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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Rand Paul, Non-Interventionism, and the Founding Fathers

Jamie Fly lists some of the positions Rand Paul has taken in the Senate: He’s proposed massive cuts to the defense budget, called for significant cuts to foreign aid, including to Israel, and blocked routine Senate resolutions condemning brutal crackdowns in countries such as Syria as well as statements of support for key allies, such […]

Jamie Fly lists some of the positions Rand Paul has taken in the Senate:

He’s proposed massive cuts to the defense budget, called for significant cuts to foreign aid, including to Israel, and blocked routine Senate resolutions condemning brutal crackdowns in countries such as Syria as well as statements of support for key allies, such as the Republic of Georgia.

He says this as if it were a bad thing! Most of these descriptions are accurate, but Fly is misleading his readers on the last point. Even though Georgia is not formally a treaty ally, and is in no way a “key” ally despite its contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the amendment on Georgia that Paul blocked recently was not just a “statement of support.” This was the Rubio amendment that called on the Obama administration to push for a NATO MAP (Membership Action Plan) for Georgia. The purpose of this amendment was to advocate for a misguided and unwise policy of NATO expansion on behalf of a country that many European allies do not want to bring into the alliance, and Sen. Paul correctly opposes further NATO expansion.

More ludicrous is Fly’s claim that non-interventionists misunderstand the views of the Founding Fathers:

Also troubling is the fact that people who call themselves constitutionalists, such as the Pauls, argue that their foreign policy would be the type of foreign policy espoused by the Founders. They are obviously overlooking the inconvenient fact that there is no way that those men gathered in Philadelphia in 1776, who faced death if captured by the British, meant the words of the Declaration — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” — to apply to just those thirteen colonies at only that time. Anyone who doubts this should look no further than Thomas Paine’s comment at the time that “the cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.”

This is such a dim argument that it almost feels unfair to criticize it. Yes, signatories of the Declaration understood this statement to apply to all men. That has absolutely no bearing on how the United States government should conduct its foreign policy. Thomas Paine was not a signatory of the Declaration, and his political views were not all that representative of the Founding generation, which is why he later found himself imprisoned in France by the revolutionaries he had gone to support. What we know from the actual conduct of U.S. foreign policy from Washington through Monroe is that the United States defended Americans and American territory when they were attacked, but otherwise avoided entangling themselves in the internal affairs and conflicts of other states. The U.S. was a neutral power until 1917, and following independence the U.S. did not enter into any military alliances, permanent or otherwise. Fly and his colleagues repudiate that tradition, but for some reason they are intent on denying that they have done so.

Fly concludes:

The Republican party does not need these voters, many of whom are independents or Democrats unlikely to support the eventual nominee.

Fly need not worry. If the Republican nominee agrees with the ruinous foreign policy that he and his colleagues advocate, there is no danger that Ron Paul’s voters will support him.

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