The problem is that politics is not war, but the only reliable alternative to it.
Alternative fuels, meanwhile, are potentially a decade away from offering a reliable alternative to oil.
But the most reliable alternative to X-ray scanning, hand-searching everything, is slow and expensive.
PacketExchange, for example, trumpets its service as a "faster, safer and more reliable alternative to the public internet".
The vaccines prevented deaths or reduced symptoms in mice, ferrets and monkeys infected with different types of flu, raising hopes for a reliable alternative to the seasonal vaccine.
Once this has happened, and the world's aviation authorities have agreed common operating standards, HAPS should prove a cheap and reliable alternative to blasting things into orbit.
Instead, in an effort to cash in on the post-war boom in sedatives, the company introduced the drug as a reliable alternative to barbiturates.
Ivory Coast had long been seeking a reliable alternative to Emmanuel Eboué and Aurier looks like he could become a better player than the former Arsenal defender ever was.
Despite being hailed as a reliable alternative to the unpredictable Contreras, the 32-year-old Loaiza could end up as the odd man out in the five-man rotation when Mike Mussina returns.
Widely praised as a lower-cost and more reliable alternative to Microsoft's Windows NT, Linux has made surprising gains in the market for the powerful computers that are used as network servers.
To those of us who worked with him – I was political editor of the Daily Mail at the time – he offered a lucid, reliable alternative to the exuberant machinations of Damian McBride and Ed Balls.
