The Latest Interpol GA Fiasco

Interpol’s New Leadership Demonstrates Lack of Will for Reform, with Sandra Grossman, National Interest, December 17, 2021. "Interpol makes valuable contributions to fighting crime that crosses international borders, but human rights organizations have rightly criticized the organization for failing to properly vet requests for police cooperation. Interpol did nothing to calm those concerns at its latest General Assembly meeting, held November 23-25 in Istanbul."

My NDAA Priorities for FY2022

Improving the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022, edited by Frederico Bartels, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3673, December 3, 3021. "The Armed Forces are in the midst a substantial change in how they execute deterrence and prepare for war. The effort to refocus the Department of Defense on great-power competition started in earnest with the 2018 National Defense Strategy. This refocus is not a discreet event but an ongoing process that will take time and resources. The challenges to increase the size of the Navy are representative of the necessary time horizon for the other branches of the military. In this endeavor, Congress is an equal partner with the executive branch, and the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) represents a critically important opportunity to strengthen the national defense."

UAE Wins Interpol Presidency

In Interpol Elections, the Autocracies Take Control, Daily Signal, November 29, 2021. "The General Assembly last week held its latest round of elections, and the results were just about as bad as they could have been."

Brexit Won't Work Without Economic Freedom

Post-Brexit Britain Gains Prosperity via Trade Freedom, but Tax-and-Spend Policies Threaten These Gains, Daily Signal, November 12, 2021. "In the months and years before Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, Brexit’s enemies based their case overwhelmingly on economic arguments. That is what they have always done. The reason is simple: The political case for the European Union in Britain is not popular, because it means subordinating the elected House of Commons to EU bureaucrats. So the EU’s friends in Britain talked about money instead of sovereignty."

The FY2022 NDAA and Interpol

Abuse of Interpol for Transnational Repression: Assessing the FY22 NDAA’s Provisions for Prevention, with Jonathan Reich, Just Security, November 10, 2021. "The U.S. Congress has expressed increasing concern in recent years about the rise in transnational repression — that is, cross-border actions ranging from assassinations and abductions to intimidation and financial blacklisting that seek to deter and punish opposition or dissent. One form of transnational repression that has attracted considerable attention is the abuse by certain member countries of Interpol, the international organization tasked with facilitating worldwide police cooperation. As the single-largest funder of Interpol, the United States has an opportunity to take significant steps to curtail transnational repression by opposing Interpol abuse. This would both help to ensure that Interpol serves its intended purpose, and aid in setting the agenda for wider liberal democratic opposition to transnational repression in all its forms."

Interpol Priorities in 2021

Key Priorities for the U.S. at the 2021 Meeting of the Interpol General Assembly, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3664, November 1, 2021. "The 89th annual meeting of the Interpol General Assembly to be held this November 23–25 in Istanbul, Turkey, will be dominated by the election of a majority of Interpol’s Executive Committee, including a new president of Interpol, and the election of all seven members of Interpol’s appellate body, the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files. The United States should work with other democratic nations to form a democratic caucus in Interpol to ensure that qualified candidates from law-abiding democracies fill these positions. While the agenda for Interpol reform is wide, the United States should recognize that the autocracies are bidding in particular to win Interpol’s presidency, and defeating that bid—not reforming Interpol—will have to be the top priority in 2021."

ATT Is Bad for CATP

The Biden Administration’s Conventional Arms Transfer Policy Should Not Be Handcuffed by the Arms Trade Treaty, Hertiage Foundation Issue Brief #5235, November 1, 2021. "The Biden Administration is reviewing its Conventional Arms Transfer Policy (CATP), which governs conventional weapons export. A State Department official has indicated this review would determine “the proper relationship of the United States to the Arms Trade Treaty.” Incorporating the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in a revised CATP would be a grave error. The ATT would raise serious barriers to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy—and transform difficult questions of arms export policy into matters of law. The ATT is used solely to constrain the U.S.’s democratic allies: Most of its members do not take it seriously. The U.S. should continue to have a CATP that allows policymakers to weigh all relevant factors—not be handcuffed by the ATT."

Remembering Don

Remembering and Appreciating Donald Kagan, Yale Professor, Scholar, and Mentor, Daily Signal, August 18, 2021. "Sadly, with his passing—and the death just a few months earlier of Ambassador Charles Hill—Yale now has no identifiably conservative senior scholars. Yes, there are some who are not clearly party-line progressives, but by and large, the cleansing is complete, and it is now possible to graduate from Yale without even the opportunity to meet a senior scholar who definitely disagrees with the prevailing consensus."

How Interpol Abuse Affects the U.S. Legal System

Dictators Are Using Interpol to Shape America’s Legal System. It’s Time to Change That, with Heritage intern Zach Thapar, Daily Signal, August 17, 2021. "Without these reforms, authoritarian regimes will continue to define who is a criminal in the United States, and American law enforcement will continue to treat their meritless requests as legitimate. We must end this foreign manipulation of the American criminal justice system."

Churchill's First Greatest Work

At Full Flow: Winston Churchill’s The River War Restored, Finest Hour, No. 193, Third Quarter 2021, pp. 42-45 (not available online). "This definitive edition is a contribution of monumental significance to the preservation and understanding of Churchill’s life and work. No praise is too great for Professor Muller, St. Augustine’s Press, and the International Churchill Society for their labors in the production of these remarkable volumes. The patience many subscribers have shown in waiting for thesevolumes has been vindicated."

Good for Bureaucrats, Good for Bugs

The European Union’s Biocidal Products Regulation Benefits Only Bureaucrats, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #6097, June 18, 2021. "The European Union controls the sale of biocides through its Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR). A biocidal product contains a substance that is designed to control or destroy a harmful organism, often a germ or virus. Unfortunately, the BPR is a one-size-fits-all model: It puts simple products containing everyday chemicals through a bureaucratic process more appropriate for complex products containing new substances. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the BPR restricted the supply of alcohol wipes inside the EU. The U.S. and the U.K. should press the EU to eliminate the non-tariff trade barriers the BPR creates. Both should oppose the broader EU model that prioritizes bureaucratic process over growth, jobs, consumer choice, and common sense."

A G-7 Agenda for 2021

The G-7 Must Act With Unity for Growth and Freedom, with Jim Roberts, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #6093, June 10, 2021. "This year’s Group of Seven (G-7) summit of world leaders faces a series of vital and interlinked challenges. As the world seeks to recover from the devastating personal and economic effects of COVID-19, the democracies are equally seeking to regain the initiative from the world’s autocracies. From Russia’s aggressions in the Caucuses and Ukraine—and its murderous attack by poison in Salisbury, close to the route from London to St. Ives—to the much broader economic, security, and political challenge of China, the democracies are back on their heels, which is where they were when the G-7 first came together in 1973."

Interpol CCF Elections

America Must Lead Free World in Elections to Interpol Commission, Daily Signal, June 1, 2021. "Interpol, the international organization of police organizations, has an important election coming up. That election will determine the new membership of a body known as the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files. The commission’s job is to check that the processing of personal data by Interpol complies with the police organization’s own rules, and to decide on requests for access to data and for correction and/or deletion of data processed by Interpol."

The Prospects for a US-UK FTA

"Primary Spotlight on Political Risk - Interview with Ted Bromund Reviews Prospects for a US - UK Free Trade Deal," Primary Access & Research, May 19, 2021. Not available online. "There are four major obstacles on the U.S. side. First, over the past two decades, Britain has become, in the eyes of the U.S. political system, a conservative country. That doesn’t mean Britons would vote Republican if they had the chance. It means that conservatives tend to like Britain and want to improve Anglo-American ties, while liberals tend not to prioritize improving Anglo-American ties. This isn’t a black and white dichotomy, but it is a tendency. With a Democrat now in the White House, it would be surprising if the U.S. administration worked vigorously to complete the U.S.-U.K. FTA."

Interpol Abuse ABCs

What Americans Should Know About Interpol Abuse, Daily Signal, May 17, 2021. "I have a lot of experience researching Interpol, and, though my work as an expert witness, I’ve seen a lot of Interpol abuse cases. Broadly speaking, I’d say the State Department’s list is a good start—Russia is certainly a notorious abuser—but far from complete."

Guns and Silliness at the U.N. in 2021

At the 2021 U.N. Programme of Action on Small Arms Meeting, the U.S. Should Get Real, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3613, May 4, 2021. "The last meeting of the U.N.’s Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat, and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA), held in 2018, violated the PoA’s principle of working by unanimous consent. The PoA has few, if any, achievements. U.S. participation in it merely lends it a credibility it does not deserve: The only reason for the U.S. to participate is to prevent the PoA from making bad decisions. Now that the PoA has abandoned the principle of unanimity that allowed the U.S. to prevent bad outcomes, the U.S should not participate in the 2021 meeting of the PoA unless the PoA is reoriented to focus on specific, realistic, and relevant goals."

My Fish Paper

The Central Arctic Ocean Fishing Agreement: A Challenge for U.S. Diplomacy, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3606, April 16, 2021. "The Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Commercial Fishing on the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean, signed by the U.S. in October 2018 and ratified in August 2019, seeks to apply precautionary conservation and management measures to ensure the sustainable use of fish stocks in Arctic waters outside the jurisdictions of the signatory nations. The agreement has a laudable goal and is largely sensible, but it suffers from defects of both substance and process: It is vulnerable to free-riding and, by the rules of the State Department, should have been a treaty. The agreement is acceptable only as an interim measure. The U.S. should seek to replace it with a multilateral treaty that binds all major fishing nations."

Interpol's Revised RPD

Summarizing and Assessing the 2019 Changes in Interpol’s Rules on the Processing of Data, with Michelle Estlund, International Enforcement Law Reporter, volume 37, issue 4, April 2, 2021. "While Interpol has published the revised RPD, it has neither itemized the revisions nor provided a red-line version of the RPD. This article summarizes the 2019 revisions and assesses their significance, both for attorneys seeking the knowledge they need to effectively advocate for their clients when an Interpol issue arises and for practitioners concerned to ensure that Interpol is used only for purposes of legitimate law enforcement. Finally, it provides a practical illustration of the importance of Interpol’s rules on data protection for attorneys advocating before the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (the “CCF”)."

Brexit and Self-Confidence

World Sees Brexit UK’s Union Jack as What it Means to be Great Again - An American Writes, Daily Express, January 21, 2021. "In the Victorian Age, Britain’s confidence was based on its belief that it had a gift for government. The French cooked better food; the Italians wrote finer music; the Americans invented the telegraph. But as the rise of the House of Commons proved, and as Joseph Chamberlain put it, the British were “a great governing race.” That confidence endured, fortified by victory in two wars, into the late 1950s. But after 1945, popular expectations of Western governments changed. Governments were now justified in the people’s eyes by the benefits they provided and the economic growth they oversaw."

What the U.S. Should Do in Europe in 2021

The Top Five U.S. Priorities for European Policy in 2021, with Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #6037, January 13, 2021. "2021 will be an inflection point for transatlantic relations. A new U.S. Administration and Congress should focus on reinforcing the transatlantic alliance and working with Europe to address threats from aggressive state actors, while meeting the monumental challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the policy differences between the U.S. and Europe on key issues will not disappear under a Biden presidency, the need to work together remains essential: U.S. security rests first and foremost on the strength of the transatlantic alliance."

Accept the Brexit Reality

Brexit Is A Reality; The U.S. Must Act Accordingly, Washington Times, January 6, 2021. "Britain has left the European Union. Now, the United States faces a simple choice. It can either stand idly by as other nations make trade deals with Britain, or it can negotiate a free trade agreement for its own benefit. Brexit Britain has been astonishingly successful in negotiating trade deals around the world. Of course there is its deal with the EU itself, struck at the eleventh hour before Christmas, and already passed into law in Britain. The EU itself has accepted that Britain has left."