The Atlantic Council and the Royal United Services Institute have issued a joint publication entitled Europe’s Strategic Future: Implications of the Eurozone Crisis. The report features perspectives from the United States, the United Kingdom, and India analyzing how the Eurozone crisis is likely to impact Europe’s role in the world.

On this anniversary of the 1940 Nazi invasion of the Low Countries it is perhaps appropriate to consider the state of Europe’s defense.

High up in the majestic Yorkshire hills I am but a flat-cap stone’s throw from my native Sheffield.  The sheep stand fast protecting their new-born lambs from the scything, sheeting and predatory rain.  This is a place of unforgiving beauty.

On Wednesday I had the privilege of providing evidence to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee at its first meeting to consider the 2015 British Strategic Security and Defence Review alongside Lord Hennessy and Major-General Mungo Melvin.  Perhaps the most important contribution I made was to suggest to collected British politicians of all shades that whatever reforms are made to Britain’s strategic security and defense structures little will change unless the political class imposes effective oversight. 

Exercise Joint Warrior 2013 is certainly Europe’s, and possibly the world’s biggest maritime amphibious military exercise this year, and I am having the pleasure to observe and be sea-sick all over it.

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder once said, “They have it wrong if they ask if Schroeder favors Britain over France or France over Britain. Schroeder favors Germany.”  Watching David Cameron with family enjoying a German weekend break with Angela Merkel one could be forgiven for thinking all is well in the British-German relationship.

"To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: 'You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.’”

Frederic C. Hof, senior fellow with the Hariri Middle East Center, speaks with BBC Radio 5 live about the United Kingdom’s recent decision to step up support for armed rebels in Syria.