FDD's Foreign Podicy

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’s goal to destabilize Mexico? Does the Biden administration have a Mexico policy? If not, what should that policy be?

Elliott Abrams has been in the foreign policy business for a rather long time. Years ago, he served on the staffs of Democratic Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He later served in the administrations of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. During the Trump administration he served as the State Department’s Special Representative for Venezuela and later, in addition, took on the position of Special Representative for Iran. He left the State Department in January 2021.  He’s the author of five books. He’s currently senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has a blog called Pressure Points which focuses on U.S. foreign policy, the Middle East, democracy, and human rights.  He joins host Cliff May to discuss a number of pressing national security and foreign policy issues.

"It's not a sprint, it's a marathon."That was the reported assessment of a Ukrainian battalion commander recently describing Kyiv's counteroffensive against invading Russian forces. To be sure, the progress of the Ukrainian forces has been slow and the human cost incredibly high.Meanwhile, more than 40 countries — not including Russia — met in Riyadh last weekend to discuss the war. At this point in the war, what are the strategies of the two combatants? Is time on Kyiv's — or Moscow's — side?What U.S. interests are at stake on the battlefield in Ukraine?What happened at the NATO Summit in Vilnius last month?Guest host Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power, poses these and related questions to two leading experts: Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges and Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery.

In Part II of the Game of War, host Cliff May is again joined by Dr. Ben Jensen and RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery to continue their discussion on wargaming. They discuss its application in both Taiwan and Ukraine.

China’s rulers gaze across the Taiwan Strait and see an island where people are free, prosperous, and choose their leaders. They don’t like that. They insist that the people of Taiwan must be ruled by the Communist Party of China. They vow that this is the future and that they will make it happen through the use of military force if other approaches fail. But that’s not all Beijing wants in the vast region known as the Indo-Pacific. Not for the first time on this podcast, we suggest that you reference a map because we’re going to travel to some far-off and remote lands. Guiding us will be Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at FDD who studies and writes about this region and has been sounding an alarm in Congress and elsewhere about Beijing’s plans to undermine America's alliances in the Indo-Pacific — particularly with the small island nations of the region. Joining us for the tour is Jon Schanzer, FDD’s senior vice president for research, who recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and Palau, one of the island countries in the western Pacific that we’ll discuss.

War games are not entertainments. They are simulations; a way to develop insights into what would happen in an armed conflict – who would prevail and at what cost, should push come to shove. War games test strategies and capabilities. They are a tool for both research and training.Recently, Dr. Ben Jensen and FDD’s RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery conducted for Congress a war game simulating a conflict between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan.They join host Cliff May for a special two-part episode to first discuss the concept, utility, and history of war gaming followed by its application in planning for a possible contingency over Taiwan.

Samuel Ramani teaches politics and international relations at Oxford. He’s the author of Russia in Africa and Putin’s War on Ukraine.His articles appear in a range of top-tier publications. He’s often on the BBC and other international broadcast media. His Twitter feed is granular and prolific.He joins host Cliff May to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine and its footprint in Africa.

Host Cliff May recently wrote a column for the Washington Times guessing what Vladimir Putin might do next if he should succeed in Ukraine.He suggested Putin would take over Moldova, formalize his control over Belarus, and then turn his hungry eyes toward the Baltic states — with the primary goal of establishing a land bridge to Kaliningrad, a Russian territory 400 miles west of the Russian mainland.Parenthetically: Kaliningrad was called Königsberg before the Soviet army captured it from the Germans in 1945. It’s where the Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet is now headquartered.In response, Cliff received a note from a brilliant scholar, S. Frederick Starr, among whose many books is Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane. It’s a fascinating book that Cliff says changed his understanding of Central Asia and the Islamic world.In his note to Cliff, Fred asked why he didn’t think about Putin sending his tanks in another direction: Central Asia and the Caucuses.That seemed like a good question. So, Fred — the founding chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program — sat down with Cliff to answer it.

Major General Paul J. Rock Jr. commands United States Marine Corps Forces Central Command, or MARCENT. That makes him the top U.S. Marine in the Middle East. MajGen Rock is a Marine aviator with combat deployments to Iraq, and he was the commanding general of the 3d Marine Expeditionary Brigade before his current position. He believes the biggest threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East is Iran and its proxies. Why? What are Tehran and its terror proxies up to in the region? What are China and Russia doing there? How is MARCENT helping to build a regional security architecture? And how can U.S. Congress help? Guest host Bradley Bowman — Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power – asks MajGen Rock these and related questions.

Walter Russell Mead, Global View Columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Professor of Foreign Affairs, discusses his recent visit to Kyiv and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The podcast also touches on topics such as the potential threat of missiles, the US's advantageous position post-war, the Monroe Doctrine's impact on Latin America, challenges in Mexico, US-Israel relations, and the speaker's personal interests.