The Pillars of U.S. Cold War Strategy in Europe

Germany and the Coming Struggle for the Atlantic Alliance, Limes: Rivista Italiana Di Geopolitica (Italy), June 2, 2022. "The U.S. strategy for Europe after 1945 rested on three pillars."

UK Must Break Out of EU Rule-Making Orbit

The U.S. and Britain Should Conclude an Ambitious Free Trade Agreement as Soon as Possible, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #6012, September 24, 2020. "Both the U.S. and the U.K. have much to gain from negotiating and ratifying a free trade agreement, and both nations have shown strong political support for such an agreement. The fundamental goal of the European Union, on the other hand, continues to be to lock the U.K. into its regulatory orbit, thereby nullifying in practice many of Brexit’s achievements and making it effectively impossible for the U.K. to maintain an independent trade policy. The U.K. has made it clear that it will not become an EU client state and has demonstrated its commitment to developing its own trade policies. The U.S. and the U.K. must not allow narrow protectionist lobbies to defeat the broader objectives on which both nations are agreed, and should consider announcing an interim agreement as soon as possible."

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."

As Goes Sweden, So Goes Europe

Swedes Could Join European Populist Force in Upcoming Vote, Newsday, September 8, 2018. "It’s hard to imagine that anyone in Sweden, a rich and beautiful nation, has a reason to be discontented. Yet, in its election on Sunday, Sweden will likely become the next European nation where a rebel party that defies the left/right divide will gain votes."

What We All Got Wrong

So Many U.S. Delusions in Foreign Affairs, Newsday, April 1, 2018. "It’s a common lament that politics don’t stop at the water’s edge. Foreign policy, the argument goes, should be run on the basis of national interest, not party politics. But in reality, U.S. administrations of all colors have a lot of beliefs in common. Unfortunately, all too often, they believe in illusions."

The EU's Data Protection Regulations

The U.S. Must Draw a Line on the EU’s Data-Protection Imperialism, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #3276, January 9, 2018. "On May 25, 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force. Described by the European Commission as a measure to strengthen individual rights in the digital age and facilitate business, the GDPR embodies and expands the EU’s effort to apply its data-protection standards to governments and private enterprise inside and outside the EU. Together with an EU directive governing the processing of personal information by government authorities, the GDRP will mark the beginning of another phase in a long-running struggle between the U.S. and the EU over the handling of individual data by U.S. corporations and the U.S. government."

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 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."

Iran Sues Europe, and Wins

Of Mullahs and Lawyers, with Andrew Southam, Weekly Standard, February 24, 2014. "For the past year, British and European Union sanctions against Iran have faced a string of legal challenges and lost nearly every round. The sanctions relief offered by the so-called interim nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran conceals the broader problem that the European legal basis for sanctions is eroding. Iran is expert in the waging of terror wars. It’s also, it turns out, good at lawfare."

Non-Profts Aren't A Sector, They're Life

Nonprofit Model Entirely Misleading, Newsday, February 16, 2014. "One of the many virtues of the United States is it has an exceptionally lively nonprofit sector. There is an organization for everyone, and every organization speaks for itself. Europe is less fortunate: there, government funding of nonprofits is the norm. But at least Europe is waking up to the dangers of subsidies. We seem to be going to sleep."

At the ATT, China Intervenes Against the EU

The Arms Trade Treaty, Day Four: As a New Draft Arrives, China Speaks and the EU Begs, Heritage Foundation Foundry, March 22, 2013. "The fun began with an intervention on Wednesday by Germany, speaking on behalf of the EU, and asking—begging, really—for the EU to have the right to sign the treaty. Because the national interests in the EU are too diverse to allow it to settle on a common negotiating position, all the EU wants is the pathetic validation of its own existence that would derive from signing the treaty. It’s not in the room to achieve anything substantive."

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."

Confirmation Hearings and US Policy Towards Europe

Hagel, Kerry, and Brennan Senate Confirmation Hearings: U.S. Policy on Europe, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3820, with Nile Gardiner and Luke Coffey, January 9, 2013. "The Senate confirmation process allows the American public an opportunity to learn more about these candidates, what they believe, and how they see America’s role in a dangerous world. The American people deserve clear answers from President Obama’s nominees and a clear-cut commitment from them that they will advance U.S. interests on the world stage and defend America’s national security needs."

The EU: Effect, Not Cause, Of Peace

The EU’s Nobel Peace Prize: Not Just a Laughing Matter, Heritage Foundation Foundry, October 12, 2012. "The lesson of the EU’s prize—taken with the three prizes that the U.N. has won in various guises over the past decade and President Obama’s award in 2009 for promising to be more multilateral—is that the Nobel Committee, like a lot of elites, think that the way to promote peace is to diminish national sovereignty and the democratic control of politics by relying on supranational institutions of regional (or global) governance."

The EU's Explicitly Elite Approach

The EU’s Pursuit of Stability Über Alles, Contentions, September 12, 2012. "The EU turned from an instrument for restoring a degree of stability to one dedicated to the preservation of the status quo. That approach – and Dalrymple is absolutely right about this – is bound to fail. It means the EU, which still talks a lot about increasing Europe’s power in the world, is more interested in pursuing policies which guarantee Europe’s continued relative decline. It also means that the reality of German dominance of the EU – politics win in the short run, but economics win in the long haul – is becoming ever more obvious to most Europeans, which is one reason why the EU is less popular now than ever."

Defending the US-UK Extradition Treaty

The U.S.-U.K. Extradition Treaty: Fair, Balanced, and Worth Defending, with Andrew Robert James Southam, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #2723, September 4, 2012. "The 2003 Extradition Treaty between the United States and Great Britain is intensely controversial in the United Kingdom. The treaty resulted from a British process and is a modern and praiseworthy approach to extradition that is based on an objective evidentiary test, requires dual criminality in all cases, and has a proportionality standard. The European Union’s European Arrest Warrant does not have these virtues and therefore urgently needs reform, as does Britain’s participation in the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Extradition and acceptance of the jurisdiction of the supranational European Court of Human Rights. While Anglo–American cooperation on the treaty and on extradition and international criminal justice can be improved, the 2003 U.S.–U.K. Extradition Treaty is fair, balanced, and worth defending."

The Economist's Curious Views on Unions

Britain, Europe, Scotland – and the Economist, SAIS Review, May 7, 2012. "No policy can contribute to solving every problem, as E.E.C. membership claimed to do, and policies that pretend to do so are answers in search of a question. Arguments about Britain’s European destiny are so much fluff: there is no end of history, and if there is, the EU is not it."

European Integration As Means, Not Ends

Five Conservative Principles That Should Guide U.S. Policy on Europe, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #3524, March 1, 2012. "A strong transatlantic alliance should be at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Washington should reinvigorate partnerships with America’s key friends and allies in Europe. It should adopt policies that advance national sovereignty and economic freedom across the Atlantic, rather than subvert them."

Fog In Channel, Commentators Cut Off

Britain's 'Isolation', Contentions, December 18, 2011. "To me, the funniest – and most revealing – part of the entire affair is the argument that Britain will suffer for its ‘isolation.’ The nicer version of the argument holds that the EU is about to make a lot of rules – or, to be more exact, about to make even more rules – that will be bad for Britain, and Britain needs to be at the table to mitigate the damage they’ll do. The less nice version of the argument is that the EU, long generous and forbearing towards an ever-wayward Britain, will now lose patience and wreak a mighty vengeance upon it. Given the EU’s current difficulties, this makes me chuckle. No matter which version of the argument is proffered, though, it comes down to the underlying assumption that the EU is akin to a hostage-taker who punishes disobedience by his captives. That may be so. But if it is so, why stick around at all?"