A candidate who can bridge the gap between social conservatives, anti-tax conservatives and foreign policy conservatives is one who is aiming for more than just the 30 percent of the vote in Iowa that might get him to the next level in the primary gauntlet. Pawlenty, who has also made strong and informed statements on foreign policy [bold mine-DL], seems to be trying to reunite the disparate wings of his party. ~Jonathan Tobin

Pawlenty does like strong statements on foreign policy, but I’m not sure that many would call them informed. Leaving aside some of his goofier mistakes in recent weeks, Pawlenty’s “informed” comments have usually amounted to recycling boilerplate or thoughtlessly repeating hawkish complaints about Obama. Here is one example of Pawlenty’s “informed” commentary:

My basic perspective on foreign policy – this is oversimplifying it – but in the interest of time this is it: You may have learned it on the playground, you may have learned in it business, sports. You may have learned it in some other walk of life, but it’s always true. If you’re dealing with thugs and bullies, they understand strength. They don’t respect weakness.

At least he realized that this oversimplifies things! Previously, Pawlenty has relied on one of the oldest, most overused hawkish accusations available when he made the charge of appeasement against Obama. He also managed to get some basic facts wrong in the process:

Not only did the president abandon missile defense, but he is opening negotiations with Iran and North Korea. The lessons of history are clear: Appeasement and weakness did not stop the Nazis, appeasement did not stop the Soviets, and appeasement did not stop the terrorists.

Of course, Obama didn’t abandon missile defense. This is why the Russians are still complaining about the “Phased Adaptive” system that the administration has been supporting with the help of some eastern European governments. The claim that the administration gave up on missile defense in Europe is one of the earliest, most egregious lies Republicans have been circulating about the “reset” policy since it began in 2009, and it is one they kept relying on in their attempt to derail the arms reduction treaty. As I observed at the time when he first used this line, there was never any actual attempt to appease the Soviets or jihadists. That didn’t prevent people from recklessly flinging the charge of appeasement at their opponents, but the appeasement never took place. This just underscores how uninformed Pawlenty’s views really are.

Logevall and Osgood cited this quote from Pawlenty’s speech in their World Affairs Journal article as an example of the mindless use of the example of Munich to justify opposing all diplomatic engagement. They wrote this later in their article:

As the current debate over U.S. foreign policy again turns on the lessons of the past, Americans would do well to take a closer look at the country’s long wrestling match with Munich’s ghost. Such an examination would show, first, that “Munich” has retained its power in American political discourse for more than seventy years largely because of electoral calculations. Second, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, the success or failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s has to a great extent hinged on the willingness of presidents to withstand the inevitable charges of appeasement that accompany any decision to negotiate with hostile powers, and to pursue the nation’s interests through diplomacy. Sometimes these negotiating efforts failed; sometimes the successes proved marginal. But those presidents who challenged the tyranny of “Munich” produced some of the most important breakthroughs in American diplomacy; those who didn’t begat some of the nation’s most enduring tragedies.

Pawlenty is someone who seems to be reflexively opposed to diplomacy and engagement. He generically extols the virtues of national strength and decries appeasement, and he doesn’t possess much understanding of the rest of the world. He is a living embodiment of hawkish ignorance, but he is a “serious” contender for the nomination and so we are told that he holds informed views on the subject.