FDD's Foreign Podicy

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.

LTG (Ret.) H.R. McMaster wears many hats. Most important for us at FDD: He’s Chairman of the Board of Advisors for our Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).He served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army for 34 years, he holds a doctorate in military history, and he was the 26th assistant to the president of the United States for National Security Affairs.Ways to keep up with him: Reading what he writes as well as listening to both his Battlegrounds podcast and the Good Fellows podcast he does along with historian Niall Ferguson and economist John Cochran from their base at the Hoover Institution.But when he’s in Washington — or as Cliff calls it: "Baghdad on the Potomac" — we like to sit him down at FDD and pummel him with questions. Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s CMPP, joins the episode to help do just that. 

One of the most important missions of the United States military is defending our homeland against a range of threats. But that mission is only becoming more difficult as China, Russia, and North Korea strengthen their means to threaten Americans here at home.What is the current military threat to the American homeland? How is that threat evolving?What does the Department of Defense need now and in the future to defend our homeland more effectively?Bradley Bowman — senior director of FDD's Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP), filling in for host Cliff May — asks these and other questions to two U.S. Air Force officers who have served our country in uniform for decades and accumulated thousands of flight hours.Lieutenant General David S. NahomLt. Gen. David S. Nahom is the Commander of Alaskan Command within United States Northern Command. He’s also Commander of the Eleventh Air Force within Pacific Air Forces and Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command Region. In other words, he’s focused on the current threat.Brigadier General Joseph D. KunkelBrig. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel is the Director of Plans, Deputy Chief of Staff, Plans and Programs in the U.S. Air Force headquarters. That means he focuses on the future threat and what we need to be doing now to prepare.

On May 28, 2023, after 21 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan won another five-year-term as president of Turkey — or Türkiye — as he prefers. To discuss what this means for Türkiye, the U.S., the Middle East, Europe, and NATO, host Cliff May is joined by Sinan Ciddi, non-resident senior fellow at FDD and associate professor of national security studies at Marine Corps University, and Jonathan Schanzer, FDD’s senior vice president and former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

American political scientist Joseph Nye popularized the concept of soft power decades ago. As he wrote in his 2004 book by that name, “soft power – getting others to want the outcomes that you want – co-opts people rather than coerces them.” Such soft power cooption can be less costly than hard power coercion.But we see daily reminders that soft power is insufficient and hard power often remains decisive, at least initially.Consider:Putin’s unprovoked large-scale invasion of Ukraine;Beijing’s saber rattling in the Taiwan Strait; andTehran’s continued employment of terrorist proxies and steps toward a nuclear weapon capability....These remind us that soft power has its limits.But it would be a mistake to dismiss the role of soft power. It’s a necessary but not sufficient complement to hard power that can help the U.S. secure its interests.America needs both hard and softer power tools and needs to employ and integrate them more effectively. That’s one of the big ideas animating FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).What are the tools of soft power? How do they relate to hard power?How is China using soft power tools against the United States and its allies?How can we wield our soft power tools such as international development more effectively?To discuss these topics and more, Bradley Bowman — senior director of FDD’s CMPP, filling in for Cliff May as host — is joined by Daniel Runde and Elaine Dezenski.Daniel RundeDan is a senior vice president and director of the Project on Prosperity and Development (PPD) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis. Dan has held leadership roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank Group and has significant experience in the private sector.He has written a new book: The American Imperative, Reclaiming Global Leadership Through Soft Power.Elaine DezenskiElaine is senior director of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power. Elaine has more than two decades of leadership in public, private, and international organizations and is a recognized expert on geopolitical risk, supply chain security, anti-corruption, and national security.