The New York Post reports that President Trump will arrive in Ankara for a two-day NATO summit — this, only three months after he stated he was 'absolutely without question' considering withdrawal from the alliance. I am told the visit also involves plans for billions in arms sales. I engage with that pairing carefully, because the two facts together describe something a mind attentive to foreign affairs ought to examine closely.

I have always counseled against permanent entanglements — that principle stands. But I must be equally plain about the other side of the ledger: a nation that publicly entertains abandoning its associates, and then arrives at their table offering weapons for purchase, has subtly transformed a political covenant into a commercial transaction. The alliance is no longer a shared compact of mutual security; it becomes a market, and the Republic's protection becomes a product with a price that may be revised at the next summit, or the one after.

This matters beyond the immediate negotiation. The value of any commitment rests on the credibility that it will be honored. When a powerful nation spends months suggesting it may leave, it teaches every partner — friend and adversary alike — to discount its word. Adversaries grow bolder; friends begin quietly hedging. The damage to deterrence is not paid on the day the statement is made; it is paid across years, in accumulated miscalculation by those who no longer know what to believe.

I am not unmindful that alliances can outlive their purpose, and that permanent attachment to any foreign arrangement carries its own risks. There are moments when a republic ought to reassess its commitments with clear eyes. But reassessment conducted through public threats and theatrical ambiguity is not strategy — it is the posture of a debtor trying to renegotiate by declaring bankruptcy might be considered. The leverage gained in one transaction is purchased at the cost of trustworthiness in every future one.

The reported phrase — that 'Daddy isn't going anywhere' — is not language I would choose to describe the bearing of a republic among sovereign nations. An executive who frames the security of allied nations as a personal favor conferred by a patriarch has, I would suggest, inverted the proper relationship between office and policy. The commitments belong to the Republic, not to any single officeholder. They outlast administrations. Precedent set carelessly in one season becomes the chain that binds the next.

My counsel is this: let the administration attend the summit, conduct its business, and sell what arms serve the Republic's genuine interest. But let it also consider what it costs to arrive at any table as a partner whose loyalty was, only months ago, publicly in question. The price of that uncertainty is not denominated in dollars. It is denominated in the credibility that, once spent, is slowly and painfully restored — if it is restored at all.