World
America First foreign policy ‘profoundly dangerous,' invites multi-front war, eminent historian warns
FIRST ON FOX – The United States needs to maintain its global focus and efforts to stymie the growing cooperation and ambition of “axis of evil states,” according to historian and journalist Andrew Roberts, Baron Roberts of Belgravia. Roberts sits in the British House of Lords.
“When it comes to the axis of evil states, frankly, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have a forever war, especially if you will not actually fight,” Roberts, a biographer of several British leaders, including Winston Churchill, told Fox News Digital. “It can be done for an amount which is a really very impressive return on investment.”
Roberts, along with retired Gen. David Petraeus, wrote “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine,” an assessment of U.S. foreign conflict involvement examined through the lens of successful strategic leadership. Roberts is currently working on new chapters for the paperback release, which will focus on the war in Gaza and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions for Taiwan.
He argued that the United States, as a global superpower, can and should “walk and chew gum” – so to speak – and that American isolationism would prove “a profoundly dangerous force… not just for the rest of the world but for America as well, ultimately.”
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China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Ali Khamenei (Getty Images)
“If the United States decides to essentially shrug off the responsibility of a great global superpower that you’ve been really since the Great White Fleet circumnavigated the world in 1909, a long time ago now… one can understand that any titan gets weary,” Roberts said. “However, if you were to embrace isolationism, the ultimate response would be from the alliance of anti-democratic nations that we are seeing is working closer and closer… ultimately it will rebound terribly on you.”
The desire for an “America First” policy has grown stronger as the U.S. faces down two significant conflicts – first from Russia, now in its third year of invading Ukraine, and from the bubbling tension between Iran and Israel.
Some Republicans particularly have opposed the continued funding of Ukraine without a clear plan as to how the conflict could end, raising fears of another “forever war” like those the U.S. maintained in the Middle East over the past two decades.
Andrew Roberts, the renowned historian and writer, in Windsor, England, Oct. 23. (David Levenson/Getty Images)
House Republicans have worked to condition aid for Ukraine, which has surpassed $113 billion as of March 2024. Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., called for any funding to Ukraine to be balanced out by spending cuts elsewhere and for it to be paired with U.S. border policy changes. The House finally passed the $60 billion funding bill for Ukraine on Saturday.
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“We cannot continue to borrow and spend money we don’t have for wars overseas while failing to protect Americans from the Biden border invasion here at home,” Good told Fox News Digital earlier this month. “At a bare minimum, any package for military aid to Ukraine should be fully offset and must include H.R. 2 with performance metrics to secure our own border.”
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets with House Speaker Mike Johnson to discuss additional aid from Congress. (Courtesy Speaker Mike Johnson’s office)
Roberts argued that the U.S., as a “great superpower… some might argue the only superpower” can protect both itself and support allies in a conflict that has proven an “extremely impressive” return on investment.
“The Ukrainians have taken out well over half of the Russian tank fleet,” Roberts noted. “Now, at any stage in American post-war history, if you offer the president that deal, he’d have snapped it up.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill on Dec. 21, 2022. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)
“You’ve got a $825 billion per annum defense budget to spend, [and] less than a 10th of that, take out your opponent’s tank fleet, essentially – at least, over half of it – is an amazing return on investment,” he added.
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“After 20 years of the forever war in Afghanistan before Biden’s, in my view, outrageous scuttle from that country, you’d got it down to the situation where no Americans had died for 18 months, and the whole American cost of this conflict was down to about 20 to $25 billion a year,” he said. “That’s an amazing thing, to be able to keep the Taliban out of power.”
Ukrainian servicemen fire with a D-30 howitzer at Russian positions near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on March 21, 2023. (Sergey Shestak/AFP via Getty Images)
However, Roberts stressed that there should remain limits to the U.S. ambitions overseas, dismissing the idea that Washington should seek Russian regime change as “not our duty, not our job, not our responsibility, and certainly not a very sensible thing.”
“The obvious reason is that it would just stoke anti-Western nationalism in Russia,” he explained. “No, they can do those things themselves, and I think the point at which they might do that is, as has happened so often in history, when Russian aggression has been shown not to succeed.”
Firefighters battle a blaze after a Russian attack on apartment buildings in Uman, south of Kiev, Ukraine, April 28, 2023. (National Police of Ukraine via AP)
Roberts lamented, though, that Russia has made strides in Ukraine’s easternmost territories, with a breakthrough on the front and potentially bigger gains to come “if the West doesn’t help Ukraine more.”
Indeed, more and more analysts and commentators have grown increasingly dismal about Ukraine’s potential successes: The BBC, Politico EU and other outlets in the last week have run articles discussing why and how Ukraine could face defeat this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says any victory hinges on continued funding from allies to keep pace with Russia.
Roberts suggested that such doomsday prophecies may prove premature, stressing that “there’s no such thing as inevitability in history.”
“So many times in history, you’ve seen one thing about to happen and then the opposite happens,” Roberts mused. “These breakthroughs the Russians are having in certain theaters… not major ones so far, but they are fighting with a shell advantage, and that’s because the United States and Europe are not providing the shells.”
“It’s certainly not inevitable that either the Ukrainians win or lose that war unless, of course, we stopped providing them with the wherewithal to continue to fight,” he warned. “It’s them that are putting up in the blood, huge amounts of it, but simply because Russia is a bigger country does not mean that it’s automatically going to win: If that was the case, you’d have won in Vietnam.”
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
An unidentified individual has shot Lieutenant General Alekseyev in the Russian capital before fleeing the scene, authorities say.
Published On 6 Feb 2026
A senior Russian military official has been hospitalised after being shot several times in Moscow, according to state media quoting Russian officials.
An unknown assailant carried out a gun attack on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev, deputy chief of Russian military intelligence, in a residential building, Svetlana Petrenko, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee (ICR), said on Friday.
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Alekseyev is deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the General Staff at the Defence Ministry.
Petrenko told reporters that a criminal investigation has been opened for attempted murder, and illegal trafficking in firearms regarding the incident, according to the Interfax news agency.
She said that the shooting attack took place in a building at Volokolamsk Highway in Moscow and the suspect fled the scene.
“The victim was hospitalised in one of the city hospitals,” Petrenko said, adding that investigators and forensic experts are currently working at the scene of the incident, reviewing CCTV footage, and questioning witnesses.
Alekseyev was one of the officials sent to negotiate with the late leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led a rebellion against Moscow in 2023 and the was killed in a plane crash which many observers blamed on President Vladimir Putin.
Series of assassinations
Several senior Russian officers have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine four years ago, with Moscow blaming the attacks on Kyiv.
In some cases, Ukrainian military intelligence has claimed responsibility.
The most recent officer to be killed was the head of the General Staff’s army training directorate, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, who was killed by a bomb under his car on December 22.
Last month a Russian court sentenced an Uzbek man to life in prison for the 2024 killing of the head of the Russian army’s radiological, chemical and biological defence forces.
The general, Igor Kirillov, was killed when a booby-trapped scooter exploded as he left an apartment block in Moscow, in an attack Kyiv said it had orchestrated.
new video loaded: Toronto Police Officers Charged in Drug and Corruption Investigation
transcript
transcript
Toronto Police Officers Charged in Drug and Corruption Investigation
Eight Toronto police officers were charged in an investigation, which began after a prison manager was targeted by three hit men. The investigation unraveled a crime network and and revealed a connection to the police officers who have been accused of participating in organized criminal activity and drug trafficking.
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“The allegations of criminal corruption include bribery, obstruction of justice, drug trafficking, theft of personal property, breach of trust, and the unauthorized access and distribution of confidential information. Our belief is that member was doing his job effectively, was ethical and had complete integrity in his position, and that those actions, his commitment to integrity in his position, was what spawned the criminal actions against him. We are alleging that some police officers who were collecting personal and private information unlawfully and distributing it to members of organized crime, which ultimately resulted in serious harm in our communities.” “This is a painful and unsettling moment. Organized crime is corrosive. That it infected our service is unacceptable.” “The investigators involved held a mirror to the face of the criminal justice system, and to our policing institution to uncover the truth.”
By Meg Felling
February 5, 2026
World
Britain drags feet on IRGC terror designation as Iran-linked center allegedly sells extremist merchandise
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is facing intense criticism over its failure to swiftly outlaw Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The development comes as a London-based Islamic center has been accused of selling merchandise supporting terrorism.
Potkin Azarmehr, a British-Iranian expert on Iran who has written extensively on Iran’s influence operations in the United Kingdom, told Fox News Digital the “Islamic Centre of England is a regime outpost.
“The head of the center is directly appointed by Iran’s supreme leader. The letter of the appointment is publicly read during the inauguration ceremony. There is not a shred of doubt that the center is used to peddle the influence of Iran’s political Islam. It is also used to recruit disgruntled British individuals who are sent to Iran for training.”
The Daily Telegraph reported in late January that U.K. authorities were investigating the Islamic Centre of England for allegedly selling Hezbollah phone cases and pro-Iranian regime key rings. Britain has sanctioned the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist movement, Hezbollah.
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A Google Maps photo showing the Islamic Centre of England in London. (Google Maps)
The pro-Hezbollah and pro–Islamic Republic goods were reportedly sold at a bazaar Dec. 14, 2025, according to the paper. One key ring displayed the words, “With the kindness of God, Seyyed Ali [Khamenei] is our leader.” The Islamic Republic of Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei, would order the murder of thousands of Iranian demonstrators just weeks later.
The bazaar also allegedly had stickers of late IRGC global terrorist Qassem Soleimani, who was responsible for the murders of over 600 military personnel, according to the Trump administration. President Trump ordered a drone strike in January 2020 that killed Soleimani in Iraq.
Emma Schubart, a research fellow at Britain’s Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital, “The Islamic Centre of England is not an isolated religious institution; it is part of a wider ecosystem of Iranian state-linked influence operating openly in the U.K., and at the center of that ecosystem sits the IRGC.
“The U.K. Government is dragging its feet over designating the IRGC. By delaying action, ministers are allowing hostile Iranian networks to continue operating under the cover of civil society and religious life. This is a dangerous blind spot in Britain’s national security.”
The Islamic Centre of England is a registered charity. When asked about reports of the Islamic Center’s role in selling pro-terrorist merchandise, a spokesperson for the U.K.’s Charity Commission told Fox News Digital, “As part of our ongoing statutory inquiry into (the) Islamic Centre of England, we have raised concerns with the trustees about material sold by third parties at a recent event hosted at the charity’s premises. We take very seriously any alleged links between a charity and extremism or terrorism. Such links are abhorrent and corrosive to the trust on which the charitable sector depends.”
A British Union flag flies from a souvenir stall near the Houses of Parliament in London Oct. 27, 2025. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Azarmehr, however, countered, “The U.K. Charity Commission, the regulatory body, has been ‘investigating’ the center for five years with no decisions and no updates other than appointing an interim director, but the center carries on business as usual.
“The only tangible result is that every time you make a complaint to the charity about the center, they reply by saying that because they are investigating the center, they cannot comment.
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“The first head of the center, Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, is now a member of Iran’s powerful Assembly of Experts and a key figure in propagating Iran’s soft power abroad. Araki’s family have U.K. citizenship. The previous U.K. government, in which Alicia Kearns was part of its administration, even paid the center in excess of £100,000 in COVID-19 furlough.”
In this photo released Jan. 6, 2020, by the official website of the Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fourth from left, leads a prayer over the coffins of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and his comrades who were killed in Iraq in a U.S. drone strike at the Tehran University campus, in Tehran, Iran. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Kearns, who is the shadow minister for home affairs for the opposition Conservative party, is now demanding that the Islamic Center be shuttered.
“These latest revelations of terrorist tat being sold by the Islamic Centre of England are yet more evidence of why the center must be closed and those responsible for propagating terrorist propaganda face the law,” she told the Telegraph.
“The figures being idealized are responsible for the cold-blooded murder of tens of thousands of young Iranian protesters, adding to the many regional and international crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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A spokesperson for the Islamic Centre of England told Fox News Digital, “The trustees take all concerns about the center very seriously. We are currently reviewing matters pertaining to the Dec. 14 event and, in light of this, are unable to comment further at this time.”
The EU announced last week that it has classified the IRGC a terrorist entity. The U.S., Canada and Australia have previously designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization. The IRGC played a key role in the massacre of Iranian demonstrators last month.
Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (MAHSA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The proliferation of pro-Iran activism unfolded last weekend in London. Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform Party in the United Kingdom, posted on X, “When people in Britain are chanting support for the thuggish regime in Iran, we are in serious trouble as a nation.”
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Video footage embedded in Farage’s post and other clips on social media shows a mix of pro-Palestinian and pro-Iran regime messaging at the protests.
Multiple Fox News Digital inquiries to the British prime minister’s office went unanswered.
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