In this episode of Today's Battlegrounds, H.R. McMaster and French Ambassador to the US, Philippe Étienne, discuss the rise of the far right, France’s economic challenges, the future of European security, and the 2027 French presidential election.

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Ambassador Philippe Étienne served as French Ambassador to the United States from 2019 to 2023 after serving as President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic adviser and G7 and G20 sherpa. He also served as Ambassador to Germany and Romania and Permanent Representative to the European Union, as well as postings in Moscow, Bonn, Belgrade, and Brussels. Ambassador Étienne has taught international affairs at Columbia University, recently published his diplomatic memoir, Le Sherpa, and has served as President of the Paris Peace Forum since April 2026.

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He was the 25th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. Upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1984, McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for thirty-four years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018.

In this episode of Today's Battlegrounds, H.R. McMaster and Francisco Sagasti discuss the lessons of Sagasti's presidency, political and economic trends in Latin America, and his new book, Knowledge is Power, which explores the life and legacy of Sir Francis Bacon.

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Dr. Francisco Sagasti served as interim President of Peru from November 2020 to July 2021 during one of the most turbulent stretches in the country's recent history. An industrial engineer by training, with graduate degrees from Penn State and a PhD in operations research and social systems science from the University of Pennsylvania, Sagasti built a career bridging technocracy, philosophy, and public service — heading the World Bank's Strategic Planning Division, chairing the United Nations Council on Science and Technology, and founding GRADE, one of Peru's leading think tanks. He has taught at Wharton, IE Business School, and the University for Peace, and is the author of more than twenty-five books. Elected to Congress in 2020, Sagasti was serving as chair of its Science, Technology, and Innovation Committee when a constitutional crisis elevated him to the presidency. While serving as president, Sagasti stabilized the government, secured desperately needed COVID-19 vaccines, and orchestrated a peaceful transfer of power following the 2021 presidential elections.

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He was the 25th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. Upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1984, McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for thirty-four years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018.

In this episode of Today's Battlegrounds, H.R. McMaster and Vladimir Kara-Murza discuss the state of the war in Ukraine, the prospects and perils facing Russia's opposition, the shifting currents of Russian domestic politics, the effort to organize the Russian diaspora into a coherent political force, and prospects of a post-Putin Russia.

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Vladimir Kara-Murza is a Russian opposition leader, historian, and journalist whose career has placed him at the center of the struggle over Russia's political future for two decades. A protégé of the murdered democratic leader Boris Nemtsov, Kara-Murza served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party in 2012 and helped shape the Magnitsky Act framework, which transformed targeted human-rights sanctions into a global instrument now used by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, and Australia. He survived two poisonings, one in 2015 and one in 2017, attributed to Russian security services. Then in 2022, Russian authorities arrested him for publicly condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Contrived charges resulted in a twenty-five-year prison sentence in a maximum security prison in Siberia which is the longest sentence imposed on a political prisoner since the fall of the Soviet Union. He was released in 2024 as part of the largest East-West prisoner exchange since the Cold War. The same year, Kara-Murza won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary written and published in the Washington Post from his prison cell. He now sits on the newly formed Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces run by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is also the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute and lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He was the 25th assistant to the president for National Security Affairs. Upon graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1984, McMaster served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army for thirty-four years before retiring as a Lieutenant General in June 2018.