LSAT PrepTest 44 Section 4 Question 26 Explanation | Logical Reasoning

Here's a Logical Reasoning question from the October 2004 LSAT.

A chain of phrases should help here:

Must respond aggressively to have strong foreign policy --> Everyone must think problem's grave --> EU won't, unless economy's threatened --> not all EU members strong in foreign policy

Where's the jump here, the place where the logic breaks down and an assumption is needed? The argument goes from saying that if the economy isn't threatened, not everyone will respond aggressively to saying that not everyone will have a strong foreign policy (presumably because they won't respond aggressively).

But who's to say that all the EU nations won't think the problem in question threatens the economy? Maybe they will think it does and thus respond aggressively and have a strong foreign policy. For this argument to work, we can now pre-phrase, we must assume something like "not all the EU nations will think the problem is a threat to the economy." We see right away that C fits this pretty well, since it mentions not all EU members thinking the problem is economically threatening. Let's quickly go through the other choices:

A) Out of scope. If this were assumed it really wouldn't affect the argument. We're just talking about what will get the countries in the EU alliance to act, not whether allied or non-allied countries are more aggressive.

B) Out of scope again. Whether the EU members have a lot of wealth is unknown in this argument; it isn't addressed at all (remember, stick to the facts in the argument, not anything you may know from other sources). So, assuming anything about countries that are wealthy is unhelpful.

C) Correct.

D) The opposite of what we need...this is already stated by the argument (the argument says that if the countries don't agree a problem's economically threatening, they won't aggressively respond and thus won't have a strong foreign policy) so it can't be what needs to be assumed.

E) Out of scope. We're not balancing economic and foreign policy benefits; the point of this argument is that the EU nations can't agree if a given problem is economically beneficial or dangerous.

Remember:

1) Use a chain of phrases (accomplished by underlining on the real test, but written out here for learning's sake) to map the argument's progression.

2) Pre-phrase to solve questions more quickly and accurately.

3) Ditch answers that are out of scope and that are the opposite of what we want (in this case, things stated in the argument, which obviously can't also be needed assumptions).