Colin Dueck and Roger Zakheim take another stab at “reform conservative” foreign policy. They make this thoroughly unhelpful observation:

Now, when liberals discuss what they view as necessary reforms of GOP foreign policy, what they generally mean is: more liberal. And when isolationists discuss what they view as necessary reforms, what they generally mean is: isolationist. We disagree.

Well, critics of existing Republican foreign policy usually will want to change it in the direction that they prefer. That would be the point of criticizing the policy. Obviously the authors don’t accept the criticisms offered by others, but last time they utterly failed to outline what policies, if any, they think should be reformed. They don’t have any business complaining about others’ preferences for Republican foreign policy reform when they haven’t proposed any reforms whatsoever. As critics across the spectrum noticed, there was no substance to their initial call for reform. It was a gesture towards changing policy without articulating any changes in policy.

So what do they have to say this time? They start by invoking Eisenhower again:

There are certainly other fine examples for GOP foreign policy, notably Ronald Reagan, but Eisenhower offers the model for conservatives on how to build a muscular foreign policy amid isolationist currents on Main Street.

Okay, so they find following Eisenhower’s example useful because it permits Republican foreign policy to remain activist and hawkish without provoking public backlash. That’s all very well, but it still doesn’t tell us anything. A little later, we get this:

A reform-conservative foreign policy for the U.S. would embrace bolstered deterrence of competitors in specific cases such as Ukraine and the East China Sea, through enhanced capabilities and clarity of commitment.

This is the first really specific and relevant thing they’ve had to say, and it’s a terrible idea. The U.S. shouldn’t be making any additional commitments in these cases beyond what the U.S. is already required to do by treaty. The U.S. shouldn’t be threatening to take “decisive military action” over territorial disputes between China and its neighbors, nor should it want to do the same in Ukraine. Once again, their proposals are indistinguishable from conventional Republican foreign policy arguments that we hear all the time. There is no reform anywhere to be seen.

Finally, we are treated to this nugget of wisdom:

A serious foreign policy must support our allies and challenge our adversaries.

No kidding. Apart from stating the blindingly obvious, it tells us very little about how they think the U.S. should manage its relations with allies and adversaries. Yes, we should support allies (if they really are allies that we’re sworn to defend), but in what way and at what cost? And perhaps adversaries will sometimes have to be challenged, but the manner in which that is done and the extent to which it is done are what distinguish a responsible foreign policy from a reckless and destructive one. If they are aware of this distinction, they don’t tell their readers. They go on to say this:

A reform-conservative foreign policy would support American allies in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere with greater clarity, via concrete measures of commitment, while ratcheting up pressure against strategic adversaries such as Iran.

So presumably they think that the U.S. should deploy more forces to these regions and increase sanctions on Iran. That’s hawkish boilerplate. Do they envision other forms of pressure on Iran besides sanctions? They don’t say. The one thing they do fault the Bush administration for is the lack of prior planning for post-invasion Iraq, but this suggests that they think the only thing Bush got wrong was the execution of the policy and not the original decision to wage an unnecessary war. They seem to think that the only relevant lesson of the Iraq war is that there needed to be more planning for the occupation. As I said last time, this is not even a good imitation of foreign policy reform.