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."

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."

Fear and Loathing in the Brexit Debate

Fear and Loathing in the Brexit Debate, Weekly Standard Online, June 23, 2016, "From the start of the current battle over Britain's EU membership—which culminates Thursday in the vote on the Brexit referendum—advocates of a British exit have half-joked and half-worried that the Remain campaign would get its gas from what they called Project Fear, a relentless barrage of fear, uncertainty, and doubt aimed at wavering voters. How right they were."

British Decline, American Decline – And Brexit

British Decline, American Decline – And Brexit, Forbes, June 22, 2016, "James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute is – at least to this historian of Britain – one of the most readable and stimulating commentators on economic affairs out there today. His recent column on “Is America Really in Decline? What We Can Learn from Britain” raises a few points which shed some light on the declinist argument and on the case for Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit. As Pethokoukis puts it, drawing on historian Robert Tombs, the so-called decline panic that Britain experienced in the post-1945 decades “rests on two assumptions: First, Britain experienced a collapse in global influence and economic dynamism. Second, those results stemmed from ‘long-standing failures’ of the nation’s core institutions.”"

The Need for a British World Role

Without a Sense of Purpose, What is Britain Defending?, Yorkshire Post, July 17, 2015. "Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s pledge to meet Nato’s spending target of two per cent of national income on defence through 2020-21 is welcome, but it’s not enough. This isn’t, simply, a problem of money. It’s a problem of Britain’s belief in its world role."

The Decline and Fall of British Liberalism

Election Reveals Battle for Britain’s True Liberal Soul, Yorkshire Post, April 17, 2015. "THE debates between the party leaders have made one thing clear. The election isn’t just a struggle between the Tories, Labour, and the rest. It’s a moment that reveals the state of British liberalism. By liberalism, I don’t mean the nanny-statism that today passes for liberalism, with its identity group politics, its ravenous appetite for state spending in the name of appearing to care and its 
love of top-down control."

Meet Mr. Camerband

From Butskell to Camerband, Weekly Standard, March 20, 2015. "Today, the strenuous partisan warfare between Cameron and Miliband belies the emergence of a comparable composite, Mr. Camerband, who embodies a near-convergence that goes well beyond finance. The only exceptions in the current Tory-led coalition are Michael Gove’s reforms in education, which got him demoted, and Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare revolution, which has survived largely thanks to Smith’s passionate commitment and seniority within the party."

Summer Reading on World War I

How Does Freedom Work? Read These, Newsday, August 21, 2014. "This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The historical literature on the war is vast, rivaled only by the U.S. Civil War and the Second World War. The Great War's lessons, in the end, are what you make of them. But if you want to know more about the war, here are a few of my personal favorites."

Lessons from Churchill to Cameron on May 10

In Britain, Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man?, FoxNews.com, May 10, 2010. "May is a momentous month in British political history. By virtue of the respite it offers from Britain’s legendarily gloomy weather, it has witnessed more than its fair share of elections. And by virtue of the fact that good campaigning weather is also good fighting weather, May marks the most historic handover of power in modern British political history. Today is the seventieth anniversary of the beginning of France’s defeat at the hands of the German Army, of Winston Churchill’s entry into Number 10 Downing Street, and of Britain’s salvation."

On May 10, From Churchill to Cameron

Churchill's Anniversary Offers Insights on Coalition Government in Britain, Heritage Foundation Foundry, May 10, 2010. "No matter what happens, the result is likely to be a coalition government. But the British experience of coalition governments has not been a happy one. And this is a particularly appropriate day to reflect on that fact, because it was seventy years ago today – May 10, 1940 – that the last successful coalition government in Britain was formed."

Does Free Trade Promote Democracy? Yes But.

Free Trade, But Not Only Free Trade, New Ledger, May 6, 2010. "Let me begin by agreeing, in part, with Greg Scoblete’s response on Real Clear World to my piece on humanitarian intervention and sovereignty in TNL last week. I’m happy to add freer trade to my list of ways that, depending on the circumstances, we may be able promote democratic change in foreign tyrannies or autocracies. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, a free and open economy is not just good at generating economic growth: it’s also a broader social and political good."

American Manners, English Gloom

On A Letter from London, Contentions, January 7, 2010. "Geoff Dyer’s column “My American Friends” in the New York Times is hitting my mailbox from every direction at once. If you’ve not read it, you should: it’s fun. It’s got, of course, a few swipes at George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, and Tony Blair, but it’s really a love letter from Britain to the United States. Dyer points out that many of the British clichés voiced about America reflect either ignorance or a barely-disguised, liberal-elite desire to bring the U.S. down a peg or two because, as too many Britons are grumpy and desperate to feel superior about something, Americans must be made out to be inferior."

A Libyan Redux?

Was Qaddafi Paid Off?, Contentions, October 13, 2009. "No, I’m not talking about the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, though some very stinging questions have been raised about just how, exactly, the release was related to BP’s negotiation with Libya about an oil exploration deal. I’m talking about the 1970s."

Margaret Thatcher and "A Real Detente"

How Margaret Thatcher Helped to End the Cold War, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2631, September 28, 2009. "When Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, many in the West had come to believe that the Cold War could not and should not be won, that anti-Communism was morally wrong, and that the future lay in détente between the superpowers and the evolution of democracy into ever-deepening state socialism. By the time she left office, the Berlin Wall had fallen and Eastern Europe was liberated. A year later, the Soviet Union crumbled into the dustbin of history. Democracy and freedom were on the advance."

Can Ministers Think?

A Painful Admission of Incapability, Contentions, July 23, 2009. "Jacqui Smith was Britain’s Home Secretary from late June 2007 through early June 2009. She was ultimately forced to resign when, as part of the ongoing scandal of parliamentary-expense claims, it was discovered that her husband had requested reimbursement for pornographic movies. Quite enough has been said about this episode, which reflected poorly not on Ms. Smith, but on her husband and the expense system. But yesterday, the BBC reported that she has given a thoroughly depressing interview to Total Politics magazine. She admits that she had 'never run a major organization' before taking over the Home Office, and that if she did a good job it was 'more by luck than by any kind of development of [my] skills.' "

A Troubling Meme on the Special Relationship

Sir Michael Howard on the Special Relationship, Contentions, July 18, 2009. "In the latest Times Literary Supplement, Sir Michael Howard, in the course of a largely admiring review of two recent works on Winston Churchill, makes a claim that made me pause. According to Sir Michael, 'The myth of the “special relationship” that Churchill invented and that so many of his admirers on both sides of the Atlantic continue to propagate is briskly demolished. . . . Throughout the war the United States consulted her own interests, as any state is bound to do: and these did not extend to helping Britain either to remain solvent or to retain any part of her empire once the war was over.' I am, I suppose, one of those propagating admirers."

The Five Myths of US Defense Spending

Demystifying Defense: Exposing Myths About US Military Expenditures, Harvard International Review, Spring 2009, Vol. 31, No. 1. "The most serious impediments to a serious discussion of defense spending are the myths that surround it. Until these myths are cleared away, no rational debate regarding what the US and its allies around the world should do to secure their interests is possible. The most urgent need, therefore, is for politicians and the public to know how much the US and other powers spend, to place these expenditures and their trends in historical context, to weigh the dangers of both excessive and insufficient defense spending, to understand why the US and the world's democracies maintain armed forces, and why the US spends so much relative to its potential adversaries. Absent this knowledge, the political process that shapes defense spending in democracies will not work effectively, and their defense will suffer. In short, for today's democracies, defense spending is not an economic problem. A people who lack the will to pay will eventually find they are a target for those who have the will to fight."

More on Obama and Dresden

When Obama Goes to Dresden, Contentions, May 29, 2009.

Visiting Dresden An Unwise Choice

President Obama’s Visit to Germany: Mythologies of Dresden Must Be Rejected, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2460, May 28, 2009.

On Halford Mackinder

Back to Mackinder. Really?, Contentions, May 1, 2009.