China

Chinese Communism 101: Beijing’s Campus Strategy

In recent years, it’s become apparent that the People’s Republic of China intends to eat America’s lunch. No one is more responsible for revealing that than Matthew Pottinger, a former journalist who went on to earn an honest living serving in the U.S. Marines, and, in the previous administration, as Deputy National Security Advisor. He’s currently a distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution and he chairs FDD’s China Program.
China’s rulers have an impressively comprehensive strategy for achieving dominance in Asia sooner, and globally later. One important component has now been revealed by FDD Adjunct Fellow Craig Singleton who previously spent more than a decade serving in a series of sensitive diplomatic national security roles with the U.S. government. He has published a new report on the “modern-day Trojan Horses” that have gained entry into America’s universities – supporting the military-industrial complex of the People’s Republic of China.
Matt Pottinger and Craig Singleton join FDD Foreign Podicy host Cliff May for a wide-ranging discussion.

Biden’s Democracy Summitry

On December 9th and 10th, President Biden hosted what he called the Summit for Democracy – a virtual conference to which he invited 110 governments. Three principal items on the agenda: defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and advancing human rights.
Did this “summit” make any progress or at least chart a way forward?
What’s been the reaction from authoritarians, corrupt politicians, and human rights abusers? Based on what criteria were invitations issued – or not issued? What, if anything, comes next?
To discuss such riddles, Foreign Podicy host Cliff May is joined by Brian Katulis, Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute, non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and co-editor of the Liberal Patriot; and Reuel Marc Gerecht, formerly a Middle East specialist in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, now a senior fellow at FDD.

Strategic Surprise: A Conversation on Nuclear and Missile Threats with Rep. Mike Turner

The People’s Republic of China recently tested an advanced new hypersonic glide vehicle that circles the Earth and is designed to evade U.S. defenses and conduct a nuclear attack against the American homeland.
A new Pentagon report reveals that Beijing is expanding the size of its nuclear arsenal much faster than expected and that in 2020 China’s rulers launched more ballistic missiles for testing and training “than the rest of the world combined.”
Moscow conducted an anti-satellite test on November 15 that created more than 1500 pieces of trackable space debris, putting American astronauts (and Russian cosmonauts) on the International Space Station in danger. The test also demonstrated again Russia’s ability to target American satellites that we depend on for our security.
Meanwhile, Iran continues to expand its ballistic missile arsenal and inch toward a nuclear weapons capability.
As the Biden administration prepares its Nuclear Posture Review for publication next year, what should we understand about the Chinese and Russia nuclear weapons threats to Americans and our allies and what should we do about it?
Should the U.S. adopt a “sole purpose” or “no first use” nuclear policy? What is the status of U.S. efforts to modernize our nuclear deterrent? What is the role of missile defense in all of this, and what level of defense spending is needed to secure our nation?
U.S. Congressman Mike Turner, who represents Ohio’s 10th district, is a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and serves as Ranking Member of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, which oversees, among other things, strategic deterrence, nuclear weapons, missile defense, and space.
To discuss these issues and more, Representative Turner sat down with senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, Bradley Bowman, on this special edition of Foreign Podicy.

The U.S. Rejoins the UN’s Human Rights Violators Club

If the United Nations Human Rights Council were a figment of George Orwell’s imagination, you’d probably say: “Okay, very entertaining but, even accounting for dramatic license, this is a bit over the top.”
The UNHRC is a club for many of the world’s worst and most chronic violators of human rights (read FDD’s assessment here). Among the privileges of membership: virtual immunity to criticism.
The U.S., by contrast, is fair game for criticism. And Israel has long been the council’s whipping boy.
President Trump and his ambassador the UN, Nikki Haley, withdrew from the UNHRC three years ago. President Biden has reversed that policy. The U.S. has just won election to that body again – with the Biden administration promising that re-engagement will lead to reform.
Joining host Cliff May to discuss the UN and human rights are Rich Goldberg, senior advisor to FDD, who has held senior positions in the House, Senate, and National Security Council; Orde Kittrie,  a senior fellow at FDD and a tenured professor of law at Arizona State University;  and Morgan Viña, who served as Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, and is now Vice President for Government Affairs at JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

The U.N. Record on Health, Human Rights, Trade, and Communications is Worse Than You Think

There are dozens of international organizations affiliated with the United Nations. Some do useful work. Those that do not are under no pressure to improve.
As for those that do harm: They pretty much enjoy impunity.
Republican and Democratic administrations alike have preferred to leave not-well-enough alone.
FDD scholars recently published a monograph, “A Better Blueprint for International Organizations,” examining what has gone wrong, and what could be done – if there is the will – to reform the flawed and deteriorating U.N. system (a system generously funded by American taxpayers).
Foreign Podicy host Cliff May discusses some of the organizations within the U.N. system with Emily de La Bruyere, a senior fellow at FDD who focuses on China; Craig Singleton, an adjunct fellow at FDD who spent more than a decade serving in a series of sensitive national security roles with the United States government overseas; and Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at FDD, who has served on the National Security Council, in both houses of Congress, and as the editor of the FDD monograph.

The Predators Threatening Africa

Africa is a large and diverse continent. Many different peoples, ethnic groups, tribes — these terms overlap but are not synonymous — speaking more than a thousand languages, organized into more than 50 nation-states.
Most of those nation-states achieved independence in the aftermath of World War II, as European imperialism and colonialism died out. In few African lands has political stability and prosperity followed.
And today, Africa is threatened by new predators. Violent and vicious jihadists are kidnapping, killing, and committing a long list of other crimes. Africa also is threatened by what I’m going to call neo-imperialism — not the European variety.
Joining host Cliff May to discuss these issues is Dr. J. Peter Pham, who was the first-ever United States Special Envoy for the Sahel Region of Africa.
Before that, Ambassador Pham served as U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region of Africa. He’s also been a denizen of think tanks. Currently he is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council, but his first DC think tank affiliation was an Adjunct Senior Fellow at FDD.
In addition, he was a tenured Associate Professor of justice studies, political science, and Africana studies at James Madison University, and Director of the school’s Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Ambassador Pham is the author of more than 300 essays and reviews and the author, editor, or translator of over a dozen books, primarily on African history, politics, and economics.

The UN System: What Went Wrong and What Should Be Done

The U.N. and other international organizations were designed to give structure to what we like to call the “international community” – establishing and expressing what we like to call “international laws” and “international norms.”
Over recent years, however, authoritarian regimes have been increasingly dominating these entities, and utilizing them for their own, decidedly illiberal ends.
FDD scholars have just published “A Better Blueprint for International Organizations,” a monograph with a foreword by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, and contributions from a dozen FDD scholars. They make clear what went wrong and what can – and should – be done to fix this broken, indeed, increasingly corrupt, international system.
To discuss these issues, host Cliff May is joined by Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor to FDD and the monograph’s editor, and Morgan Viña, who served as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to Ambassador Haley and is now an adjunct fellow at FDD.

Beijing, the WHO, and the Pandemic

In January, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on the World Health Organization to fully investigate the possibility that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. He cited new U.S. intelligence that raises troubling questions. But China’s rulers have not been forthcoming.
Is the World Health Organization making a serious attempt to get at the truth? If not, what can and should be done? Those are just some of the issues Foreign Podicy host Cliff May explores with Anthony Ruggiero and Craig Singleton.
Anthony is a senior fellow at FDD. He has more than 19 years of government experience in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Most recently he served as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and National Security Council Senior Director for Counterproliferation and Biodefense.
Craig is an adjunct fellow at FDD. He previously spent more than a decade serving in a series of sensitive national security roles including overseas assignments at the U.S. embassies in Baghdad, Caracas, and Mexico City.

The UN and the Illiberal International Order

With the defeat of the Axis Powers in 1945, the United States emerged as the strongest nation on earth. But rather than emulate hegemons of the past, American leaders envisioned a new and different world order.
Their goal was to organize an "international community," establish "universal human rights," and a growing body of "international law."
This project required new institutions, in particular the United Nations.
Three quarters of a century later, it requires willful blindness not to see that the UN and many other international organizations have become bloated and corrupt bureaucracies, increasingly serving the interests of despots.
To discuss what’s gone wrong and what might be done to prevent the UN and other international organizations from drifting further into the clutches of authoritarians host Clifford D. May is joined by Richard Goldberg, Orde Kittrie, and Emma Reilly.
Rich Goldberg is a Senior Advisor at FDD. Among his many government positions, Rich previously served as the Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the National Security Council, and Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to former Mark Kirk, both when Kirk was in the House and then the Senate. Rich is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. We thank him for his service.
Also joining is Orde Kittrie. He, too, is a Senior Fellow at FDD as well as a professor of law. He is a leading expert on nonproliferation law and policy, and an expert on international law, particularly as it relates to the Middle East. On lawfare, well, he wrote the book. Its title: Lawfare: Law as a Weapon of War. Orde served for over a decade in various legal and policy positions at the U.S. State Department. He was a lead US negotiator at the UN for the treaty on the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism and participated in drafting several UN Security Council resolutions.
Joining, too, is Emma Reilly who has worked in the field of human rights for almost 20 years. She joined the UN Human Rights Office in 2012. In 2013, she blew the whistle on an exceptional and dangerous policy: UN bureaucrats giving to the Chinese government the names of dissidents, including US citizens, who planned to engage UN human rights mechanisms. The bureaucracy’s response: To not fix the problem and to attempt to fire her instead.
All three join host Cliff May for this episode to discuss what happened and what, if anything, can be done moving forward to combat this high level of corruption.

Arms Control and the Man

Marshall Billingslea has worked on a range of significant and difficult national security issues.
He served as Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing at the Treasury Department, president of the international Financial Action Task Force, Deputy Under Secretary of the Navy, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy. He’s also been an Assistant Secretary General at NATO.
Last April, he was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control with the personal rank of ambassador — a challenging portfolio over the months that have followed.
To find out more, he joins Cliff May and Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, for a discussion on the latest national security issues.

The Rise of the Illiberal World Order

In theory, the United Nations and other international organizations express the will of something called “the international community,” while enforcing something called the “liberal international rules-based order.”
In practice, the UN and other international organizations now pursue different agendas.
John Bolton served as National Security Advisor under President Trump, as U.S. ambassador to the UN under President George W. Bush, and in senior positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
He has long been concerned that the UN and other international organizations are drifting – or being pushed – and what such transformations portend for the United States and other free nations.
Richard Goldberg is a former director on the National Security Council. He also served as a foreign policy advisor in both the House and Senate. He is now a senior advisor at FDD.
Both join Cliff to discuss what’s become of the modern experiment in internationalism.

The U.S. Military’s Southern Exposure: Trouble in the Neighborhood

The U.S. Southern Command, SOUTHCOM, is one of six geographic combatant commands. It’s responsible for planning, operations and security cooperation in Central America, South America, and most of the Caribbean.
It’s a joint command including military and civilian personnel from the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and several federal agencies.  Its mission is to deter aggressors, defeat threats, respond to crises, and work with allied and partner nations to defend the U.S. homeland and America’s national interests.
The SOUTHCOM Commander, Admiral Craig S. Faller, is a Naval Academy graduate who served as Commander of the John C. Stennis Strike Group / Carrier Strike Group 3 in support of Operations New Dawn (in Iraq) and Enduring Freedom (in Afghanistan).  He has also served as the Director of Operations (J3) in U.S. Central Command, and as the Chief of Navy Legislative Affairs, which is where he worked with Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).  
Both join FDD Foreign Podicy host Cliff May for a discussion of the challenges and threats posed by America’s enemies and adversaries in this vital region.

H.R. McMaster and the Fight to Defend the Free World

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.

Our Man in Geneva: The UN is bigger – but not better – than you think.

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.

Pivoting Toward China

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.

Predators in the Global Jungle

David Kilcullen is an Australian-American soldier and scholar who served as a top advisor to the U.S. military in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also has worked in Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia.
And he’s an advisor to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP).
His new book, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, looks at the military threats facing America and its allies, including what the dragons — Moscow and Beijing — and the snakes — Tehran, Pyongyang, and non-state jihadi groups – are learning from each other. He suggests the options that need to be considered if free nations are “to evolve and survive the long twilight struggle ahead.”
He discusses these and related national security issues with host Cliff May on episode 54.

China and the Future of Defense

The Chinese Communist Party represents a multi-faceted and increasingly formidable threat to the United States and its democratic allies. In this intense competition with Beijing, the U.S. must ensure its war fighters have the most capable and technologically advanced weapons in the world.
If America’s technological superiority is allowed to deteriorate, Beijing may be tempted to undertake aggression that the U.S. could struggle to defeat — aggression that could have been avoided.To prevent this from happening, the House Armed Services Committee has established a Future of Defense Task Force focused on the U.S. defense innovation base.
On this special edition episode of Foreign Podicy, Bradley Bowman — Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP)— is joined by the task force’s co-chair — Congressman Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts — to discuss the goals of the task force, the health of the U.S. defense innovation base, and the growing threat from China.

Special Edition: Defense Dialogue

The threats facing the United States and its allies are not static. They grow. They transform. America’s defense strategies and defense budgets need to respond with creativity and muscularity.
In November, the U.S. Congress employed a legislative tool known as a Continuing Resolution (CR) to provide temporary funding for the U.S. Military. Now, in December, there is another funding deadline looming. But this kind of uncertainty puts America’s national security and our military personnel at heightened and unnecessary risk.
The day the CR expired, FDD’s Brad Bowman discussed these and related issues with Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana. Representative Banks, a member of the House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Committees, is himself a veteran who deployed to Afghanistan in 2014 and 2015 — experience that gives him an especially informed voice. Brad serves as Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power. Brad previously worked as a senior director in the U.S. Senate, as well as an army officer, pilot, and assistant professor at West Point.

Future Wars: a Conversation with H.R. McMaster

H.R. McMaster served as a U.S. Army officer for thirty-four years—including deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan—before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018. He then served as White House national security advisor. Now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, he also chairs the Board of Advisors at FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power.
He joins host Cliff May for a discussion about national security during a challenging and dangerous time—a time when the U.S. is threatened by a motley crew of rivals, adversaries and sworn enemies.

Preserving the Liberal World Order

Since the end of World War II, we have seen the emergence of a “liberal world order.” By any historical standard, it’s brought us extraordinary peace, prosperity and progress. Though imperfect, it’s preferable to any other option currently available. But unless the U.S. defends it and invests in it, it will die—sooner rather than later. That, in a nutshell, is the argument Robert Kagan makes in his powerful new book: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. He joins FDD president and Foreign Podicy host Clifford D. May for a discussion of what human progress in the 21st century requires. 

Religion and Secularism in Central Asia

Kazakhstan is one of the ten largest countries in the world, yet most Americans couldn’t find it on a map. Today, the former Soviet Republic is an anti-Islamist, Muslim-majority nation, yet most Americans have no idea we have friends there. To learn more about this distant and intriguing corner of the world, host Clifford D. May is joined by Svante Cornell, Director of the Central Asian Caucasus Institute at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Nothing but Net: Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare

A peril that may not be on your radar screen: Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare (CEEW). Computers and the Internet have made our lives easier but they’ve also left us vulnerable to an arsenal of cyber weapons that threaten us as much as terrorists, guns and bombs.Foreign Podicy host Clifford D. May is joined by Dr. Samantha Ravich, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as well as a principal investigator for FDD’s Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare project, to discuss CEEW, and what must be done to combat it.
Episode resources:
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/MEMO_CyberDefinitions_07.pdf
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/samantha-ravich-cyber-enabled-economic-warfare-assessing-us-strategy/
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1282920/dod-initiates-elevation-process-for-us-cyber-command-to-a-unified-combatant-com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senate-confirms-paul-nakasone-to-lead-the-nsa-us-cyber-command/2018/04/24/52c95ca4-47e8-11e8-9072-f6d4bc32f223_story.html?utm_term=.bc6091cfdaff
Listeners can find and subscribe to Foreign Podicy via iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and SoundCloud.
To request more information or to provide feedback for the Foreign Podicy team, email press@defenddemocracy.org.