Many Americans will not recognize the name Abu Qatada. Qatada is a radical Muslim cleric currently behind bars in the United Kingdom waiting deportation to Jordan for terrorism-related charges. It has been widely reported that he is also wanted by authorities in Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, and Algeria and has been once described by a Spanish judge as “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe.” The British government claims that Qatada provided religious and spiritual advice to extremist groups almost immediately after arriving in Britain in the mid-1990s. Qatada …
If the 2012 edition of Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom has bad news for the United States, the news for Europe is not much better. The 43 nations of the European region did manage to lose less economic freedom than did the United States, but a decline is still a decline. And the European decline was broad-based: Only nine countries made gains, and every one of the top 10 declined—in some cases, dramatically. The underlying driver of the declines in many cases will come as no surprise: higher levels of …
The Fed has shocked us once again, and it’s probably right. There’s a firestorm on the horizon. It starts in Europe, but it threatens the U.S. economy just as surely, and the Fed is getting ready. The most fundamental role of any central bank is to deal with a financial market crisis, to ensure markets operate as normally as circumstances permit. A central bank does this primarily by ensuring an adequate flow of liquidity to market participants, whether banks, other financial institutions, or other central banks. It is in this …
American readers looking for a sweeping and superbly written study of the British Conservative Party should look no further than Robin Harris’s The Conservatives: A History, just published by Bantam Press. Its more than 600 pages cover every Conservative prime minister from Robert Peel to David Cameron, with in-depth and lively analysis of the premierships of some of the great titans of modern Britain, including Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Salisbury, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. As Harris observes in his conclusion, the Conservative Party has for two centuries symbolized the greatness …
Spain will have a new government in time for Christmas, and unlike Greece and Italy, Madrid’s government will be a democratically elected one. Mariano Rajoy’s center-right Partido Popular secured an absolute majority in yesterday’s elections and, on December 22, will take 186 out of 350 seats in the lower house of the Spanish parliament. What is less certain, however, is whether Spain can last that long without falling the way of its fellow southern neighbors—Greece and Portugal—and needing a bailout. Spain’s economic position is perilous. Unemployment is at 21.5 percent, …
The European press has a death grip on the idea that China will provide the huge sums of money necessary to make a dent in the EU financial crisis. Like most things involving the EU, the crisis has progressed at a snail’s pace. This has given the media the chance to recycle the “China is coming!” story again and again, despite the lack of evidence. In fact, the barriers to a Chinese bailout are daunting for several reasons. 1. The Scale of the Problem The EU does not need €10 …
A week ago, the Spanish government of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero agreed to Spain’s participation in NATO’s European missile defense system by allowing four U.S. Navy Aegis guided-missile destroyers of the Arleigh Burke class to be stationed at the naval base of Rota, in southwestern Spain. These destroyers are armed with the Standard SM-3 surface-to-air missile (SAM) designed to intercept short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The U.S. Navy destroyers will be based in Rota beginning in 2013, along with 1,100 servicemen and 100 civilian employees. Together with …
Being a leader often means telling your friends uncomfortable truths. Amid the tentative optimism NATO is now feeling in Libya, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has again reminded the alliance’s European members that the mission has only been made possible by strong U.S. support. Equitable burden sharing within NATO has been a perennial concern for Secretary-General’s over the years. However, there now appears to be a tipping point. Americans—worried about their nation’s debt, deficits and unemployment—are growing weary of shouldering a disproportionate share of NATO’s budget. Rasmussen states that NATO’s European …
People have been shocked by the images of destruction and violence coming out of Great Britain in the past few days. But if they tracked the steady loss of freedom and the simultaneous rise in the number of Britons dependent on the largesse of the state over the past few years, they should not be surprised. The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom documents a steady decline in U.K. scores since 2006. British freedom has been dragged down by heavy government spending. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s deficits to …
In his farewell address in Brussels, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates delivered a blunt warning to America’s European allies: there is the real possibility of “a dim, if not dismal future for the transatlantic alliance” unless NATO member states undertake a firm commitment to increase defence spending and make a bigger commitment to NATO operations. As Gates points out, only five members of the 28-member alliance currently spend the agreed minimum 2 percent of GDP on defence: the US, UK, France, Greece and Albania, and defence spending in Europe has declined …
