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Alliances & Foreign Aid blog
Seven Tests of Whether the Military Is Really Ready for a FightReadiness is whether the force can fight tonight, not how big it is or how much it costs. Seven tests, each with the reason it matters.Trade Is Foreign Policy and Every President Has Treated It That WayEmbargoes, aid, tariffs and export controls have always been weapons of statecraft, and treating trade as only economics misreads our history.How the Reagan Doctrine Turned Containment Into RollbackReagan chose to back anti-Communist resistance movements instead of only holding the line, and the argument over that choice still divides the right.Burden Sharing Is Not a Trump Idea, It Is an Eisenhower IdeaPresidents of both parties have asked Europe to carry more of its own defense since Eisenhower, and the ask is a sign of a serious alliance, not a threat to it.Why Deterrence Is a Promise You Have to Be Willing to KeepDeterrence works only when an enemy believes you have the means and the will to respond, and doubt about either one invites the war you wanted to prevent.Lodge in 1919 and Vandenberg in 1948 gave two Republican answers on treatiesTwo Republican Senate chairmen faced Democratic presidents and got opposite results. A side-by-side table shows why one treaty died and one lived.Vandenberg's Conversion and the Republicans Who Built the Postwar OrderA Michigan isolationist became the Republican who steered NATO through the Senate, and the party's part in the postwar world is bigger than most Americans know.How Reagan built strength first and then sat down with GorbachevThe 1987 INF Treaty followed a military buildup and a hard line, not a substitute for one, and hawks and dealmakers both need that sequence.The One Time NATO's Article 5 Was Invoked, and Who Answered the CallNATO's mutual-defense clause was invoked once, for America, on September 12, 2001, and the allies who answered earned a hearing from every skeptic.George W. Bush's AIDS relief plan showed how conservatives can run foreign aidPEPFAR is the aid program conservatives can defend, because it counts results. Here is how it works and what it teaches about every other dollar sent abroad.Eleven Hard Questions About Israel and American Interests, AnsweredWhy does America back Israel? Eleven questions from skeptics on the left and the right, answered fairly and without pretending the critics have no case.