NATO - The Foundation, But Not the Sole Focus, of U.S.'s Europe Policy

Ahead of 2023 NATO Summit, U.S. Policy in Europe Must Advance Prosperity and Security, with Dan Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #5323, July 7, 2023. "The U.S. does not have a serious policy for Europe: The Biden Administration’s claim that foreign and domestic policy are now one is intended to excuse its failings abroad and justify its progressive policies at home. At the July 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, the U.S. should press for the rapid adoption and full funding of NATO’s regional plans and support Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression, while building a wider security and economic framework that will serve the West in the face of an aggressive China. The Biden Administration remains reflexive in Europe, clearly keen to shelve the region and return to its domestic priorities once the war subsides. This approach does not serve U.S. interests."

The Russian Nuclear Danger

What Russia Says About Nuclear Weapons And What It Means, with Robert Seely PhD MP and Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, 19fortyfive March 14, 2023. "Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime has consistently signaled that the Ukraine War could trigger Moscow’s use of nuclear weapons. After a lull in threats toward the end of last year, possibly due to China exerting its influence over the Kremlin, those threats are on the rise again. At the end of February, former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said the world faces a nuclear apocalypse if the West continues to arm Ukraine with advanced weaponry."

A Moment of Opportunity

How Russia’s War Impacts U.S. Influence in Europe, Limes Online, February 24, 2023 [paid access]. "One of the many unintended side-effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine has been the sudden revival of the U.S.’s influence in Europe – or at least in NATO. Yet again, as it has done so many times in the past, the European members of NATO have been reminded that the threats to European security are real and cannot be met without the leadership and assistance of the United States. But the U.S. recovery of its influence risks being a waning asset, because of the strains posed by the war, because of the decline it implies in Russia’s influence, and because the U.S. ultimately faces a greater challenge from China, a challenge to which Europe is only beginning to awake."

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."

U.S. Policies in Europe After Russia's Invasion

The Top Five U.S. Priorities for European Policy After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, with Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #5258, April 7, 2022. "The year 2022 is the most important in transatlantic relations since the end of the Cold War. Russia’s unprovoked second invasion of Ukraine brings new urgency to the need for cooperation between the United States and its European allies. The U.S. can only meet the demands of this new era of great-power conflict, in which Russia and China both pose grave and wide-ranging challenges, if the U.S. builds on the strength of the transatlantic alliance, which remains central to its security. The Russian attack demonstrates that Europe has profoundly underestimated the dangers for which NATO was founded—and exists—to deter. The shock of the Russian assault must lead to unified action."

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."

Priorities for the U.S. in Europe in 2020

Six Key Priorities for U.S. Europe Policy in a Crucial Year, with Daniel Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #5025, January 17, 2020. "The year 2020 will have an outsized policy impact on key issues facing the transatlantic alliance. Key challenges for U.S. policy in Europe in 2020 include the continued threat of Russia to U.S. interests and to American allies, Russia’s continued war in Ukraine, the pernicious effects of Chinese investments, the Trojan horse of Chinese 5G technology putting Western intelligence sharing at risk, and failure to secure the Balkans and allowing local conflicts to metastasize. U.S. policymakers should focus on six key priorities in 2020: (1) a U.S.–U.K. free trade agreement, (2) NATO deterrence capabilities, (3) U.S.–EU trade negotiations, (4) moving Europe toward a robust response to the rising threat from China, (5) supporting the Three Seas Initiative, and (6) continued engagement in European hotspots."

Cheney v. Pence

Trump’s Right: Allies Need To Do More, Newsday, March 17, 2019. "Former Vice President Richard Cheney and current Vice President Mike Pence had an argument last week. It revolved around a major theme in the Trump administration’s foreign policy: that U.S. allies should pay more of the costs of the American security guarantee."

A Trump Strategy?

Trump Faces Decisions of Great Powers, Newsday, January 6, 2019. "From criticizing NATO and the World Trade Organization, to quitting the UN Human Rights Council, to dropping out of the Paris climate deal and the Iran nuclear deal, and now to pulling U.S. forces out of Syria, President Donald Trump is not shy about making big calls. And those big calls all have the same target."

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."

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."

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."

Who Else Calls The Allies Free-Loaders?

Are America’s Allies A Bunch Of Free-Riders?, Forbes, April 21, 2016. "Is the United States being cheated by its allies around the world? Are the European members of NATO free-riders on the United States? That’s what President Obama says. And he’s been saying it for years. But it’s not true."

Let Us Now Praise Useless Icons

Symbols Without Substance, CapX, March 3, 2016. "A few weeks ago, I met a group of Europeans who were touring the US on the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. When the conversation turned to the proposed US-EU trade deal, most of the European delegation seemed to agree (sensibly) that its economic impact would be minor. But they supported it none the less, on the argument that it would be a valuable symbol. That meeting came back to me when I read Rob Halfon MP’s explanation of why he will be voting for Britain to remain in the EU. As he put it, repeatedly, “I am frightened”. For Halfon, the value of the EU is symbolic: it’s supposedly an “alliance of democracies.” The EU’s not doing anything to improve the West’s position. It’s not the kind of alliance that actually fights. It’s just a symbol."

They're Not Our Friends

The Top Ten U.S. Myths About the European Union, CapX, January 21, 2016. "If the US is to be an effective ally of the democratic nations of Europe, it must see the European Union (EU) as it really is. In the years after the Second World War, the US was right to encourage Western Europe to trade more freely and to cooperate for their own security, both to defend against the Soviet threat and to stabilize the region’s fragile post-war democracies. This policy lost its relevance after the end of the Cold War and the rapid democratization of much of Eastern Europe. At that point, the US had achieved what it wanted to achieve with its support for a united and free Europe."

What We Should Be Doing in Europe, 2016 edition

Top Five Priorities for U.S. Policy Toward Europe in 2016, with Dan Kochis, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4506, January 8, 2016. "U.S. policy toward Europe in 2015 failed to rise to the significant challenges that confront it. The U.S. is no closer to having a clear and comprehensive strategy to deal with Russia than it was a year ago; it continues to devalue key bilateral and multilateral relationships in Europe for the sake of supporting the European Union (EU); and it took no effective steps to support improved governance in increasingly autocratic Turkey or in the aspiring democracy of Georgia. The devastating Islamist attacks in Paris in December 2015 prove that terrorism is an increasingly serious threat in the heart of Europe, and, from Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to the refugee crisis stemming from Syria, the EU displayed its customary obsession with inward-looking bureaucratic processes and supranationalism. The U.S. should defend European security, sovereignty, and prosperity, not support supranational institutions that undermine all these values. Here are the top five policy priorities in the European region for the Administration and Congress in 2016."

Recommendations for US Policy Towards Europe

Top Five Policy Priorities for Europe in 2015, Heritage Foundation Issue Brief #4331, with Nile Gardiner and Luke Coffey, January 14, 2015. "It is time for the U.S. to renew its commitment to European security, to make NATO relevant again, and to promote economic freedom across the continent. Here are the top five foreign policy priorities in the European region for the Administration and Congress in 2015."

Russia's Troubled Periphery Troubled by Russia

Russia’s Aggression Isn’t Stopping in Ukraine, Newsday, November 16, 2014. "NATO confirmed on Wednesday that Russian tanks were moving into rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine. But Russia's aggression under Vladimir Putin didn't begin in Ukraine and, unless the West stops vacillating, it won't end there, either."

Winners and Losers in Scotland

The Scottish Referendum: Who Won, Who Lost, National Interest, September 24, 2014. "It seems churlish to speak of winners and losers today, but, after all, the point of voting is to pick winners. The most important winner, of course, is the Union itself. Scotland, too, is a winner. Apart from the fact that it would have been worse off outside the Union, it has demonstrated that it’s possible—as it has been for centuries—to be both Scottish and British."

In Syria, If It's Worth Doing, It's Worth Doing Poorly

In Syria, Obama Calls on the J.V. Team, Newsday, September 20, 2014. "While the president called the Islamists the junior varsity team in January, it's obvious that they are professionals at murder. I hate to be rude about the Syrian rebels, who are risking their lives. But it's not the Islamists who are the JV squad: it's our guys. That's why they need training. So the new plan is much the same as the old plan. It relies on others to do the dirty work and promises more than it can deliver. Unfortunately, the motto of the administration's approach to Syria has not changed: If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly."