The New York Times jumps into the lingering Rand Paul vs. the Establishment storyline today, purporting to examine what Paul’s popularity portends for the future of the GOP’s foreign policy. But in truth, such stories have been able to paint this as a significant rift within the party only by utilizing the same selective vagueness that Paul himself employs when discussing political ideology. Some of this is, of course, natural and understandable–at least on Paul’s part–because a worldview must have overarching principles.
But what Paul’s foreign policy would mean in practice is incredibly unclear in the Times piece. It devotes more than a thousand words to the subject and still manages to paint an extremely and frustratingly incomplete picture. This is to Paul’s benefit. Only a selective reading of history–by both Paul and the New York Times–gives the appearance of a philosophical divide in which the two sides are more evenly balanced than they really are. For example, the Times writes:
Some Republicans are less worried. They view Mr. Paul’s crusade as nothing more than the usual attempt by members of the opposition party to undermine the assertive foreign policy of an incumbent president.
In the 1980s, Democrats harshly criticized President Ronald Reagan’s attempts to arm Nicaraguan rebels. During the 1990s, Republicans derisively called President Bill Clinton’s intervention in Kosovo “Clinton’s war.” In Mr. Obama’s first term, critics assailed his expansion of the war against terrorism, including the expanded use of drones.
There are two omissions in that second paragraph of ostensible examples of partisan game-playing masquerading as honest policy criticism. The first omission is of the administration of George W. Bush and his domestic political critics. Excluding Bush from this list exempts Democratic criticism of the war on terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from the ranks of cynical point scoring and elevates it to something more substantial. But in fact Democrats’ behavior on Iraq was nauseating. Democratic Party leaders stomped their feet demanding action to curb Saddam Hussein’s behavior for years during the Clinton administration, at a time when it became official American policy to support regime change in Iraq. They ramped up that rhetoric when Bush became president and could be painted as vacillating at a time of choosing. And they voted overwhelmingly for the war. Then they bolted.
The second omission is in referring to Obama’s “critics” of the drone program without party affiliation. The truth is that Republicans and conservatives support the drone program. Though many on the right appreciated Paul’s filibuster and his ability to easily win a round of publicity against the president, a great deal of those supporters actually disagreed with Paul on policy. Charles Krauthammer is the latest to express this clearly, writing in his Washington Post column today that the outlandishness of Paul’s one specific example of droning Jane Fonda meant that “Paul’s performance was both theatrically brilliant and substantively irrelevant.”
In fairness to Paul, he isn’t quite as vague about how to translate his principles into action as his defenders usually are, which indicates they know the limits of the Paul doctrine, such as it is. In his major foreign policy speech at the Heritage Foundation, Paul spoke at length about the need to incorporate a policy of containment into America’s broader foreign policy grand strategy, and he put that recommendation in the context of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. (He deserves credit, at least, for being honest about staking out a position to the left of the one currently claimed by President Obama.) He quoted George Kennan to this effect throughout his speech.
But he also quoted Kennan approvingly in Kennan’s critique of Harry Truman’s version of containment. This is an implicit acknowledgement that, pace Paul, it was not Kennan’s vision of containment that won the Cold War–and in fact Kennan’s version of containment was immediately and frankly rejected by Truman and his advisors who helped craft the Truman Doctrine. It is also not Paul’s version of containment, then, that was successful and it is highly misleading for Paul to try to pass his own policy off as the successful Cold War strategy utilized by presidents from Truman to Reagan (and the first Bush).
Paul will have much support on the right to try and move the GOP away from Iraq-style invasion and occupation; the public is noticeably war-weary. But the public also supports military action against Iran if the alternative is letting them get the bomb. Paul also complements Reagan’s foreign policy and tries to claim its mantle. But given Paul’s support for cutting the defense budget, does anyone honestly believe that Paul would have supported the crucial Strategic Defense Initiative? More likely, he would have argued against it as a waste of money and a tactic that made war more likely.
As I’ve written before, Paul is no crank or conspiracy theorist. But there is much room between that and mainstream conservative foreign policy. So far, Paul seems to get the easy questions–and only the easy questions–right. That’s better than nothing, but not by much.
"There are two omissions in that second paragraph of ostensible examples of partisan game-playing masquerading as honest policy criticism." n nActually, there are three omissions. The Times neglected to say that one of the reasons Democrats objected to Reagan's aid to the Nicaraguan rebels was that it was partially paid for by selling arms to Iran.
The problem with talking about containment is that there were almost as many containment strategies as there were presidents. n nIn fact, the preeminent scholar on containment, John Lewis Gaddis, thinks Reagan finally won the Cold War by implementing a containment strategy very much like what Kennan advocated; at the least, Gaddis thinks Kennan should have approved of Reagan's approach. Rather than simply react to and try to meet every Soviet encroachment, as Truman would, Reagan sought to exploit the tensions and weaknesses of the Soviet empire – economic as well as ideological. While persuading the Soviets that they had more pressing interests than their adventures abroad, Reagan enlisted the help of the Soviet leader to change his own regime. Far from winning the Cold War, the Truman doctrine mired the US in wars of attrition (Korea and Vietnam) that left the country demoralized and exhausted, setting the stage for US withdrawals and Soviet advances. n nPaul's invocation of containment raises more questions than it answers. One wonders why he thinks this grand strategy, employed in a context where you had rational state actors adverse to self-destruction, can simply be transplanted into the very different soil of the war against terror. One also wonders why he seems to insist on putting so many foreign policy tools back in the tool box, such as force or foreign aid, when the best flavors of containment involved the artful and proportionate use of as many of them as possible, in contrast to the worst, which tended to over-rely on one or two tools. Finally, how would he exploit the internal tensions of our enemies and foster a Muslim Gorbachev who would help his people reform themselves. n nI suspect that Paul is as much an advocate of containment as he is of realism. In other words, he's cynically misusing a more popular strategies to disguise his pursuit of a rejected, discredited policy — the sort of Robert-Taft isolationism that so outraged Ike that he ran for president to save the Republican Party and the US from it.
You're saying Paul is an isolationist? But Mr. Mandel didn't label him such, and Paul denies it ("Foreign policy is uniquely an arena where we should base decisions on the landscape of the world as it is . . . not as we wish it to be. I see the world as it is. I am a realist, not a neoconservative, nor an isolationist.") And until a Charlie Rose or other persistent interviewer presses Paul to say what distinguishes him from an isolationist, Paul will do the "float like a butterfly" thing made famous by another guy from Kentucky, but not nearly as well? n nA couple of days after the filibuster, Paul wrote to the Washington Post, "No American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime." The slipperiness didn't get past Krauthammer, who wrote, "Note the absence of the restrictive clause: 'on American soil."" If Heaven forfend Rand Paul were POTUS, then Anwar al-Awlaki would still be busying himself in Yemen putting together terrorist plots to kill as many Americans as he could? Osama ben Laden would still be keeping up with the news from Abbotobad.
It is pointless to compare Rand Paul's attitudes to traditional Lindbergh/Buchanan/America First type isolationism. While some of the same elements of that affliction may be present in Paul's world outlook, there is a new ingredient brought about by more recent events: The belief that acts of terrorism perpetrated against us are the natural consequence of our foreign policy, and were in fact provoked by our own actions. That was the most sinister aspect of his father's ideas, and that is what needs to be exposed (if it indeed resides) in the son's. Rand is a far more polished performer than Ron, and that fact will almost certainly elevate him to the upper tier of 2016 Republican candidates. I was heartened by the fact that he went to Israel in an attempt to demonstrate that anti-Semitism was not at the heart of his views on the Middle East, but a completely hands-off policy is every bit as dangerous to Israel as Obama's pro-Palestinian advocacy. In any event, rather than assigning labels, his precise, case by case views must be determined as 2016 draws nearer. That won't be easy, given his obvious caginess. But one Obfuscator-in-Chief is enough!
Indeed Rand Paul is a mighty warrior a damn Teeebaagerzz Mercenary owned by The Koch Brothers so is Mitch McConnell. Judd Ashley is coming to the Senate soooooon. Quit pot and Watch your Ass! Mitch.
GOP IS REALLY SCREWED: CPAC 2,930 Participant’s STRAW POLL Rand Paul 25 % Marco Rubio 23 % Rick Santorum 8 % Chris Christie 7 %. Indeed Rand Paul is a mighty warrior a damn Teeebaagerzz Mercenary owned by The Koch Brothers so is Mitch McConnell. Judd Ashley is coming to the Senate soon. Quit pot and Watch your tailgate! Mitch. Jeb Bush hires his lawyer Clint Bolick to author a book on ‘Immigration War’ and get paid zombies to weep during book-signing ceremony. I believe GOP is finished. If Jeb is their 2016 candidate they’re better off with kantoot Bu2721tch Michelle Milken or Ventriloquist Bobby Jindal or Ho-Nu2721gga like Allen West.
I don't think We The People really care that much about Rand Paul's specific politics. what we saw in his filibuster was someone with guts. someone who was willing to step up and say what needed to be said: that we have a Constitution and that Obama hasn't been bothering to pay attention to it. n nthe world has shifted a little bit over the last month. a new pope means the Catholic Church has a do-over, and a new start. at the same time, Rand Paul stood up for liberty, and America listened–even the low-info crowd who probably confuse Rand with Ron. and finally, the MSM started to actually report on Obama and his "misstatements" and political game-playing. (maybe the plain old meanness of cancelling the WH tours was what finally pushed them over the edge). n nmaybe truth is making a comeback. n n
There are more cannabinoid receptors in the body than any other receptor type. n nMedical Marijuana prohibition is a crime against humanity and a violation of the religious precept – heal the sick. n nThe Catholic Church opposes Medical Cannabis. – It will not be doing well in America.
Who were the only two members of the House of Representatives to vote against a resolution calling upon the Security Council to charge Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Geneva Convention? They were ultra-rightist Ron Paul and ultra-leftist Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has lost a primary election, and so he is not in Congress.. Neither is Ron Paul, who has retired. However, his son, Rand Paul, is now a member of the Senate. nExtremes meet. The Left is the Right. Think of Patrick Buchanan.