Here’s the video of Senator Paul’s speech this morning. The senator calls for a more cautious direction for U.S. foreign policy—he identifies himself as realist rather than a neoconservative or an isolationist—and cites George Kennan’s containment doctrine as an inspiration for his vision.
Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy Speech at Heritage
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5 Responses to Rand Paul’s Foreign Policy Speech at Heritage
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Clint says:
Senator Rand Paul,
“In a recent Senate resolution, the bipartisan consensus stated that we will never contain Iran should they get a nuclear weapon. In the debate, I made the point that while I think it unwise to declare that we will contain a nuclear Iran, I think it equally unwise to say we will never contain a nuclear Iran. War should never be our only option. “ -
Dan Phillips says:
One school of less interventionist (I’ll call it that for the moment) thought seems to believe that interventionism is dominant and needs to be countered with an alternative that is less of a radical departure and can be sold to the base and the masses. Another school of non-interventionist thought believes that interventionism must be radically challenged at the root (at the level of its assumptions). Rand Paul is doing the former. His father did the latter. Rand’s strategy could result in a less bellicose foreign policy, but it will never be intellectually or emotionally satisfying to the hard core fans of his father’s foreign policy.
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Too light on details. How would anything similar to containment work in a modern setting? How interventionist would we have to be to confront threats that cross borders and cultures, but without seeming like rampant invaders?
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Rand missed an opportunity really to spell out why the large size of the U.S. government is directly related to the size of America’s commitments around world and the size of the national-security state. He needed to libertarians and conservatives cannot have a small domestic state and world empire. It doesn’t work that way. It’s easy for Obama (or the Clintons for that matter) to preside over such a state, regardless of what they say on the campaign trail, because they believes in big government.
How does he feel about Hagel calling Iran containment?