Alan Dowd

This retreat of democracy and free government represents a challenge—and a threat—to America.

Helping nations in need often serves America’s most important interests while burnishing America’s highest ideals.

The downward trend in foreign aid spending by the US government is not a function of the American people losing interest in foreign aid. After all, it has never been popular. More likely, it’s a function of presidents no longer defending foreign aid, explaining it, or connecting it to the national interest.

Recent passage of the BUILD Act, which aims to “facilitate market-based private sector development and inclusive economic growth in less developed countries,” presents an ideal opportunity to discuss the thorny issue of foreign aid.

We must deal with the world as it is and fashion solutions that protect innocents, promote justice and defend the shared values of liberal democracy. The UN has failed to do that for more than seven decades. Worse, it has hindered responsible powers from playing that legitimate and necessary role. Perhaps it’s time to try something new.

Generally, American presidents who try to work through the United Nations and want it to live up to its noble mission often become disappointed.

The United Nations has failed to do what it was created to do—“promote the establishment and maintenance of international peace and security.”

We have heard much in recent years about Washington’s “Pacific pivot” aimed at deterring Chinese adventurism in the South China Sea and the “reassurance initiative” aimed at deterring Russian revisionism in Eastern Europe. What has received far less attention is Beijing’s pivot to the Americas and Moscow’s revival of Cold War-style intervention in the Western Hemisphere.

We shouldn’t redraw existing borders carelessly. But when trying to hold a state together becomes more disruptive to international order than allowing it to break apart, when one group mistreats another within a state, when a government loses the ability and authority to govern, the sensible course is to let that state dissolve.

America and NATO’s interests in the Arctic—which include territorial integrity, sovereignty, resource exploration and development, trade, and freedom of navigation—are under threat because of Russia’s actions.