On this Washington Roundtable episode of the Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast, sponsored by Bell, our guests are Dov Zakheim, PhD, former DoD comptroller, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Dr. Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute, Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO who is now with the Center for a New American Security and Michael Herson of American Defense International.

Topics:

— Update on National Defense Authorization Act and continuing resolution as lawmakers gear up for campaign season

— Congressional support for additional Ukraine aid

— Impact of former President Trump’s legal woes on support among Republican lawmakers and the party’s base

— Vladimir Putin’s move to annex Donbas and Luhansk as well as renewed nuclear threat to deter further US and European support for Ukraine and half Kyiv’s efforts to regain its territory

— Whether Putin’s gambit will prevent Western aid or Ukraine’s advance, or the call up of 300,000 reservists will change the course of the war given poor Russian leadership and morale

— World leaders’ response to Putin at the United Nation’s annual General Assembly meeting

— How Washington and its allies can deter Putin from using nuclear or unconventional weapons or respond should he do so

— The failure to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, precipitating an expensive war, and how it should change the approach to deterring China from moving against Taiwan

— President Biden’s latest unambiguous declaration that the United States will defend Taiwan if Beijing invades

— Meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to address mounting Taiwan and other tensions on sidelines of UN General Assembly gathering

— UN report on North Korean nuclear weapons and strategic missiles

— The message the port visit of the USS Ronald Reagan to Busan sends to Pyongyang and Beijing

— The outlook for the Iranian regime in the wake of mass demonstrations following the death of a 16-year-old girl who was killed by the government’s religious police for wearing her hijab too loosely

— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Yerevan, becoming the highest ranking American official to visit Armenia since its independence, and subsequent cease fire after Azerbaijan’s latest attack on Armenia