The Washington Post today ran a lengthy front-page story headlined “As Mexico drug violence runs rampant, U.S. guns tied to crime south of border.” The title pretty much sums it up: the Post states that an “unprecedented number of American guns [are flowing] to the murderous drug cartels across the border” and that this is fueling the violent battle between drug runners and the Mexican government. Of course, one reason that battle has turned violent is because the Mexican government of Felipe Calderon is trying, for the first time, to …
In a “no news is news” story, The Washington Post reports that, in spite of nominal support from President Obama in April 2009, neither Senate Democrats nor the White House is enthusiastic about seeking ratification of the CIFTA treaty. That is good news. CIFTA is the Spanish acronym for the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. Negotiated under the auspices of the Organization of American States, it was signed by President Clinton in 1997, but it has not yet …
No, the undead aren’t Senators worried about the outcome of next Tuesday’s election. Nor are they the bodies of the departed, reanimated to feast upon the living. Citizens in the U.S. Capitol aren’t in any danger —well, no more danger than usual, anyhow—of having their brains sucked out and devoured. Rather, the undead in this case are treaties signed by Presidents past, treaties that are dead but yet still alive. Call them zombie treaties. In order for a treaty to have domestic effect as law in the United States, they …
The First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, which focuses on disarmament and international security, has for the past month been hearing statements from U.N. member states, U.N. officials, and NGOs on a wide range of subjects, from outer space to chemical and biological weapons. But a central focus of many statements is the U.N.’s proposed Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The supposed purpose of this treaty is to establish “common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms.” The U.S. agreed to participate in the negotiations …
Last week, George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, unveiled the results of a wide-ranging review of spending, designed to bring the government’s share of the economy down from today’s 47.5 percent to 41 percent by 2014–15. In the main, the review’s results are welcome, though they do not go far enough. Unwisely, though, the government included defense spending—which had already taken a beating from the previous Labour government—in its review. The result, as defined by the government, is that after inflation, defense spending in Britain will shrink by …
On Tuesday, September 28, at 4 pm, the former Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. John Howard, will deliver the seventh Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture at The Heritage Foundation, under the auspices of the Margaret Thatcher Center, on The Anglosphere and the Advance of Freedom. The Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture invites distinguished advocates of freedom to explore fundamental questions surrounding freedom as a primary principle of foreign policy. The first Freedom Lecture was delivered on September 7, 2006, by the Honorable Natan Sharansky, who asked the eloquent question “Is Freedom …
As expected, President Obama touched on one of his favorite subjects in his lengthy address to the United Nations General Assembly today: nuclear disarmament. He claimed that: As we pursue the world’s most dangerous extremists, we’re also denying them the world’s most dangerous weapons, and pursuing the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, 47 nations embraced a work-plan to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years. We have joined with Russia to sign the most comprehensive arms control treaty in decades. We have …
James Downie, standing in for Jonathan Chait at The New Republic, believes that The Heritage Foundation’s view of the relationship between first principles and foreign policy is wrong, and contrary to George Washington’s vision. Inevitably, he seeks to prove his point by quoting Washington’s Farewell Address. His case would be even less persuasive if he’d read a little more, or a little more thoroughly. But before we go into that, it’s worth drawing attention to Downie’s concluding point: “the Founding Fathers don’t provide much of a foundation at all” for …
One common way of thinking about foreign policy is that it exists in its own world, separate from domestic policy or the first principles on which a nation is founded. According to this view , the job of the foreign policy expert is to deal dispassionately with the world as it is, making no distinction between democracies and dictatorships, and shaping policy solely by cold-hearted consideration of the national interest. The Heritage Foundation has never accepted this way of thinking. It believes that the first principles on which the United …
The State Department has posted a speech by Ann K. Ganzer, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Threat Reduction, Export Controls, and Negotiations. Delivered on August 4 at the South American Conference on Interdiction and Regional Security of Small Arms & Light Weapons, Ganzer’s speech sheds valuable light on the Administration’s intentions on several treaties, including the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty, and reveals serious contradictions and flaws in the Administration’s position. What is striking about Ganzer’s speech is the contrast between the U.S. policies that she describes. Ganzer praised the U.S.’s …
