What We, And They, Are Doing Wrong

A New Approach to Europe: U.S. Interests, Nationalist Movements, and the European Union, Heritage Foundation Lecture #1300, December 4, 2018. "Current European policy combines low growth, low levels of job creation, high levels of unskilled immigration, increasing levels of supranational control, a rejection of the assimilative force of national identity, and lashings of deeply felt guilt. The first error of U.S. policy toward Europe is supporting the errors of its fiscal and monetary systems. The second error the U.S., and Europe, have made is to neglect security. The threats to European security today come from two quarters: Russia and the Mediterranean, the latter due in large part to the effects of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cataclysmically irresponsible open-borders policy."

Adenauer and de Gaulle All Over Again

With her Chequers Plan, Theresa May is repeating the mistakes of former Tory Prime Ministers, BrexitCentral, July 13, 2018. "The cardinal sin inherent in the way Britain thinks about the EU — and its predecessors — is that Britain focuses on economics at the expense of politics, and fixates on visible trade at the expense of invisibles. The focus on economics, I believe, reflects a couple of things."

London (and Paris), Not Brussels

U.S. Should Stop Supporting the EU, Newsday, February 26, 2017. "The Trump administration doesn’t like the European Union. Its critics claim this is a major shift in U.S. policy. They’re right. But on substance, it’s the administration that’s got it right. The upcoming French elections show why."

The Drifting U.S. Policy Toward Europe

"America’s Outdated Europe Policy: In 2017, the Next President Must Adapt to New Reality," The Conservative, a publication of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe, volume 1, issue 1, September 16, 2016, "Since the end of World War II, U.S. policy toward Europe has drifted, without deliberate thought, far from its initial premises—while Europe itself has changed beyond recognition. It is time that the U.S. recognized this fact. The incoming President should direct the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee a comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Europe, a study to be based on the enduring American interests in Europe, the lessons of the post-1945 era, and on the new facts of Europe that have emerged since 1989."

Back to the Future in Europe

America’s Outdated Europe Policy: In 2017, the Next President Must Adapt to New Reality, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4559, May 18, 2016, "Since the end of World War II, U.S. policy toward Europe has drifted, without deliberate thought, far from its initial premises—while Europe itself has changed beyond recognition. It is time that the U.S. recognized this fact. The incoming President should direct the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee a comprehensive study of U.S. policy toward Europe, a study to be based on the enduring American interests in Europe, the lessons of the post-1945 era, and on the new facts of Europe that have emerged since 1989."

Better Out Than In

Why the U.S. Fails to Grasp British Disquiet Over EU, Yorkshire Post, May 16, 2016, "If it made any difference to the debate, President Obama’s recent press conference with the Prime Minister appears to have boosted the Brexit cause. Obama’s intervention is just the latest incident in the history of American failures to realise why Britain is better off out than in."

Finally, My Dissertation Is Relevant

For Earth Day, Barack and David Recycle Some Cliches, Weekly Standard Online, April 25, 2016. "In the quarter-center I’ve spent studying British relations with Europe, I have never seen, or read, a performance that recapitulated as many cliches as President Obama's press conference with Prime Minister Cameron on Friday. I suppose I should be grateful: in future, I won't have to spend months scrounging around British archives for materials to illustrate how poorly American politicians understand the European issue in Britain: Obama's given me all the sources I need."

Contra the EU

Time for the U.S. to Rethink Its Support for the European Union, Daily Signal, October 4, 2015. "It is time for the U.S. to recognize that the policy of supporting the EU is now longer in the interests of the United States, or of Europe itself. The time when that policy was wise has now passed."

In Praise of Partisanship

Barack Obama Finally Offers a Clear Choice, Newsday, January 23, 2015. "Let's be grateful to President Barack Obama. In his State of the Union address, he dropped the pretense of bipartisanship and, by siding with the progressives, gave the nation what it needs: a clear choice. That's the true American way."

A Big, Bad Idea

Closing Chapter of a Not So Special Relationship?, Yorkshire Post, January 16, 2015. "The White House announced Prime Minister David Cameron’s two-day visit to Washington in a statement issued last Saturday. It was a tellingly low-key announcement for an Anglo-American relationship that has mostly drifted in the past five years. The alliance, though, does have one big idea up its sleeve. Unfortunately, it’s a bad one."

Promoting the Obvious: Free Trade Between the US and the UK

Freedom from the EU: Why Britain and the U.S. Should Pursue a U.S.-U.K. Free Trade Area, with Nile Gardiner, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief, September 26, 2014. "A referendum on British membership in the European Union is scheduled for 2017. EU supporters argue that exit from the EU would hurt Britain’s economy and, in particular, its ability to negotiate trading arrangements with the rest of the world—a responsibility currently exercised by the EU on behalf of all of its member states. But there is every reason to believe that Britain, the world’s sixth-largest economy, would be able to negotiate trade agreements independently. If Britain does decide to leave the EU, one of its central priorities should be to negotiate a modern free trade area (FTA), based on sovereignty and freedom, with the United States. This is a goal that the U.S., which should abandon its policy of supporting the EU at the expense of the sovereignty of its member nations, should also champion."

The Brexit Prize and the IEA

And the Prize for Britain’s Exit to the EU Goes To . . ., Heritage Foundation Foundry, April 11, 2014. "The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London awarded its prestigious “Brexit Prize,” a 100,000 euro award for the best plan for a British exit from the European Union (EU), earlier this week. The winner, Iain Mansfield, is the director of trade and investment at the British embassy in the Philippines. Thankfully, there are evidently still a few civil servants who have not succumbed to the British establishment’s decades-long bias in favor of the EU."

The Troubled European Periphery

Europe Must Wake Up to New Danger, Newsday, March 7, 2014. "If you looked out from Europe in the 1990s, you could see sunshine on the horizon. With the end of the Cold War, NATO appeared to be on the road to irrelevancy. But the sunshine has faded. Russia's dismemberment of Ukraine should remind Americans and Europeans that European security, for which all of us paid a high price over the past hundred years, is not assured."

The Commonwealth Is Not "The" Alternative to the EU

Flexible Relations Will Help Britain Achieve a More Prosperous Future, Yorkshire Post, October 7, 2013. "Britain doesn’t need to be part of any one dominant bloc. What Britain needs above all is the national flexibility and determination to make good policies on its own, and that’s exactly what the EU denies it. Looking around for a new home is a much less useful activity than checking out of the European emergency ward."

The EU As Carcass

Under Obama, the U.S. Clings to the Carcass of the European Union, Forward!, Autumn 2013. "The EU today is a carcass, the shred of an old policy that once had a solid basis, but is now merely a rag. It is time for Britain to cut loose, and for the United States to recognize that a sovereign Britain, able to trade freely around the world and unshackled by the ever more supranational EU, would be a better friend and a better ally than a Britain slowly and reluctantly submerged in a deeply undemocratic EU will ever be. It must be the conservative mission in both Britain and the United States to make that recognition a policy reality on both sides of the Atlantic."

Neither the Will Nor the Way

Where the Syria Vote and Obama’s EU Advocacy Meet, Centre for Policy Studies, September 10, 2013. "As that Blairite wave has receded, the British left has moved back closer in line to the tendencies of Europe. The U.S. pressure on Britain to stay in the E.U. is only going to give ideological and practical encouragement to those tendencies, and make it even harder for the government of the day to win the vote on the next crisis – when the case for action in alliance with the U.S. may be much better than it is in Syria today. And if Britain lacks both the way and the will to act, the Special Relationship will indeed be much diminished."

This Isn't the Africa Policy You're Looking For

Obama Travels in Style But Fails to Reach the Right Conclusions, Yorkshire Post, July 26, 2013. "Barack Obama is one of the best-travelled Presidents in US history. During his first term in office, he visited 35 countries, and he’s made another 12 trips since his re-election. But quantity does not imply quality. Indeed, given the results of his travel, he’d be better off staying home."

What Obama Should Do To Restore the Special Relationship

In Meeting with Cameron, Obama Should Advance the U.S.-U.K. Special Relationship, with Nile Gardiner and Luke Coffey, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3933, May 10, 2013. "President Barack Obama will host British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House on May 13. Publicly, it has been announced that the visit will be dominated by events in Syria, economic cooperation, countering terrorism, and priorities for the next meeting of the G-8. Privately, David Cameron is likely to raise a number of sensitive issues, such as the U.S. position on the Falkland Islands and the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union (EU). This visit offers an opportunity for President Obama to get the Special Relationship back on track."

Priorities in US-European Relations

John Kerry’s Grand Tour: Priorities for Europe, with Nile Gardiner and Luke Coffey, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3858, February 21, 2013. "The Obama Administration has too often taken America’s relations with Europe for granted. Secretary Kerry’s trip to Europe will offer him an opportunity to improve relations with America’s European partners, especially the United Kingdom, while at the same time ending blind U.S. support for deeper European integration."

Cut Loose from the EU Carcass

Another View from Washington DC: The State Department and EU Are Natural Allies, Heritage Foundation Foundry, January 17, 2013. "In his energetic response to Philip Gordon’s ill-conceived request that Britain forget about recovering its sovereignty and protecting its democracy, Hannan argues that the State Department wants Britain in the EU because the U.S. is gradually realizing that the EU is, “Frankenstein-like,” defining itself by petulant hostility to the U.S., and it wants Britain inside to moderate that hostility. If only. The State Department doesn’t want Britain inside because it disagrees with the EU. It wants Britain inside because it agrees with the EU. Not with absolutely everything it does, of course ¬– but most of the things that Hannan finds objectionable are things the State Department likes."