60.3.1 - Foreign Policy

⬅️ Back to 60.3 Politics · Sisters: Immigration MOC · Europe (MOC) · 60.3.7 Economics · Database: Foreign-policy base (file not included in this release)

The arguments and evidence about intervention, restraint, aid, national interest, and the political limits on war. Country histories and war chronology also live in 60.13 Wars and the country folders.

A useful distinction from the existing notes

Isolationism distinguishes isolationism from narrower non-interventionism; Elective War in Democracies asks whether democratic electorates can sustain costly wars whose benefits are delayed or difficult to observe. Neither question by itself settles whether a particular intervention is justified.

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Restraint and Intervention

• Blowback — Debate Brief — a one-minute opening, terrorist-veto argument, evidence, objections and replies, and cross-examination questions.
• Blowback — Causation, Responsibility, and the Limits of the Argument — extensive assessment of blowback, terrorist agency, Barbary history, Iraq and anti-ISIS policy comparisons, internal militant records, and the limits of the empirical evidence.
• Isolationism — definitions, historical arguments, and the case for avoiding foreign entanglements.
• Isolationism - Charles Kupchan — book-length defense and qualification of restraint.
• Elective War in Democracies — electoral incentives, visible costs, and hard-to-measure strategic gains.
• Ronald Reagan on Appeasement — the competing warning against excessive accommodation.

Aid and Statecraft

• Foreign Aid — fiscal scale and public debate; check fiscal year and whether figures are obligations or outlays.
• USAID — agency-specific notes.
• 60 Knowledge/60.3 Politics/60.3.1 - Foreign Policy/USAID and Color Revolutions - DataRepublican Fact-Check — 34-claim audit, exact grant/IRS checks, Georgia chronology, and causal limits.
• Color Revolutions — claims about external influence and local agency, best read with source-specific evidence.

Regional Cases and Debates

• Yes, The U.S. Is the World's Biggest Terrorist - Kyle Kulinski — source-audited anti-imperialist argument about U.S. violence, civilian harm, sanctions, proxy responsibility, and the contested category of state terrorism.
• Historians Debate Ukraine War - Niall Ferguson vs Scott Horton — competing interpretations of the Ukraine war.
• Iran War Debate Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East Lex Fridman Podcast 473 — Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz on Iran; contains multiple summaries and fact-check material.
• Europe (MOC) · UK Immigration - Law, Policy and Evidence — related regional policy.

Know the Other Side

• Restraint → Isolationism · Hegemony or Survival - America's Quest for Global Dominance · Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
• Intervention and deterrence → Ronald Reagan on Appeasement · Elective War in Democracies · The Spirit of Democracy - The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World

Cross-vault

• 60.13 Wars — war-specific evidence and chronology.
• 60.9.3.4 Political Philosophy — just-war and moral authority questions.
• Immigration MOC — displacement, borders, and regional responsibility.

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Folder base

60.3.1 - Foreign Policy.base (file not included in this release)

Filed captures and working notes — October 2026

Statecraft, intervention and foreign-policy comparisons

• Books to read countering Libertarian Military Meekness Isolationism — preserved working note or source capture
• Dave Smith and Robert Spencer Debate - Should the U.S. Support Israel Against Iran? — preserved working note or source capture
• Interventionism — preserved working note or source capture
• Iran notes from Twitter Live — preserved working note or source capture
• Iranian Appeasement — preserved working note or source capture
• Moynihan's Law — preserved working note or source capture
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — preserved working note or source capture
• Realism Foreign Policy — preserved working note or source capture
• The Global South — preserved working note or source capture
• U.S. Intervention in Central-South America — preserved working note or source capture

Auto-index and earlier query views

• Ukraine
  • Historians Debate Ukraine War - Niall Ferguson vs Scott Horton
• 60.3.1 - Foreign Policy (file not included in this release)
• Blowback — Causation, Responsibility, and the Limits of the Argument
• Blowback — Debate Brief
• Blowback — Library and Reading Guide
• Blowback — Research Record and Source Audit
• Books to read countering Libertarian Military Meekness Isolationism
• Color Revolutions
• Dave Smith and Robert Spencer Debate - Should the U.S. Support Israel Against Iran?
• Elective War in Democracies
• Foreign Aid
• Foreign Policy.base (file not included in this release)
• Interventionism
• Iran notes from Twitter Live
• Iran War Debate Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East Lex Fridman Podcast 473
• Iranian Appeasement
• Isolationism
• Moynihan's Law
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• Realism Foreign Policy
• Ronald Reagan on Appeasement
• The Global South
• U.S. Intervention in Central-South America
• USAID and Color Revolutions - DataRepublican Fact-Check
• USAID

NOTES

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