Special Reports

From June 27 - July 5, 2025, the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) supported a high-level delegation to Ukraine. The bipartisan group—including senior experts from the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—traveled to Kyiv, Dnipro, Odesa, and Warsaw. Herman Pirchner, AFPC President, led the 9-person delegation.

America needs an effective strategy for Greater Central Asia to enhance its competitive position in a region that will significantly impact the Russia-China relationship, geopolitical competition in Asia, and key resource markets including uranium, oil, and natural gas. The proposed strategy ensures open access in Greater Central Asia while securing opportunities for profitable American investment through technological partnership, resource development, and logistical facilitation.

On February 12th, the American Foreign Policy Council convened its third “Airlie Dialogue” conference at the University Club in Washington, DC. The full-day event brought together leading scholars, officials and experts for a day of discussions about the common intellectual fight against Islamic extremism, and the “war of ideas” now taking place in the Muslim World. What follows is a summary of the conference’s proceedings.

The question of why totalitarian regimes suddenly and unexpectedly collapse has long perplexed researchers, generating no shortage of post-mortems and scholarly analyses after the fact. Accurately predicting the longevity of such regimes is a risky enterprise, and the subject of this report – an examination of how close the regime created by Russian President Vladimir Putin might be to its downfall – is inherently speculative in nature. Yet, as a direct witness to the collapse of the Soviet Union, I have a clear sense of how the sudden collapse of seemingly unshakable power can occur. What follows is my best assessment of the current state of Putin’s regime, drawing on both general observations and extensive personal experience.