FDD's Foreign Podicy

LTG (Ret.) H.R. McMaster is a soldier, scholar and strategist. A graduate of West Point, he served in the U.S. Army for 34 years, earning a doctorate in history along the way, and retiring as a Lieutenant General. From February 2017 until April 2018, he was President Trump's National Security Advisor. He's currently the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he's also the chairman of the advisory board of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power. He's just published a new book, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World. He joins Cliff to discuss his time as the U.S. National Security Advisor, his assessment of the latest international security issues ranging from China and Russia to Afghanistan, and his book — including what he hopes the next U.S. administration can gain from it.

On September 22, 1980, Iraq and Iran went to war. The conflict dragged on for eight long years, taking an estimated half million lives. When it was over, both countries and the Middle East had been profoundly changed. Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow at FDD — also a native Farsi speaker who has been intensively studying the region for years — talks with host Cliff May about this not-so-well-remembered war, and its significant fallout. For additional background reading, read Behnam's latest article, "Why The Iran-Iraq War Matters For The Success Of Maximum Pressure," here.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in New York is often a high-profile figure. Think of Nikki Haley, John Bolton, Jeane Kirkpatrick — or, going back further, Adlai Stevenson, Arthur Goldberg, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Andrew Young. American ambassadors to the United Nations in Geneva – where there also are dozens of UN-affiliated international organizations – tend to be less well-known, but they have important work they can do – if they want to. Ambassador Andrew Bremberg has been in that job for about a year, and he joins host Cliff May to discuss what he’s seen and done, and what the UN is and isn’t doing. Also contributing to the conversation is Richard Goldberg, a former White House National Security Council official who spent a decade on Capitol Hill overseeing U.S. foreign assistance. Rich now serves as a senior advisor at FDD and leads FDD’s International Organizations Program.

Ambassador Ron Dermer has been Israel’s ambassador to the United States since 2013 – not an uneventful period for Israel, America and the Middle East. Most recently he has been encouraged by the prospect of Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations, and by President Trump’s decision to “snap back” sanctions on Iran’s hostile rulers. Also on his mind: why Palestinian leaders would be smart to resume negotiations with Israeli leaders (and why they almost certainly won’t), and the threat posed by Hezbollah, the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon, a state suffering multiple crises. Ambassador Dermer discusses these and other issues with Foreign Podicy host Cliff May.

Garry Kasparov is a former world chess champion, a former Russian dissident and democracy leader, and a current human rights activist. He’s founded a new organization, the Renew Democracy Initiative, committed to defending democratic values and freedoms in the U.S. and around the world. He joins host Cliff May for a wide-ranging discussion.

Lebanon is a small country that has long been facing enormous perils. This week, its capital, Beirut, exploded – literally.  An enormous, devastating and mysterious blast in the port killed a still-unknown number of people, but reportedly over a hundred, injured thousands more, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Lebanon’s strongest political and military faction is Hezbollah, a designated terrorist organization loyal to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The possibility of Hezbollah dragging Lebanon into another war with Israel remains real -- particularly as Hezbollah installs increasingly sophisticated missiles, tens of thousands of them, in Lebanese homes, hospitals, schools and mosques. The missiles are, of course, pointed at Israel. All this falls within the context of Lebanon’s worsening economic crisis. James Rickards, a well-known writer on economics and geopolitics who serves on the Board of Advisors for FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, has just released a new FDD report on this dire situation, written before the horrific explosion in Beirut. He — along with Tony Badran, a research fellow at FDD, who was born and raised in Lebanon and has for years studied and written about the Levant — joins FDD Foreign Podicy host Cliff May to discuss the new report, and the very real possibility of Lebanon’s imminent collapse.

In 1972, Nixon went to China, where he met with Communist leader Mao Zedong. Thanks to that bold diplomatic initiative, the United States and the People’s Republic learned to peacefully co-exist, living happily ever after. Well, not exactly. What Nixon called “the week that changed the world” helped China become wealthier and more powerful, but Beijing did not become America’s strategic partner — or a reliable stakeholder — in what we like to think of as the liberal, international, rules-based order. To discuss what China’s rulers have been doing, are doing, and intend to do, host Cliff May is joined by two scholars new to FDD. Nathan Picarsic, a senior fellow at FDD, studies Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy, and its competitive approach to geopolitics. Emily de La Bruyère, also a senior fellow, has pioneered novel data collection and analysis tools tailored to Beijing’s strategic and institutional structures. She uses primary-source, Chinese-language materials to provide insight on geopolitical, technological, and economic change.

Israelis are now pondering a hugely consequential decision: Should they change the status of some of the territories under their control, drawing borders that have for more than 70 years remained indeterminate? The Trump administration appears to have given a green light to such alterations – so long as they’re in line with its peace plan, sometimes called – with either bravado or derision — “The Deal of the Century.” Joining Foreign Podicy host Cliff May to discuss the multiple factors and variables involved in the Israeli decision are Jonathan Schanzer, FDD’s senior vice president for research who has written extensively on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other Middle East issues, and John Hannah, senior counselor at FDD, who has worked as a top advisor in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

In recent weeks, the pandemic – the global spread of a deadly virus that originated in China – has dominated the news media, and therefore most of the public’s attention. Among the important stories that have been marginalized: the on-going conflict in Afghanistan, as well as America’s diplomatic attempts to end that conflict, or at least reduce America’s participation in it. Discussing these and related issues with host Cliff May are Tom Joscelyn, FDD senior fellow, senior editor of FDD’s Long War Journal, and a regular contributor to The Dispatch; and Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power. Brad served more than 15 years as an active duty U.S. Army officer, including time as a company commander, Blackhawk pilot, congressional affairs officer in the Pentagon, and staff officer in Afghanistan.

Richard Goldberg just finished a year on the National Security Council (NSC) where he served as the Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now back at FDD as a senior advisor, he’s going to explain to host Cliff May and Foreign Podicy listeners how the NSC operates; its relationship with other government departments; how it makes policies and attempts to have those policies implemented; what it’s doing and what it’s managed to get done during President Trump’s first three years in office.