FDD's Foreign Podicy

Xi is in Washington, shaking hands and smiling as the People’sLiberation Army prepares for aggression in the Pacific. Putin continues to try to play the victim while continuing his unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The regime in Iran is severely weakened but continues to menace commercial traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. And North Korean leader Kim Jong Unis responding to American concessions and South Korean conciliation with more ballistic missile launches.

Some Americans are familiar with the threats China, Russia,Iran, and North Korea pose individually. But how are these adversaries helping each other, and how does American action or inaction, strength or weakness in one region or against one adversary impact the others?

To explore these questions and more on Foreign Podicy,Lt. Gen. (Ret.) H.R. McMaster and Ryan Brobst join guest host Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). H.R. McMaster is a former U.S. national security advisor to President Trump and serves as chair of the Advisory Board for CMPP, where Ryan Brobst is deputy director.

Russia is turning captured Orthodox parishes into tools of occupation while holding tens of thousands of abducted Ukrainian children as leverage in any ceasefire deal.  China and Iran continue to feed the Houthi militants in Yemen drone and satellite technology to terrorize Red Sea shipping lanes.
 
From election interference to drone incursions along the Baltics and Poland, these authoritarian regimes continue to test the will of fragile democracies and international order. 
 
U.S. Representative Joe Wilson (SC-2), chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, and FDD’s Research Fellow Dr. Ivana Stradner join Foreign Podicy guest host RADM Mark Montgomery to unpack the Axis of Aggressors new generation warfare campaign against NATO and the West.

Sept. 11, 2001 began as a beautiful late summer day in New York City and Washington, DC.

Then, out of what was literally a clear blue sky, two hijacked passenger jets slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, another into the Pentagon just outside Washington. A fourth plane, thanks to the courage of the passengers aboard, did not reach its target but insteadcrashed in Pennsylvania.

Lewis “Scooter” Libby was in the White House. He tells host Cliff May what took place over the days – and years – that followed.
 

Relevant Link:  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/8/cruel-awakening-911/

On August 26, an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed 13 American service members and roughly 170 Afghans at Abbey Gate, one of the entrances to Kabul airport.

Four days after that, the last U.S. service member left Afghanistan.
 
Then, on Sept. 7, 2021, the Taliban declared the restoration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
 
These anniversaries have not sparked much media interest. One notable exception: A new documentary film from Wall Street Journal Opinion: 

“The Path to Zero: The Withdrawal FromAfghanistan,” looks at President Biden's April 14, 2021 order to draw American troop levels down to zero, and traces what followed.
 
The film's producer and director, Michael Pack, talks with host Cliff May about what happened back then and the lessons we should have learned by now.
 
Documentary Links:
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/opinion-docs/wsj-opinion-the-path-to-zero/2EB4BA30-CF99-462F-BB52-222870D4F002
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwzv_B9x-k

In late Summer of 2001, the UN hosted what it called the “World Conference on Racism” in Durban, South Africa.
Instead of combating racism, the conference incited it, becoming the worst international manifestation of Jew-hatred since World War II and the Nazi Holocaust.
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro accused Israel of “genocide.” Yes, way back then.
Gerald Steinberg, the founder and president of NGO Monitor, a think tank focused, as its name suggests, on non-governmental organizations, talks to host Cliff May about how and why those poisonous seeds were planted, and what they’ve grown into more than two decades later.