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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Reform Conservatives and Foreign Policy (III)

Most reform conservatives are content to leave the foreign policy status quo in their party as it is.

Last year Justin Logan identified foreign policy as reform conservatism’s “blind spot,” and the first attempt to define a specifically “reform conservative” foreign policy just confirms how true that is. Even when someone sets out to create a “reform conservative” foreign policy agenda, it turns out to be indistinguishable from current Republican foreign policy, and includes absolutely nothing new or interesting. When I first remarked on the absence of foreign policy reform from the reformists’ agenda, I explained the omission this way:

Put simply, most reform conservatives don’t care about foreign policy reform because they don’t think there is anything seriously wrong with Republican foreign policy.

A reform conservative might object that Dueck and Zakheim are just claiming the mantle of reform without justification, and that would be fair. Then again, it is hard to think of very many people on the right that identify with “reform conservatism” that would find anything substantively wrong with the complete absence of new policy ideas in this so-called “reform” proposal. So it would seem that the core of the original criticism was right all along, which is that most reform conservatives are content to see the foreign policy status quo in their party remain as it is.

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