Foreign Policy & Security
Latest Foreign Policy & Security Publications
Getting Over the Line: Solutions to the Irish border
Dr Graham Gudgin and Ray BassettThe Irish border is not the insoluble obstacle to Brexit negotiations that it has been made out to be and the UK can leave the single market and customs union while preserving a frictionless border in Ireland. This can be achieved by the use of new technology and in the context of a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and EU, in an arrangement that goes beyond the Customs Partnership and in no way threatens the Good Friday Agreement.
In Defence of Collective Security
John BewAs Putin celebrates another election victory, today’s Labour party should remember that there can be no coherent response to the Russian provocation without an appreciation of how our collective security is underscored by NATO and the role Labour played in its creation. In a new essay, In Defence of Collective Security, Professor John Bew, Head of Policy Exchange’s Britain in the World project and an award winning biographer of Clement Attlee, argues that our current system of Western security, based on NATO, was painstakingly put in place by Attlee and Ernest Bevin and that the current Labour leadership betrays that legacy.
Beyond Brexit: Essential reading on international affairs and security in a changing world
John Bew, Gabriel Elefteriu, Patrick Porter and Jamie GaskarthPolicy Exchange is delighted to announce that Professor John Bew, Head of Policy Exchange’s Britain in the World Project, has been appointed as a specialist adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry into ‘Global Britain’. To mark that appointment, we publish a new reading list, Beyond Brexit: Essential reading on international affairs and security in a changing world, compiled by Professor Bew, Gabriel Elefteriu, Jamie Gaskarth and Patrick Porter.
Latest Foreign Policy & Security Blogs
The collective action to Russia was in part a result of the UK’s firm unilateral response
Policy Exchange’s Professor John Bew, whose essay on the Skripal affair was discussed on the Today programme, argues that the UK’s initial response to Russian aggression paved the way to wider, collective action.
Time for political game-playing over the Irish border to stop
Policy Exchange’s Senior Fellow on EU Affairs Ray Bassett – himself a former senior Irish diplomat – argues that ‘any hard border in the Irish Sea and North/South would hurt Ireland a lot more than it would Britain’ and that Ireland’s interests are more aligned with the UK than EU. Consequently, he says Dublin should drop its efforts to keep Northern Ireland in the Customs Union.
The EU’s own report confirms that the Irish Border issue can be resolved with technology – does this expose other motivations in Dublin and Brussels?
Dr Graham Gudgin – himself a former special adviser to the First Minister of Northern Ireland – finds that the EU’s own research group has identified technological solutions to avoid a ‘hard border’, raising questions about Dublin and Brussels’ intransigence on this issue.
Latest Foreign Policy & Security News
New Anglo-American project launched with high-level conference in Washington
Policy ExchangePolicy Exchange launched our new Anglo-American project with a high level conference in Washington to debate US-UK Relations in a Changing World. Both the US National Security Adviser Lt Gen HR McMaster and the National Security Adviser to the British Prime Minister, Mark Sedwill CMG, spoke at the event – the first time the two holders of these positions have appeared together in public. The event attracted widespread media coverage including from Bloomberg, Newsweek, ABC News, Voice of America, Washington Times, The National, Mail Online and the New York Times.
Niall Ferguson compares balance of power to Congress of Vienna at Policy Exchange’s Anglo-American conference
Policy ExchangeProfessor Niall Ferguson, who spoke at the launch of Policy Exchange’s new Anglo-American project, argued that the best historical analogy for the current balance of powers is with the pentarchy of five great powers that dominated European (and hence world) affairs for a century after the Congress of Vienna of 1814-15. A modern pentarchy was created in the form of the permanent members of the UN Security Council. Professor Ferguson argues that “Whether or not these five great powers can make common cause once again is the great geopolitical question of our time.”
Warning on undersea cables attracts widespread media coverage
Rishi SunakThe new Policy Exchange report warning that undersea communications cables are vital to our economy but vulnerable to attached attracted widespread national and regional media coverage, including its author, Rishi Sunak MP, appearing on Radio 4’s Today programme and writing for the Telegraph.
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