Great Power Podcast

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with longtime Middle East hand Ambassador Dennis Ross regarding the next steps in America’s confrontation with Iran, what changes the war has wrought in the Persian Gulf, and how the current conflict is reshaping America’s approach to great power politics.

BIO:

Ambassador Dennis Ross is the counselor and William Davidson Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He also teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Jewish Civilization. For more than twelve years, Amb. Ross played a leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East peace process, dealing directly with the parties as the U.S. point man on the peace process in both the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations. He served two and half years as special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region, spending the first 6 months of the Administration as the special advisor on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. His newest book is Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World (Oxford University Press, March 2025).

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Melinda Haring and Daniel Kimmage of Kensington Global, authors of a recent piece on emerging powers, about their concept of “new Spartas” and what it means for today’s global order.

MATERIALS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

-- “Rise of the New Spartas,” Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, July 2026, https://jstribune.com/rise-of-the-new-spartas/

BIOS:

Melinda Haring is CEO of Kensington Global LLC, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, and a senior advisor at Razom for Ukraine.

Daniel Kimmage is a former senior official at the State Department, and currently President of Kensington Global.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman talks to Dr. Colin Clarke of The Soufan Center regarding the growing sophistication of extremist groups, the Trump administration's new counterterrorism strategy, and the intersection with America's Great Power Competition with China, Russia and other powers.

MATERIALS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:

- Colin P. Clarke, "The New Shape Of Global Jihadism," Statecraft and Strategy no. 1, Spring 2026, https://www.statecraftandstrategy.com/the-new-counterterrorism-terrain/the-new-shape-of-global-jihadism/.

- Clara Broekaert and Colin P. Clarke, “The Pandemonium Narrative and Its Limits: Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic State’s Innovation Pattern,” Hudson Institute Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, May 11, 2026, https://www.hudson.org/terrorism/pandemonium-narrative-its-limits-artificial-intelligence-islamic-states-innovation-clara-broekaret-colin-p-clarke.

- Colin Clarke and Charlie Winter, “The Islamic State May Be Failing, but Its Strategic Communications Legacy Is Here to Stay,” War on the Rocks, August 17, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/the-islamic-state-may-be-failing-but-its-strategic-communications-legacy-is-here-to-stay/.

- White House, United States Counterterrorism Strategy 2026, May 2026, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-USCT-Strategy-1.pdf.

BIO:

Dr. Colin Clarke is the Executive Director of The Soufan Center. His research focuses on domestic and transnational terrorism, international security, and geopolitics.

Colin previously served as the Director of Research at The Soufan Group and as a Senior Research Fellow with The Soufan Center. Prior to those roles, Clarke was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he spent a decade researching terrorism, insurgency, and criminal networks. At RAND, Clarke led studies on ISIS financing, the future of terrorism and transnational crime, and lessons learned from all insurgencies since the end of World War II.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman talks with Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute about China's growing demographic problems, and what they signify for the PRC's future - and for Beijing's strategic rivalry with Washington.

MATERIALS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE:

-- The PRC's Chinese New Year robot demonstration can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUmlv814aJo

BIO:

Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on international security in the Korean Peninsula and Asia, demographics, and economic development. Domestically, he focuses on poverty and social well-being. Dr. Eberstadt is also a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research.

His many books and monographs include Men Without Work: Post-Pandemic Edition (2022); Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications (2010); The Poverty of “the Poverty Rate” (2008); The End of North Korea (1999); The Tyranny of Numbers (1995); and Poverty in China (1979). His latest is Lessons for an Unserious Superpower: The “Scoop” Jackson Legacy and US Foreign Policy (2024).

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman talks with Michael Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about the current state of the war between Russia and Ukraine, and its implications for the U.S. campaign against Iran and Great Power rivalry more broadly.

BIO:

Michael Kofman is a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on the Russian military, Ukrainian armed forces, and Eurasian security issues. Prior to joining Carnegie in 2023, he served as director of the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses, where he led a team conducting research on the capabilities, strategy, and military thought of the Russian Armed Forces.

Kofman is a contributing editor at War on the Rocks, where he hosts the Russia Contingency, a bi-weekly podcast on the Russian military and the Russia-Ukraine war. He previously served as a research fellow and program manager at the National Defense University. Past fellowships have included the Modern War Institute at West Point, Center for New American Security, and the Woodrow Wilson Center.

In this episode, host Ilan Berman talks to Jonathan Schanzer, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, about how the war with Iran is reshaping the Middle East - and what it means for “great power competition” writ large.

MATERIALS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

-- "Regime Change Without Nation Building," Commentary, April 2026, https://www.commentary.org/articles/jonathan-schanzer/regime-change-iran-america-trump/

BIO:

Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is the executive director at FDD, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars.

Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he followed and froze the funding of Hamas and al-Qaeda. Jonathan has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum. He has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East and U.S. national security.

His most recent book is Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021). His other books are State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), and Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2004).

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Randy Schriver and Mike Kuiken, the Chair and Vice-Chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, about the USCC's latest report to Congress, and what they see as the future domains of our unfolding competition with the PRC.

MATERIALS REFERENCED:

-- The Commission's 2025 Annual Report to Congress (available here: https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2025-annual-report-congress)

BIOGRAPHIES:

Randall Schriver is the Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security (IIPS) and a partner at Pacific Solutions LLC. He is also a lecturer for Stanford University’s “Stanford-in-Washington” program, is on the Board of Advisors to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, and is on the Board of Directors of the US-Taiwan Business Council. He served for two years (2018-2019) as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, where he led a team of nearly one hundred professionals and was the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on matters related to the Indo-Pacific region.

Michael Kuiken serves as Vice Chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission following nearly 23 years in the U.S. Senate and is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In the private sector, Mike is the Managing Member of Silver Valley Strategies, where he advises founders, CEOs, and investors on geopolitical and government strategies.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Dana Stroul of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy about the changing shape of the new Syria, and what we can expect in terms of the looming showdown between the United States and Iran.

BIO:

Dana Stroul is Director of Research and Shelly and Michael Kassen Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, positions she assumed in February, 2024. She rejoined the Institute after serving from 2021-2023 as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, the Pentagon’s top civilian official with responsibility for the region.

Prior to first joining the Institute in 2018, she served for five years as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she covered the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey. Before working on Capitol Hill, Stroul served in the Middle East policy office of the Secretary of Defense.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Kamran Bokhari of the New Lines Institute regarding the Trump administration's unexpected early January operation to apprehend Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro and the larger strategic implications of that move.

BIO:

Dr. Kamran Bokhari is Senior Director and a key founder of the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy. Previously, Dr. Bokhari served as Director of the Institute’s Analytical Development Department and played a pivotal role in establishing its M.A. program in Strategy & Policy, where he teaches three seminars. Bokhari publishes a weekly essay for Geopolitical Futures and is a regular columnist with Forbes.

Dr. Bokhari brings over 15 years of private-sector intelligence experience, providing intellectual leadership in publishing cutting-edge geopolitical analyses and strategic forecasts and has also served as Central Asia Studies Coordinator at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. His core areas of expertise are: Strategic Intelligence Analysis, Foreign Policy/National Security, Eurasian Geopolitics (Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, & South Caucasus) Democratization, Civil-Military Relations, Comparative Political Systems, Counterterrorism, & Political Islam.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with intelligence veteran and Iran expert Norman Roule about the state of Iran's strategic programs after the "Twelve Day War" with Israel, its mounting domestic troubles, and the durability of its strategic partnerships with Russia and China.

BIO:

Norman Roule served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to the Middle East in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. He held multiple senior intelligence assignments in Washington, as well as during over 15 years of overseas work. He served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from November 2008 until September 2017. He is now a business consultant on Middle East political, security, economic, and energy issues, with an emphasis on the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran, as well as an advisor to numerous think tanks.