Beyond the Water's Edge: Vandenberg's Fifth Anniversary


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Honest Candor

Four score and one year ago, Senator Arthur Vandenberg stood in Congress and delivered his “Speech Heard Round the World,” a bold vision for the future of American foreign policy that emphasized U.S. sovereignty, robust alliances, and a strong national defense to advance American interests and values around the world. He argued it was through maintaining a strategic, muscular global presence that we could best protect the security, freedom, and prosperity of Americans from external threats. Seventy-six years later – and five years ago this week — a small band of patriotic Americans came together to fight for these same principles. On April 28, 2021, we officially launched The Vandenberg Coalition, and we are proud to have walked alongside each of you in the footsteps of our namesake for these last five years....

-Carrie Filipetti, Executive Director of the Vandenberg Coalition

Letter Supporting Pastor Ezra Jin

This week, The Vandenberg Coalition published a letter from 27 conservative national security experts to President Trump and Secretary Rubio asking that the United States advocate for the release of Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri during next month's U.S.-China summit. Pastor Jin is the founder of Zion Church, which has multiple locations across China, and he was unjustly imprisoned along with more than 20 of his colleagues in October 2025 as part of one of the Chinese Communist Party's largest nationwide crackdowns on Christian churches in decades.

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Washington Examiner Exclusive

Vandenberg Flash Focus

The Vandenberg Coalition at Five Years

April 28, 2026, marks the fifth anniversary of The Vandenberg Coalition’s founding. Over the last five years, conservative foreign policy has seen meaningful successes, faced notable setbacks, and confronted new challenges and opportunities that will shape its future direction. Elliott Abrams, Chairman of The Vandenberg Coalition and Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Secretary Robert Wilkie, 10th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs and the newest member of The Vandenberg Coalition’s Governance Board, join Executive Director Carrie Filipetti on this special edition of Flash Focus to reflect on the state of conservative foreign policy.

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What We're Reading

King Charles Can Save the Falkland Islands

TVC Chairman Elliott Abrams | National Review | April 27, 2026

Bottom Line: Today, President Trump has a much closer relationship, politically and personally, with Argentine President Javier Milei than with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Argentina is a democracy. So the Falklands — or as the Argentines call them, the Malvinas Islands — may be on the chopping block. What can the British do? Use the king’s visit this week — and arm him with a truly powerful justification that will persuade Donald Trump.

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Think We’re Losing the War in Iran? Consider Where Things Really Stand

TVC Governance Board Member Mark Dubowitz | Fox News | April 25, 2026

Bottom Line: The mistake that many analysts are making today is confusing the Iranian regime’s survival with its strength. A regime can persist and still be strategically hollowed out. The Islamic Republic of Iran is that regime. The question is whether America has the discipline to turn Iran's strategic defeat into a durable American victory.

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What if China Succeeds?

TVC Advisory Board Member Matthew Kroenig | Foreign Policy | April 22, 2026

Bottom Line: Fictional alternative histories have imagined what the world might have looked like if the Axis powers had won World War II. Creative authors should get to work on imagining and warning the public of the dangers that await if the CCP wins the new cold war. Envisioning this frightening future may be what it takes to motivate Western policymakers to adopt the strategies and policies necessary to ensure that the CCP fails—and the rest of us succeed.

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America Gets Serious About Cartels. Will Mexico?

Joshua Treviño | The Wall Street Journal | April 24, 2026

Bottom Line: The question for the United States is whether to tolerate President Claudia Sheinbaum's longstanding duplicity. Two Americans are dead in the honorable service of their country. Two Mexicans died with them, also honorably serving their country. America will see to its own security—and to Mexico’s too, if the Mexican government will allow it. If it won’t, then America will look to other friends to the south.

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Why Trump Should Call for the Release of Political Prisoners in Negotiations with China

Olivia Enos | Hudson Institute | April 23, 2026

Bottom Line: President Trump himself has multiple opportunities to secure the release of political prisoners in his meetings with Xi. No meeting should occur in which the president and other US leaders fail to request the release—by name—of political prisoners and their safe return to their families, including high-profile individuals like Jimmy Lai, Gulshan Abbas, and Pastor Jin. Working-level meetings likewise present additional opportunities to raise individual cases and press for their release as part of diplomatic negotiations

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