FDD's Foreign Podicy

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...

Russia's war in Ukraine underscores, among other things, the urgency of boosting Taiwan's military readiness. Meanwhile, many Americans remain bitterly divided on what role of the U.S. should be in the world, and, therefore, on how strong America's military power ought to be. To discuss these and other pressing issues facing the U.S. and broader free world, Foreign Podicy host Cliff May is joined...

Russia ravages Ukraine. China eyes Taiwan. North Korea prepares a nuclear test. And negotiations for a new — and worse — iteration of President Obama’s deeply-flawed Iran nuclear deal remain on life-support.   The rules-based, American-led order is hanging in the balance — and although they weren’t granted a seat at the negotiating table, Israel currently faces a unique threat with a build-up of I...

Can there be anyone not shocked and appalled by Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine – a war intended to extinguish Ukraine as an independent nation; a war in which it appears that war crimes are not just being tolerated by the Kremlin but actively encouraged; a war intended to establish that the only laws that apply in the world today are those of the jungle? The answer: yes. Such people prefer to cal...

"A well-informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny." Thomas Jefferson said that or something close to it. But what happens when tyrants misinform us or — worse — disinform us? To help us understand disinformation and its consequences, Foreign Podicy host Cliff May is joined by three FDD scholars: RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery , Senior Director of FDD's Center on Cyber and Technology Innov...

There’s a dangerous — even reckless — new Iran nuclear accord that appears to be nearing the finish line in Vienna. Meanwhile, the Biden White House is struggling to wield the right set of policy tools to bring Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine to end. The White House wants to put both of these challenges in the rear view so that it can pivot to, and focus on, a looming great power com...

Central to America's strategy in the Cold War was the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). The idea was to make nuclear warfare a lose-lose proposition — a game you just can't win. Whichever side was attacked would retain the capability to counterattack. Both sides would end up devastated, if not annihilated. But MAD works only if both sides are equally averse to mass death and destruc...

Michael G. Waltz served as a Green Beret in the Middle East and Africa, and commanded a Special Forces company in the mountains of Afghanistan. He served as a counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, and director for Afghanistan policy in the office of the Secretary of Defense. He is the author of a marvelous 2014 book: Warrior Diplomat: A Green Beret’s Battles from Washington to Af...

Russia’s brutal war continues, and President Zelensky is asking for more assistance as the people of Ukraine attempt to exercise their right to defend themselves from an imperialist aggressor seeking to end their existence as an independent nation. The Biden administration’s efforts to revive Barack Obama’s fatally flawed deal with Iran’s rulers — in an even weaker form — may be close to completio...

As Vladimir Putin’s troops ravage Ukraine, his envoy in Vienna is steering the U.S. nuclear negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Israelis, who know all too well what it means to have bigger neighbors determined to erase your nation from the map, are trying to bring an end to the war and help those suffering as a result of the war — but they can’t forget that Putin has military forces st...

Vladimir Putin is waging a war of aggression, a war of conquest, an imperialist war. This should not come as a surprise. It’s long been evident that he views himself as a modern czar, a Caesar (which is where the word “czar” comes from), an emperor whose mission is to restore — and, if he can, enlarge — the ancient Russian empire which for a few decades was rebranded as the Soviet empire. In 2008,...

As feared and anticipated, Vladimir Putin sent his troops over the border into Ukraine – an act of aggression and a blatant violation of international law. If Ukrainians, over the days ahead display courage, defiance, and determination, can they stop Putin from stripping them of their right to independence, sovereignty, and self-determination? Having shown little will to contain Putin after he dis...

Joel C. Rosenberg is a New York Times-bestselling author. He’s written 15 novels and four non-fiction books with five million copies in print. Among his readers and fans: George W. Bush, Mike Pence, and Mike Pompeo. He also has a second vocation as what you might call a religious-political activist. And he has a new book based on that work. It’s titled: “Enemies and Allies.” Joel talks about his l...

Beijing is conducting the most ambitious military modernization and expansion effort in the history of the People’s Republic of China. And the more powerful the People’s Liberation Army becomes, the more aggressively Beijing is behaving. Given the vast distances and expanses of ocean, when Americans think of the Indo-Pacific and the Pentagon’s role there, they may think first of the U.S. Navy and...

Vladimir Putin is threatening to erase the sovereignty, independence, and self-determination of Ukraine. What caused this crisis?  What are the likely consequences not only for Russia and Ukraine but for the U.S., Europe, and NATO? How would a war between Russia and Ukraine turn out? What lessons are the rulers of China and Iran learning? How do Russian energy resources – and Europe’s need for the...

The media have changed a lot in recent years – not for the better. The New York Times certainly isn’t the newspaper it used to be.  Ashley Rindsberg has written a book making the case that, even in its best days, The Times often failed to live up to its reputation as the newspaper of record, pursuing and publishing the truth, as the paper’s founder put it, “without fear or favor, regardless of par...

John Bolton has had quite a few challenging jobs. Among them: presidential national security advisor, ambassador to the United Nations, and several senior positions in the State Department. He has an original and provocative new essay in National Review on the so-called “rules-based international order.” He discusses that and other current issues, crises, and conflicts with Reuel Marc Gerecht, a s...