Nuclear Weapons

Three years after Obama finalized the Iran deal, President Trump withdrew the US, and today Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid out a new and very ambitious path forward.

The core problem with the Iran deal is not in its details, but rather in the nature of Iran.

Trump could have chosen the deal. He could have chosen retrenchment. But he could not choose both.

The US and South Korea should have contingencies ready in case negotiations with North Korea don’t go as planned.

Keeping in mind North Korea’s record of dishonesty, President Trump would do well to keep the arrows of US force close at hand, even as he extends the olive branch of peaceful negotiation.

The United States must be able to convince our adversaries that Americans have the will and capability to inflict punishment on them in response to an act of aggression such that they would not carry out the act of aggression in the first place, and so the United States won’t have to inflict the punishment it promises.

As the number of missile-wielding states grows and as the nuclear club expands, the likelihood of a missile being unleashed against the American people or their allies—whether by mistake, miscalculation, or a madman—also grows. Missile defense doesn’t eliminate the danger, but it does give us a fighting chance to confront it.

While realists and liberal internationalists typically argue about whether the goal of foreign policy should be to achieve pragmatic objectives or to support our fundamental beliefs about the value of human lives, adherents to either school likely would agree that working to end the scourge of the North Korean slave trade meets the threshold for action.

Video links to the presentations from the 1st day of the Providence conference reflecting on the intersection of Christian intelligence and foreign policy