It is time for the United States to develop an Atlantic strategy. The U.S. has the means to do so—what is required is political will. So what would this Atlantic strategy look like? What would it cost? On this episode Luke Coffey explains how President Biden can pick up where President Trump left off, and develop a plan that does not make the U.S. vulnerable in our backyard.

Tim Doescher: From The Heritage Foundation, I'm Tim Doescher, and this is Heritage Explains.

Doescher: In his first major speech at the State Department, today, the president said he'll work to rebuild alliances around the world that he says were neglected and abused by the previous administration.

President Biden: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy. America cannot afford to be absent any longer on the world stage.

Doescher: America is back. Well, what about Afghanistan, Ukraine and Russia, the China Olympics, and China's continued rise as the biggest adversary to America? Let's cut to the chase, if American foreign policy is back according to President Biden, I really hate to see what it looks like if President Biden admits it's in decline. Now, it's safe to say that having a strategy and sticking to it is a great idea in most situations. It's even better if that strategy is one that benefits us in the end, not harms us or our allies.

>>> The U.S. Cannot Neglect Its Backyard—It Is Time for an Atlantic Strategy

Doescher: Given all the episodes we've done on the three major foreign policy failures thus far in the Biden administration, which we just mentioned above. We wanted to give President Biden and his State Department a chance to get it right. To do this, let's look to the Atlantic region and develop a strategy for how we can build new alliances and bolster existing ones in a comprehensive way that strengthens us against Russia and China. But what would this look like? What even is the Atlantic region?

Luke Coffey: This administration doesn't have the capacity, the bandwidth, or even the desire to look at these big grand strategic initiatives, like the Atlantic Strategy because they're so focused on just dealing with the foreign policy crises that they're in, like Ukraine.

Doescher: That they created.

Coffey: Or this perpetual daily drumbeat of political drama that unplays across America every single day, especially as we approach midterm elections and the next presidential election.

Doescher: On this episode of Heritage Explains, we're joined by Luke Coffey. He's the director of the Allison Center for National Security here at The Heritage Foundation. He's going to tell us why, in the face of all the foreign policy challenges we're seeing under the Biden administration, it's crucial that we don't neglect our own backyard and what developing a comprehensive Atlantic Strategy would mean for our national and economic security. But first, we're going to try something different here on Explains. Our good friends, Brad Polumbo and Hannah Cox have expanded their reach to a great new podcast called Based Politics. We wanted to give them a chance to introduce themselves to you, and maybe you'll go check it out. So take it away, guys.

Hey everybody, I'm Hannah Cox. And I'm Brad Polumbo. We're the host of the Base Politics Network. And we want you to join for our weekly news roundup, The Base Brief. We believe in teaching people how to think, not what to think. So if you're tired of getting your news from overtly partisan journalists, this show is for you. We have no tribe. We pull no punches. And the only team we root for is the free market and individual liberty. On top of that, we're two good friends who both work as libertarian conservative commentators, but we don't always agree. On The Base Brief, we let you in on the conversations we're already having as we work to analyze the impacts of public policies, spill the industry tea, and hash out our hot takes. Plus you'll get bonus interviews with top liberty lawmakers and influencers like Senator Rand Paul, Congresswoman Nancy Mays, and Libertarian party, vice presidential nominee, Spike Cohen. Search Based Politics on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast to subscribe. Now, that's B-A-S-E-D Politics. We can't wait to catch up with you. And in the meantime, stay based.

Doescher: The U.S. cannot neglect its backyard. It is time for an Atlantic Strategy. Luke Coffey, this is a really, really important paper and I wanted to get you in here. So again, just as we start, thank you for being here.

Coffey: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Doescher: And so as we start in here and we talked a little bit about it in the lead up to the interview here, but I just wanted you to tell us what constitutes the Atlantic region.

Coffey: Yes, well, the Atlantic region is a massive chunk of the earth. The Atlantic Ocean is 48 million square miles. It goes from basically the Arctic down to almost Antarctica. And there are about 80 or so countries on either side of the Atlantic, whether it's North America, Europe, Latin America, South America, or Africa that have Atlantic coastline, so it's a massive geographical area. And it's an area where even though it's so close to home in so many different ways, there's been no coordinated U.S. response to deal with many of the challenges we face in the region or how to take advantage of many of the opportunities we could have in the region, especially in this era of great power competition.

Doescher: Okay. So let me just, before we get in a little bit more, I wanted to just stick with why the region is so important. Is it just because it's close? What is it economic? What stands out for you in terms of why this is important for us?

Coffey: Well at The Heritage Foundation, I'm the Director of the Foreign Policy Center, so I manage a team of experts who focus on most of the world's regions. My personal background and interest is more in Eurasia, Russia, Eastern Europe, the caucuses with thousands of miles away from home. That's my main passion. But as I look at the rise of great powers and I see what is going on with Chinese influence, Russian influence, even Iranian influence, or the rise in empowerment of non-state actors and transnational crime organizations, I thought Americans were always look thousands of miles away. Why don't we look a little bit closer to home to see what's going on? And I think part of that reason why we don't do this is because for the most part, we have a relatively comfortable status quo in this neck of the woods. But this is changing, and unless we are more proactive, we are going to lose out on influence and economic opportunities and diplomatic relations to many of these countries in the region because of the growing Chinese influence and Russian influence.

Doescher: And we're definitely going to dive into those. And you talk about in the paper, which we'll link to in the show notes, folks, differentiating between short-term and long-term goals. But first, I wanted to get into some of the challenges that we face in the region. It's vast, as you said, and I'm not sure people fully understand some of the incredible threats that currently exist and we need to be prepared to face.

Coffey: Yeah. I think the challenges and threats that we face in the Atlantic region can be divided into two parts. You have issues that I describe in the paper as being north of the Tropic of Cancer, so this is the North Atlantic area. This is the area where you typically think about NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is where you think about Russian submarines and Russian influence and Russia militarizing the Arctic. But then you also see these important shipping lanes in the Arctic region developing, more accessible to natural resources and rare earth minerals in the Arctic that different powers are starting to compete over. And so there's an economic component, but in the North Atlantic it's more of a hard security component dealing with Russia. South of the Tropic of Cancer, the Southern Atlantic, especially along the coast of South America, the islands of the Caribbean and also the west coast of Africa, you have growing Chinese influence trying to monopolize on regional trade blocks, exploiting the local situation to extract minerals and natural resources, ultimately at the cost of the nation in question.

Doescher: They show up to these nations and they say, we're going to dump all this money into you. And then all the while they're planting 5G towers that they can monitor and surveil, things like that.

Coffey: Exactly. 

Doescher: And the nations are like, sure, please give us your money, give us your money.

Coffey: Actually, it's often the corrupt elites that China is dumping all this money in because a lot of these countries have governance issues. And that's one of the challenges for the United States. If they can help in a very long-term way, in a very gradual way to help these countries perhaps get better systems of governance where people feel like they're governed fairly and well by their political elites then these countries become less susceptible to Chinese influence. But right now you're absolutely right, China will go in, tell the corrupt political elites, we'll pay you. You give us and we'll build the free 5G tower so we can essentially listen to everything your government's deciding to do. It's crazy. But until the U.S. and our partners present a credible alternative to this, then many of these very poor countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, feel like they have no choice.

Doescher: And as I've traveled around to many developing countries, even beyond the region we're discussing, you hear that all the time. We want U.S. investment, but here's China knocking at the door. Here's Russia. Here are all these other options that we need to take, and of course, they don't need to, but they do.

Coffey: They do. Absolutely.

Doescher: Let's just kind of get ahead of the situation and develop the strategy that you talk about. What does a strategy for developing this region look like?

Coffey: We do need to do a number of things. Firstly, we need to change our mindset in the US government, especially in our foreign policy and national security architecture in how we view this region. Right now you have different bureaus in the State Department, you have different combatant commands in the Department of Defense, you have different offices in the National Security Council, all focusing on certain chunks of this vast region without any overlapping coordination.

Doescher: Oh, okay.

Coffey: So perhaps what the DOD is doing in Sub-Saharan Africa isn't matched up with what SOUTHCOM is doing along the Eastern coastline of Latin America, for example. And we need to start seeing how these regions are starting to become more interdependent in terms of trade and economic activity and we need to expand many of our free trade agreements, expand the promotion of economic freedom in this region of the world. And we need to do a better job at finding key partners in the region who can be champions for this cause of an Atlantic Strategy like we have in the Indo-Pacific. Some of your listeners might have heard of the Quad. In the past, the Quad is this informal grouping of Australia, Japan, the United States and India focusing on the Indo-Pacific and security and economic activity in the Indo-Pacific. Even though it's not often mentioned publicly, the main reason is China. And we need to find kind of that equivalent in the Atlantic region where the U.S. can lead an effort to roll back some of the influence that China and Russia's had in the region.

Doescher: Now, you say U.S. can lead this effort. And my question goes to, because it is such just a vast region, it's so many different issues between countries and from the north of Tropic of Cancer, south of the Tropic of Cancer, would they all agree that some of these threats from China, from Russia, would they all agree on that we need a coordinating body, that we need this sort of quad-like alliance?

Coffey: No, they wouldn't. That's why the U.S. has to find the ones, the regional powers that share our vision for a free and open, stable, secure, prosperous Atlantic region. And the problem, technically speaking, Portugal and Spain are Atlantic countries, but those issues in Portugal and Spain are a lot different compared to Angola or Argentina, for example. Yeah. So we have to recognize that it's not a homogenous region, it's a very diverse region. We have to be more nuanced and sophisticated with how we deal with the different challenges and opportunities. We need to find like-minded countries in the region who can assist us with this. And we need to acknowledge that we're not always going to offer a better deal for some of these countries than China will.

Coffey: The people of some of these countries would like that deal with the United States, but like I said, the political elites in some of these corrupt countries are quite happy to have that deal with Beijing. So that's why the U.S. then has to find ways to mitigate any negative impact on U.S. interests in the region from certain countries being closer to China. It's not that they have to become our adversary or our enemy, quite the contrary. We should find ways where we can cooperate with some of these countries, but do so with our eyes open understanding that they will probably never see things eye to eye with the United States on our vision for the region.

Doescher: I know that we can compare what the Trump, I know you mentioned that the Trump administration had started developing a strategy, but I don't think that's continued under Biden.

Coffey: No, it hasn't.

Doescher: Okay. So my question would be, is there a willingness in the State Department to pick this back up or is there a reason why they haven't pursued this?

Coffey: Yes. This idea of developing an Atlantic strategy was discussed in the final weeks almost of the Trump administration. And we actually published our first paper on the issue at that time to try to inform the debate and inform the policy makers. Unfortunately, when the Biden administration came in, this fell off the agenda. And I'm starting to hear rumors again, that some officials are thinking about this approach, especially when you look at it through the lens of great power competition with the rise of China and Russia, it just makes sense. But I do believe that this administration has very little bandwidth for foreign policy issues. They've shown that they want to be focused on domestic policy issues, implementing a domestic agenda, And when we saw the disaster in Afghanistan, the indecisiveness, the dithering, the defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan, This has embolden our adversaries and it's made many of our partners question U.S. resolve.

Doescher: Even in Ukraine, too.

Coffey: Yeah, Ukraine is a perfect example of this. The road that led us to this crisis in Ukraine first passed through Kabul. I have no doubt in my mind about that, so this administration doesn't have the capacity, the bandwidth, or even the desire to look at these big grand strategic initiatives, like the Atlantic Strategy, because they're so focused on just dealing with the foreign policy crises that they're in, like Ukraine.

Doescher: That they created.

Coffey: Or this perpetual daily drumbeat of political drama that unplays across America every single day, especially as we approach midterm elections the next presidential election. So I'm not hopeful that there'll be some grand initiative from the White House on this. I am hopeful that there's enough interest by some officials at the professional, technical level that has an interest in this, so if there is a change of administration, then there can perhaps be a renewed focus on this issue.

Doescher: So let's say a change of administration comes in, what would be the next best step as a new administration comes in to pursue this? Is it just acknowledging that we need this?

Coffey: Acknowledgement would be a great place to start and developing a written strategy. The Biden administration had a gender strategy out in weeks, and we still don't have a national security strategy, So it would be nice to have a specific document that can serve as a basis for policymakers to work from, just a framework document, doesn't even have to be that detailed. Just give the tasks to the different departments of government to enact a sound, reasonable Atlantic strategy.

Doescher: Luke, it just is amazing to me that this doesn't exist already. It's a massive-

Coffey: It doesn't.

Doescher: It's such a massive span of territory, and we don't have a strategy. This just seems crazy to me.

Coffey: Right now we have about five different approaches. We have an African approach or strategy. We have a Latin America approach. We have an Arctic strategy. We have a European approach. We have a North American, so we haven't joined them up. There's a lot of good stuff that's already out there the U.S. is doing. There are a lot of things we should improve on. We need to find a way to join this together.

Doescher: Well, Luke, I really, really appreciate you covering this, coming in and laying it out for us. This is something that we don't know much about because we're not dealing with it. And like you said, the president isn't traveling. And going to the situation room is not going to the actual country, going and seeing and being a part of it and experiencing. And so your call is definitely heard. So anyway, I just wanted to thank you for coming in and clearing it up.

Coffey: Oh, thanks for having me on.

Doescher: Providing actual solutions to pave the way to future success for the United States of America, not just being critical. See, that's why I love working at The Heritage Foundation. Just a special thanks to Luke Coffey for being with us on this episode to lay out this strategy. Go ahead and log into the show notes if you want to read more detail on it because it is expansive. Also, thank you so much for your response to Mike's book that we promoted on the last episode on BLM. We love it. Now, we've made an exception, we have a few more books laying around. So if you want a free copy, it's not too late. Email us at [email protected]. Rate us five stars and leave us a comment and we'll send you a copy. We'll catch you next episode.

Heritage Explains is brought to you by more than half a million members of The Heritage Foundation. It is produced by Michelle Cordero and Tim Doescher with editing by John Popp.