FDD's Foreign Podicy

Leon Panetta has been there and done that. From joining theArmy in the 1960s, to serving in Congress for more than a decade and a half, to directing the Office of Management and Budget, to serving as the Director of the CIA and Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta has served our country with distinction for decades. He also serves on the board of advisors for the Center on Military and Political Power at FDD.

How does Secretary Panetta believe the threats to our country have changed? Why should Americans care about developments overseas? How does he view defense spending? And how do we build and sustain bipartisan consensus around necessary national security policies?

Bradley Bowman, senior director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, guest hosts this Foreign Podicy conversation with Secretary Panetta.

Since declaring a blockade against Saudi Arabia on July 20, the Houthis have struck vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, fired missiles and drones at Saudi cities and, over recent weeks, seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coast, along with islands in the Bab al-Mandeb, the southern exit from the Red Sea.
FDD senior fellow Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British ambassador to Yemen, and FDD research analyst Bridget Toomey tell host Cliff May everything you've always wanted to know about the Houthis but were afraid to ask.
They discuss also how an attempt to hijack and crash a flydubai passenger jet was foiled by an Indian pilot and Israelis passengers, and the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from their last base in Iraq.

Xi is in Washington, shaking hands and smiling as the People’s Liberation 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.

Joby Warrick, a fine storyteller and longtime national security correspondent for the Washington Post, has written a biography of the most infamous terrorist of the second half of the 20th century.

“The Jackal: The Rise and Fall of Carlos, the World’s First Super-Terrorist,” relates the life story of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez – the Venezuelan-born Communist who enjoyed tailored suits, fine wine, beautiful women, and murdering in support of anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism, and other sundry causes for which he was well-paid.

The seizure of the OPEC ministers in Vienna. Two French intelligence officers shot dead in a Paris apartment. The capture in Khartoum that finally ended his run.
Since 1994, Carlos has been behind bars. In 2003, from his cell, he wrote a manifesto, L'Islam révolutionnaire, praising Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, and urging revolutionaries of every stripe — leftists, atheists, all of them — to accept Islamist leadership.

Today, Carlos sits in Poissy, a prison housed in a former monastery, where Joby interviewed him. In this episode of “Foreign Podicy,” Joby tells host Cliff May that the Jackal is no longer the wild animal he once was.

FDD’s RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery is a travelin’ man. He’s just back from Taiwan and Ukraine.

He joins host Cliff May to debrief what he saw and heard abroad—and offer his analyses. They also discuss North Korea’s role in Russia’s war, cyberattacks—almost certainly by Iran’s rulers—on water utilities in Minnesota and Michigan, the Strait of Hormuz, the Houthis and the Bab el-Mandeb, and cognitive warfare.

A week ago, President Trump seemed to have decided to hit the Islamic Republic of Iran hard – to destroy what’s left of its missile arsenals, its military-industrial base, its command-and-control headquarters and perhaps the commanders themselves.

Then the President heard that Iran’s rulers were finally ready to make a deal. Soon after, Iran’s rulers announced they were not. President Trump called that “unbelievably duplicitous.”

FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht and Behnam Ben Taleblu join host Cliff May to discuss where the conflict stands and what would be the best way forward.