Germany's the Problem

Want A Good Ally? Then Be A Good Ally, Newsday, June 4, 2017. "Trump isn’t entirely in the right in this clash. But he’s more right than wrong. His idea that trade surpluses are always good and trade deficits are always bad is wrong. In the end, trade is an exchange of goods among individuals. If our government attempts to make it harder for us to buy what we want from abroad, it’s trying to tell individual Americans what we should do with our own money. That’s wrong."

Irrelevancy Commands No Respect

Obama Is Irrelevant Abroad and Now Disliked at Home, Yorkshire Post, April 29, 2014. "A year ago, Obama’s highest Gallup rankings were on foreign affairs. But by February, a majority of Americans believed the world’s leaders had little respect for the U.S. president. In late March, CBS found that only 36 percent of Americans approved of his foreign policy. Even Obamacare is more popular."

Ten Years After Saddam's Fall

Lesson of Saddam’s Fall is that War Can Be Best Way to Justice, Yorkshire Post, December 13, 2013. "It was only a decade ago that US forces pulled Saddam Hussein out of his spiderhole at a farmhouse in ad-Dawr, near his home town of Tikrit. That success – indeed, that war – seems now to belong to another century. But it’s not so far removed from today’s travails."

Stolen Valor and the Origin of the 'Crazy Vet'

Re: The ‘Crazed Veteran’, Contentions, September 13, 2012. "The virtue of Stolen Valor is the way that it methodically and systemically uses documents obtained by Freedom of Information Act requests to reveal fraud after fraud, fake after fake, and lie after lie from supposedly traumatized veterans who in reality rarely even served in the military or saw combat at all."

Who Gets the Job Done?

Force, Not Law, Got Qaddafi, Contentions, October 24, 2011. "Dan Pipes observes that Qaddafi is the sixth former tyrant to be tracked down like a common criminal in the past decade – Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic from Serbia, Hussein in Iraq, Bin Laden in Pakistan, and now Qaddafi. Very true, but what stands out to me about this list is that none of these successes had much to do with Nuremberg-like processes, the International Criminal Court, or the U.N., no matter how much responsibility is attributed to them."

A Review of a Blair Review

On Kirchick on Blair, New Ledger, February 2, 2011. "Jamie Kirchick has a thoughtful review up for Policy Review of Tony Blair’s memoirs. It’s difficult to quarrel with Jamie’s conclusion, which is that the more Labour becomes a creature of the trade unions, the less likely it is to win an election. And I certainly endorse Jamie’s stout defense of Blair’s policies in Iraq and, more broadly, Blair’s support for close Anglo-American relations. But to my mind, the overall picture is less clear, and less favorable to Blair, than Jamie has it."

Response to State of the Union

Reaction Roundup: Heritage Responds to the State of the Union, Heritage Foundation Foundry, January 25, 2011. "In the opening section of his address, the President referred to the need to “sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world.” Those are certainly words that conservatives can endorse and respect, just as they will agree with his statement that America is “the first nation the be founded for the sake of an idea.” As Matthew Spalding has stated, the American creed 'is set forth most clearly in the Declaration of Independence, . .. a timeless statement of inherent rights, the proper purposes of government, and the limits on political authority.' Unfortunately, this was not the creed that the President proclaimed in his speech."

Oil for Food Kickbacks Wasted Again

Scotland Recovers, and Plans to Waste, Oil for Food Kickbacks, Contentions, December 19, 2010. "A Glasgow-based engineering firm, Weir Group, has been fined 3 million pounds, and had 13.9 million pounds of illegal profits confiscated, after it admitted paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Group, the BBC reports, made payments of 3.1 million pounds to the regime, plus another 1.4 million pounds to “an agent in Iraq” (regrettably not named in the judgment) in order to secure a contract worth approximately 35 million pounds. The Group, now under new management, fully acknowledged and apologized for its wrongdoing."

What Brings Nuclear Disarmament?

Democracy, Not the U.N., Brings Nuclear Disarmament, Heritage Foundation Foundry, September 23, 2010. "If the President wants to move towards reducing the undoubted dangers that nuclear weapons pose to the security of the U.S. and its allies, the place to start is not the United States, or Britain or France or Israel—it is with understanding where, and why, nonproliferation has worked in the past."

The British Parallel to Gates' Proposals

British Example Shows Danger Facing American Forces, Heritage Foundation America at Risk Memo #10-05, May 26, 2010. "In a recent speech at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that “Given America’s difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect closer, harsher scrutiny.” Secretary Gates is right to point to the dangers of America’s soaring budget deficits, but his implication that the U.S. defense budget contributes significantly to the problem is incorrect. The measures that he and the Administration propose are the same ones that have already been tried, and failed, in Britain. The British example shows the danger facing the U.S. forces."

On Trade Offs and Liberalism

The Politics of False Promise: New Labour and Barack Obama, New Ledger, May 19, 2010. "The lesson of New Labour’s fall has been lost in the United States. It should not be, for New Labour’s fate will also be Barack Obama’s. Unlike Tony Blair, Obama won high office at a time of foreign and domestic crisis. But he has doubled down by applying New Labour’s political and governing strategies nonetheless."

When New Labour's Luck Ran Out

New Labour Was Lucky, Then the Luck Ran Out, Foxnews.com, May 14, 2010. "The only problem with relying on luck is that, sooner or later, it runs out. And that, looking back, sums up much of New Labour’s time in power."

On Weak British Election Analysis in Foreign Affairs

What the British Elections Were All About, New Ledger, May 12, 2010. "It’s not fair to say that Mark Blyth and Jonathan Hopkin’s piece in Foreign Affairs on “Labour Pains: Why the British General Election is a Referendum on Its Past,” is the worst piece of commentary I’ve read on the subject."

Tony Blair and the Chilcot Inquiry

Tony Blair is Not Perfect, But He Showed Courage and Judgment over Iraq, April 4, 2010, Yorkshire Post. "Poet Walt Whitman said of the American Civil War that "the real war will never get in the books". Never is a long time. But, like the Vietnam War before it, we now know so much that isn't so about the Iraq War that it will take a generation to clear away the myths. The Chilcot Inquiry has contributed nothing to this process. That is because it, too, is a manifestation of a civil war, in this case the one inside the Labour Party. The purpose of the inquiry is to assuage the tender consciences of Labour MPs by rubbishing Gordon Brown's predecessor, who is the only reason Brown is now Prime Minister." This op-ed was written in my personal capacity.

The Obama-Berlusconi Summit

The Obama-Berlusconi White House Meeting: Advancing U.S.-Italian Cooperation, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2483, June 12, 2009.

Will Europe Take GITMO Detainees?

Another Take on Europe and the Detainees, Contentions, May 29, 2009.

Gordon Brown's Address to Joint Meeting of Congress

Live Blogging Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Address to the Joint Meeting of Congress, Heritage Foundation Foundry, March 4, 2009.

What Obama and Brown Should Do On Defense

Barack Obama and Gordon Brown Must Strengthen U.S.–U.K. Defense Cooperation, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2315, February 27, 2009.

Chapter on Blair and Iraq in Casey, ed.

“A Just War: Tony Blair and the End of Saddam’s Iraq,” in Terrence Casey, ed., The Blair Legacy: Politics, Policy, Governance, and Foreign Affairs (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Available in PDF form on request.

The MoD's Bad Deal with the Treasury

The Brown Government Should Stop Mortgaging the Future of Britain’s Defenses, Heritage Foundation WebMemo #2298, February 18, 2009.