Luke Coffey

Luke Coffey is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. His work at Hudson analyzes national security and foreign policy, with a focus on Europe, Eurasia, NATO, and transatlantic relations.

Mr. Coffey was previously director of the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation from 2015 to 2022, in which role he oversaw and managed a team covering most of Heritage’s foreign policy and international affairs work. From 2012 to 2015, he was the Margaret Thatcher fellow at Heritage, focusing on relations between the United States and the United Kingdom and on the role of NATO and the European Union in transatlantic and Eurasian security.

Before joining Heritage, Mr. Coffey served at the UK Ministry of Defence as senior special adviser to then–British Defence Secretary Liam Fox. He was the first non-UK citizen appointed to this position by the prime minister to provide advice to senior British ministers. Among his duties was helping shape British defense policy in relation to transatlantic security, NATO, the Middle-East, and Afghanistan.

Mr. Coffey previously worked in the House of Commons as an adviser on defense and security issues for the Conservative Party. He helped develop and implement policy initiatives on security and defense matters, in particular drafting the defense section of the party’s 2010 election manifesto.

His work in British politics followed his service to the United States as a commissioned officer in the Army. He spent his entire time on active duty overseas and was stationed in Italy with the Army’s Southern European Task Force. In 2005, Mr. Coffey deployed to Afghanistan for a year and was awarded the Bronze Star.

Mr. Coffey’s commentary and analysis have been widely published and he has been interviewed on television and radio by prestigious media outlets in the US and overseas. For his work in support of Ukrainian sovereignty, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy awarded him an Order of Merit, Third Class in August 2024.

Mr. Coffey has testified before the US Congress on NATO, Arctic security, the war in Afghanistan, and US policy in the South Caucasus. 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 received a Master of Science degree in the politics and government of the European Union from the London School of Economics. He holds a BA in political science from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and studied African politics at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

An avid traveler, Mr. Coffey has lived on four continents and visited more than seventy countries. A native of Missouri, he and his family currently reside in Northern Virginia.