North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

In the ceaseless struggle between civilization and barbarism, America has tipped the scales toward civilization, toward freedom and justice. In many ways, it has organized its national life—its economic, military, and moral resources—toward this end. Are we still up to the task?

As NATO has expanded and with less clarity on concrete enemies, allies have grown further apart.

Foreign ministers from NATO members are gathering in Washington this week to mark the military alliance’s seventieth anniversary. Here’s what you should know about one of the oldest and most successful defense pacts in history.

We need a return to a sober Christian Realism that appreciates our fallenness, the fallenness of the world, and our limits in shaping world events.

A disruptive foreign policy, such as the Trump Administration’s, is not necessarily disordering, and may even be warranted, especially when the status quo is unstable or unjust.  But to be justified morally, it must be creatively destructive, replacing the old order with a new one.

We were mostly right about his hateful rhetoric, fundamental dishonesty, trade wars, admiration for foreign dictators, and wild inconsistency. But we overestimated Trump’s competence and work ethic. His ability to bring material harm to the United States has been limited by how little he works and how little he knows about the presidency.

The Trump foreign policy is like the administration’s domestic policy: a little irreverent, ambitious, and completely impervious to experts’ warnings.

Instead of debating President Trump’s character, we should ask which is more Christian: the experiment with globalism that seems now to have faltered, or the somber return to nations that seeks, modestly yet earnestly, to fortify transnational alliances where they are possible, but reject them where they are not.

Pastor Brunson is free, but many others are not. The U.S. should not push Turkey away, but continue the hard work of diplomatic engagement around core human rights issues. It should also continue to engage broad range of challenges these partner countries are facing in the region.