Speaker Mike Johnson to deliver foreign policy speech at Hudson Institute ahead of NATO summit

June 26 (UPI) -- House Speaker Mike Johnson will outline his foreign policy agenda in a critical speech at a well-known conservative think tank the day before a NATO summit in Washington.

The Washington-based Hudson Institute said Wednesday that Johnson, R-La., will give remarks on July 8 "on how to bolster the credibility of US deterrence and strengthen alliances" in the face of "rising threats to the U.S.-led order."

"The threats to the United States and the U.S.-led international order are growing increasingly hostile," Hudson Institute said Wednesday in a news release, pointing to Iran, the Chinese Communist Party and Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine in what the institute called "the largest land war in Europe since World War II."

Johnson's speech on foreign policy will be given ahead of and to coincide with the start of a three-day NATO summit in Washington hosted by President Joe Biden, beginning July 9 in what will be the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 75th anniversary.

"These authoritarian countries, and their proxies," Hudson continued in its statement hinting at Iran and its proxy militia groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, "have expansionist goals and are collaborating to harm the United States and subvert its global influence."

He will then join Hudson's senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs after his speech for a talk on his plan "to bolster the credibility of U.S. deterrence, strengthen alliances, improve America's hard power, and maintain freedom, security and prosperity for the American people."

Following months of Republican stonewalling and delays, Johnson, a relative unknown before he was thrust into the speakership last year during a chaotic Republican-lead speaker election, in April announced the House would vote on two separate aid packages for Israel and Ukraine, in response to what he says were "precipitating events around the globe."

"I think that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Baltics next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies," he said in April.

Hudson -- the decades-old conservative think tank, which has among its ranks former Trump administration officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley -- in April praised Johnson's Easter announcement that he would bring a new Ukraine aid package to a House vote, citing it as critical to U.S. national security.

Johnson in May survived an attempt to remove him as House speaker incited by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that was easily squashed largely in a bipartisan response.

In April, he was in Florida at Mar-a-Lago to meet with former President Donald Trump where the presumptive Republican nominee at the time expressed his confidence in Johnson, saying, "I think he's doing a very good job. I'm sure that Marjorie understands that."