Luke Coffey studies and writes on foreign policy and geopolitical matters as the Margaret Thatcher Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, USA. He focusses in particular on defence and security matters, including the role of Nato and the European Union in Eurasian security.
He has testified before the US Congress on Nato and Transatlantic security issues. He has provided written testimony to the UK’s House of Lords Committee on the Arctic. His research has been quoted in reports by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee and the House of Lords Committee on the Arctic.
Mr Coffey served at the UK Ministry of Defence as senior special adviser to then-British Defence Secretary Liam Fox before joining the Heritage Foundation in 2012. He was the first non-UK citizen appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron to provide advice to senior British ministers. Mr Coffey worked in the House of Commons as an adviser on defence and security issues for the Conservative Party until joining the Ministry of Defence in 2010. He helped develop and implement policy initiatives on security and defence matters, in particular drafting the defence section of the party’s 2010 election manifesto.
Mr Coffey’s work in British politics followed his service as an officer in the US army. He was stationed in Italy with the Army’s Southern European Task Force and was deployed to Afghanistan for a year in 2005, and awarded the Bronze Star Medal.
He received a Master of Science degree in the politics and government of the European Union from the London School of Economics. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of Missouri-St Louis and an Associate of Arts degree in military science from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington.
