What’s the Point of NATO, Anyway?

In his repeated attacks on the Western alliance—culminating in a head-spinning morning with reports of Trump threatening to “go his own way,” followed by his declaration that “I believe in ”—Donald Trump has raised an important question: What’s the point of anyway? Today, even asking that question places you on the outer fringes of American foreign-policy debate. But that wasn’t always so. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Ronald Reagan’s former UN ambassador, has a named after her at the Council on Foreign Relations. But in 1990, she , without regret, that “ will not survive the current reconfiguration of named for Irving Kristol, the “.” But in 1993, Kristol that is on the “way to becoming moribund” as America embraces “a renascent nationalism.” This, Kristol added, “is something that most conservatives have long wished for.”