Foreign Policy

A series of polls conducted by Stand Together Trust and Center for the National Interest consistently found that Americans didn't favor current U.S. foreign policy.

ARLINGTON, Va., February 7, 2017— Stand Together Trust and the Center for the National Interest today released a poll of 1,000 Americans taken the last weekend of January demonstrating that Americans want Washington to show greater restraint when it comes to military spending and intervention in foreign matters.  These findings are consistent with our two […]

Stand Together Trust hosted Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walter McDougall for a discussion of his latest book, "The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest."

Results show voters favor an emphasis on diplomacy and trade and are skeptical of military intervention abroad. Arlington, Va., Dec. 19, 2016—Stand Together Trust and the Center for the National Interest today released a poll of 1,000 Americans that shows voters believe focusing on diplomacy and trade are better methods of improving U.S. security than military […]

Stand Together Trust hosted an event on Trans-Atlantic Relations and the Future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in New York City last month. The event featured former ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and Barry Posen, director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy. Rather than focus on nitty-gritty policy details, moderator William Ruger, vice president of research and policy at Stand Together Trust, encouraged the panelists to discuss “key ideas for the future.”

Over half of Americans believe the military should be used less overseas during next administration October 27, 2016 – Arlington, Va. — Only 14 percent of registered voters in the United States believe the country’s foreign policy has made them safer since 2001, according to a poll of 1,000 Americans released today by Stand Together […]

Five years after South Sudan’s founding, its conditions are arguably worse than those that initially led Americans to push for the territory’s independence from Sudan. Reflecting on the situation for The Boston Globe, Stephen Kinzer writes about how a coalition of Americans, which included Christians, human rights activists, the Congressional Black Caucus, and movie stars, […]

Despite the size of the  U.S. domestic arms export industry, arms sales receive very little media attention. Reporting on the cronyism within the industry for The American Conservative, William Hartung writes that “the U.S. share has fluctuated between one-third and one-half of the global market for the past two decades.” Additionally, in 2011 70 percent […]

Writing for Cato at Liberty, Ted Galen Carpenter urges U.S. leaders to cut close ties with Turkey, a U.S. ally and NATO partner that is becoming increasingly unsavory as it transitions ever closer to authoritarianism. In the aftermath of the recent failed coup in Turkey, NATO leaders were relieved to avoid an alliance with a […]

Afghan National Security Forces have wasted millions of dollars’ worth of U.S.-supplied ammunition, as Mirwais Harooni and James Mackenzie report for Reuters. According to one Afghan army officer’s estimate, up to 80 percent of low-paid Afghan soldiers have lined their pockets by aimlessly discharging their weapons and selling the casings to scrap metal dealers. Additionally, another […]