejected much of it, she shares one Strategy “core which is very, very important” reiterated b...

General David Petraeus joins the show to discuss his new book (co-authored by Andrew Roberts, our recent episode with him here ), Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine . Primarily through the lenses of Ukraine and Israel, Cliff and the General examine what has evolved into modern-day warfare. They discuss the status of Ukraine's defensive war against Russia, including criticism t...

Podcast host and author Dan Senor joins Cliff to discuss his new book, The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World , and Israel's defensive war in Gaza. Among the complexities they ponder: How does Hamas continue to rain rocket fire across Israel — do they have that many weapons stockpiled, or are they being resupplied? Is Israel achieving its militaril...

Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO) represents Colorado’s Sixth Congressional District, encompassing Aurora and adjacent areas. He's a former Army Ranger and Bronze Star recipient who deployed to combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now in Congress, he serves on the important House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Foreign Affairs Committee. He's also co-chair of the For Country Caucu...

During its October 7 invasion, Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than one thousand civilians in Israel. Its horrific acts of terrorism on that day also included mass rape, pillaging, the desecration of corpses, hostage-taking, and other unspeakable atrocities. Hamas has openly stated that it aims to repeat these atrocities and war crimes again and again and again until Israel is annihilated and Is...

Though the fighting is paused, Israel’s defensive war against Hamas continues. FDD Chief Executive Mark Dubowitz and former Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata — now a senior international fellow at FDD — just returned from Israel. Host Cliff May asks them what they saw, heard, and learned about Israel's ongoing war against Hamas, about Hamas’s allies – in particular Islamic Jihad and He...

Although six weeks have passed since Iran-backed Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and butchered more than 1,200 innocent civilians while taking hostage another 240, this is just the beginning of Israel’s multi-front defensive war. One key battlefield: the information space. Historically, the odds of winning in this arena have not been in Israel’s favor. They don’t seem to be now, either. To underst...

For an update on Israel's ground offensive in Gaza, AKA Israel's War on Terrorism, host Cliff May is joined by FDD experts Jonathan Schanzer — FDD Senior Vice President for Research and author of Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War — and FDD Senior Fellow Jacob Nagel , who previously served as Israel's National Security Advisor under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They unp...

The October 7 atrocities committed against Israel and by Hamas terrorists with support from the Islamic Republic of Iran has frozen the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as the clerical regime in Tehran doubtless anticipated. Now, the future of Saudi-Israeli relations may well depend on the outcome of Israel's war against Hamas.  Host Cliff May is joined by top experts Bernard Haykel...

Nearly a month ago, Hamas invaded Israel and murdered over 1,400 men, women, and children. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since World War II, which was also a war against the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. The Israel Defense Forces are now in Gaza aiming to cripple Hamas’s military capabilities, and it’s a challenging mission. To discuss, host Cliff May is joined by three...

Two of the world's top experts on human rights join host Cliff May to discuss the October 7 massacre in Israel — the atrocity carried out by Hamas and backed by Iran’s jihadi rulers — and about all that has followed since, in the Middle East, the US, Canada, and elsewhere.  They discuss inaction by the United Nations and other international bodies charged with championing human rights not just in...

It is the opinion of your Foreign Podicy host, Cliff May, that Andrew Roberts is the world’s greatest living historian. In recent years, he has written groundbreaking biographies of Churchill, Napoleon, and King George.  He’s a Bradley Prize winner, and Cliff is the one who nominated him. However, Cliff was outdone by His Majesty Charles the Third, as Andrew is now Lord Andrew Roberts — the sovere...

Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel has led to war. We have to think that’s what Hamas and its patrons in Tehran expected and very likely wanted. Is that because they believe they can win on the Gazan battlefields? Does Hezbollah, Tehran’s Lebanese foreign legion, plan to open a second front? Or do Israel’s many enemies in the Middle East, Europe, and here in America believe they can make Israel bac...

Israel is at war with Hamas — a real war, not another “mow the grass” conflict. Hamas is one of the terrorist groups funded, armed, trained and instructed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. This war began on Saturday, October 7 when Israel was invaded by Hamas barbarians who mass-murdered young people attending a peaceful music festival, raped women, slaughtered babies, and took hostages, dragging t...

Americans, our elected officials in Congress, and individuals aspiring to be the next U.S. president are debating whether the United States should continue to support Ukraine. Some Republican presidential candidates are arguing against aid for Ukraine, while several others warn that abandoning Ukraine would be a costly mistake. In Congress, Republican leaders of key committees continue to support...

“What’s past is prologue,” Shakespeare informed us. But what if the past is misunderstood? Or misrepresented?  What if policy makers are making policies based on false historical narratives? In 1979, host Cliff May went to Iran to report on the revolution that was then underway. Cliff admits that he didn’t know much about the country. But neither did most of his colleagues, reporters from around t...

“Hostage diplomacy” is a term you’ll frequently see in the media, but it's a misleading term. What we’re really talking about: Dictators kidnapping and torturing innocent foreign civilians.  In some cases, the leaders of free countries pay ransom to get them back. In some cases, the dictators also demand the release of convicted criminals who have been or can be of use to them. In some cases, both...

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is illegal, immoral, brutal, and barbarian.  And if you agree that there is no good alternative to American leadership of the world’s free nations and those that aspire to be, then it follows that it would be a terrible mistake — strategically and morally — for Americans to turn their backs on Ukrainians who are fighting for their freedom, independence, homeland, an...

Host Cliff May lived in Mexico in the late 1970s. Back then, there were reasons to believe Mexico was moving in the right direction. That’s no longer the case. Mexico’s narco-cartels are not only growing in power but also making common cause with Chinese Communists. One result: fentanyl-laced drugs are streaming north where they are killing tens of thousands of young Americans annually. Is Beijing...