The foreign minister of Zeria announced today that her country was severing diplomatic relations with Nandalo because...
Julie-VJuly 18, 2019
Answer Explanation
Hi LSAT Max,
I was wondering if someone could breakdown the answer choices so that I can see why (A) is correct and (B)-(E) are incorrect. Initially, I eliminated choice (A) because I saw that it was an alternative reason, but later came back to it when I saw that no other answer choice was a good fit. I wasn't too confident that the correct answer choice was supposed to be something to show that there was another reason, so any clarification would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!
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This is a strengthen question, which means we are looking for an answer choice that would help strengthen the argument in the stimulus. Let's break down the argument in the stimulus:
Premise 1: Z's minister announced that her country is severing diplomatic relations with N because of N's human rights violations.
Premise 2: Z continues to maintain diplomatic relations with many countries that the minister knows to have far worse human rights records.
Conclusion: This latest diplomatic move cannot be explained exclusively by Z's commitment to upholding human rights.
Let's look at the answer choices:
(A) is the correct answer choice because it points out that something else must be going on. The conclusion states that "the latest diplomatic move cannot be explained exclusively by commitment to the human rights," and (A) provides this additional explanation. Human rights violations might be one of the reasons for the minister's action, but it is not the only one - rather, it is a response to their trade partner's threat to restrict its imports;
(B) is incorrect because it merely provides additional information about other countries' action, it fails to reveal anything about Z's motivation for severing diplomatic relations;
(C) is incorrect because similarly to B, it talks about other countries, whereas the focus of the argument is on Z's decision to sever diplomatic relations;
(D) is incorrect even though it is an attractive answer choice. One might think that the minister's action is an act of retaliation against N's accusations, but we cannot conclude that Z is even aware of it. (D) merely says that "N has considered accusing Z..." - these intentions never materialized as far as we know and likely were never even communicated to Z. That is why this answer choice is much weaker than (A);
(E) is incorrect because this fact has no impact on the conclusion. It does not matter what the opposition party is advocating.
