Why Foreign Policy Matters Most
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I’m often asked, “Jack, why do you talk about foreign policy so much?” That’s simple—because foreign policy is unquestionably the most significant divide on the American Right. In fact, until mainstream conservatives rethink this issue, any desire for smaller government will continue to be in vain.
Recent political history highlights this constant obstacle. In the 2008 presidential election, how could so many conservatives hold their noses to vote for John McCain? That’s easy—despite McCain’s sponsorship of amnesty for illegal aliens, enacting campaign finance reform, his support for TARP and virtually all of George W. Bush’s big government agenda, the senator was still seen as “strong” on national defense. How could so many conservatives ignore Ron Paul during the Republican primaries, whose conservative platform was arguably purer than that of any Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater? That’s easy too—by opposing the Iraq war, the congressman was viewed by his party as being “weak” on national defense. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, hawkish liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman was given a prime time speaking role and Paul wasn’t allowed inside the building. Talk host Sean Hannity regularly referred to Lieberman as his “favorite Democrat,” but usually referred to Paul begrudgingly and disparagingly, if at all.
But this once rigidly enforced division has since become blurred, not-so-coincidentally as Obama continues to pick up where Bush left off. First, Paul’s profile and influence has risen significantly since 2008, within the GOP and beyond. Obama’s exorbitant spending has helped shift rank-and-file Republicans’ focus from war-at-all-costs to cost-cutting, something reflected most explicitly by the Tea Party. Popular mainstream conservative pundits like George Will and Tony Blankley now openly question the wisdom of carrying on in Afghanistan. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele dared to challenge Obama’s “land war” in Afghanistan, the pro-war, any war hardliners who rallied around Bush and McCain—from neoconservative pundits like Bill Kristol to their politician advocates like Senator Lindsey Graham—publicly excoriated the RNC head. Popular conservative pundit Ann Coulter not only defended Steele but harshly attacked Kristol and the neoconservative agenda of “permanent war.”
Praising Coulter, MSNBC conservative talk host Joe Scarborough noted:
“When Ann Coulter comes out criticizing Republican foreign policy… you know a real debate’s about to begin in the Republican Party. The party has been the party of endless wars, now, for the last five, six, seven years, with George W. Bush promising to export democracy across the globe… You know for too long you’ve had John McCain, and you’ve had Bill Kristol, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman define what it meant to be a Republican when it came to foreign policy, when in fact the Republican Party historically has usually been for restraint, accused of being ‘isolationists’ in the past, now it seems like a small group of people want to fight every war in every corner of the planet and it’s just not good for the party.”
The MSNBC host’s assessment is a good synopsis of the foreign policy insanity that has long handicapped any serious chance of conservatism taking root within the GOP, something the “small group of people,” or neoconservatives, that Scarborough notes, have always known well—which is precisely why they worked so hard to redefine conservatism as support for perpetual war. If during the Dubya years, “conservatism” meant support for endless global military adventures then the expansion of government power and spending necessary to sustain such a project was justified in the minds of right-wingers, and usually on “patriotic” grounds. Does this not aptly describe the last Republican administration and it’s almost singular appeal to conservatives? This narrative was also supposed to carry McCain with GOP voters in 2008, who had planned to run primarily on a “national defense” platform until the economy dictated otherwise.
To lose this issue, or to give any ground whatsoever to foreign policy dissenters on the Right, is exactly what the old Republican guard fears most—and it is also the issue which prevents the GOP from becoming a conservative party in any substantive manner. This is true, not only from an economic and size of government standpoint, but in terms of actual defense and national safety, as so many on the Right continue to ignore the overwhelming evidence that an Islamic threat exists primarily and precisely because of what we do around the world, not “who” we are, or simply what we believe. How many Americans today honestly believe Afghan resisters fight back simply because they hate our “freedom?” How many Americans honestly believe that us fighting them “over there” does anything to prevent terrorists’ ability to strike “over here,” as evidenced by the occasional car or shoe bombers?
Ex-CIA specialist Philip Giraldi notes, “(Tea Partiers) fail to understand that it is precisely the interventionist defense and foreign policies that are driving the bad things they see in government.” Indeed, and as Bush and his wars doubled the size of government, Obama now triples it in the same manner. When it comes to national safety, sound economics and limited government principles, the Republican Party has enthusiastically supported a foreign policy antithetical to each, and some now expect the Right to mindlessly continue supporting Obama’s similar policies. This issue has prevented the advancement of genuine conservatism more than any other and that some prominent figures on the Right are finally beginning to question it is encouraging. More must join them.
Foreign Policy is always a sign of a presidency that has failed and incompetent domestic policy. Why? All the recipients are foreign. Therefore any success is gratitude and positive spin and anything negative is just dismissed as the fault of the recipients which we were charitably trying to help.
We cannot maintain the divide that republicans can support one type of big government (big foreign war, big military, big foreign commitments etc) while the democrats merely support another type of big government.
Though governments rarely devolve and dismantle their strong central governments for more decentralization.
Can you imagine devolving/dismantling national chain stores back into local stores that did not have stores outside their city or metro area?
Yet for the US and Europe to survive this is exactly what must be done. The good old fashioned nationalism that existed prior to WWII (pre-globalism) needs to be brought back. If Japan and South Korea are not worried about Taiwan and Chinese militarism enough to have budgets and mechanisms to defend themselves then neither should the US. If Europe doesnt want to have the budgets and the mechanisms to defend itself then the US doesnt need to be an active member of NATO.
Where should the US be? It should be re-entering a period of global territorial expansion replacing immigration with statehood for Mexico, Central America and an EU confederacy for Canada and South America. Close the borders to immigration unless they are a state.
The republican war agenda is even more expensive than the democrats socialism . We get nothing from war accept destrucktion . We could have half of the defence expences and still not be in danger of invasion
I think Ron Paul was allowed at the RNC convention, actually. But he could only go with an escort or something, which is insulting. but good article.
[...] Why Foreign Policy Matters Most Submitted by Anthony Gregory on Wed, 2010-07-21 03:00 in War and Peace Why Foreign Policy Matters Most [...]
There will be no change in the foreign policy of america as the bureaucrats sitting in whitehouse and Pentagone are unable to change their mind set. The mind set of american planners is to occupy all the resources of the world by decieving and wars and wars. The americans can,t survive with their huge debt and Muslims are no more ready to pay. They are looking on Indians they are the same as Jews. They will suck the blood of americans as Jews are doing.
Back in 2001 while the neos were whipping up war hysteria you paleos were invisible. Did you think you had something to lose if you spoke up? Were you reluctant to openly oppose a popular Republican and nominally “conservative” Administration? Were you, yourselves, taken in by the distorted “intelligence” used to justify the subsequent wars? What took you so long?
Craig, there was no shortage of paleos in 2001 who were outspoken against the war. I was one of them, http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy20.html. The American Conservative was founded in 2002 in part because paleos were deprived of print outlets in which they could express their views.
Come on Mr. Busse, it’s 2010, not 2001. You sound like the Dems blaming the state of the nation on the Bush administration. It may be true, but it’s time to move on.
We’ve got to find individuals who will work to end this foreign policy madness. This is difficult, because it’s obvious that the Dems are just as wedded to the warfare state as the GOP. Hopefully Mr. Hunter is correct and attitudes are changing.
In 2001 virtually the entire nation wanted war, having just seen thousands of its civilians slaughtered by a private band of brigands who, though representing no people directly (and thus not responsible for cleaning up the mess they caused), unilaterally committed an act of war that others who had no say, either directly or indirectly, would pay for. Afghanistan’s government would not render up the perpetrators, which represented implied support of the attack and thus opened them up to invasion. What nation in history takes something like 9/11 as an occasion for genuflection on its own sins, however real? I remember a lot of people being quite bewildered and scared at the time, as well as angry–we did not know who had done these things, or whether we would be attacked again, even perhaps on a regular basis. You didn’t have to be a fire-breathing imperialist to feel such things, or think that America’s conduct abroad was pristine to feel that the people least responsible for such conduct were suffering the most for it. My impression at the time was that Bush was actually trying to keep the genie in the bottle, so to speak–many if not most people expected a full declaration of war by Congress, the reinstitution of the draft, possible closing of the borders, and the possible use of nuclear weapons. We were quite lucky this did not happen in the 1980′s, for the immediate suspicion would have been placed on the Soviet Union for the attacks; in fact, the main reason we have had such a presence in the Middle East for fifty years and more was to prevent the Russian hegemon from controlling the petroleum supplies there and using that to overwhelm resistance to them from the West.
If we have been profligate, arrogant, and destructive, we are or soon will be paying the price for that now. We cannot give back the lives we took in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else in war, and obviously profit as well as higher motives were involved in what we did. I don’t particularly blame certain nations from hating us, but I do think we have not been as harsh as we could have been nor do I think we would have been as worse as the Soviets or the Chinese, who would have been just as harsh and probably worse had they dominated the region. If America leaves the Middle East, I do not assume and nor should anyone else that the rest of the world will leave those countries in peace as long as they have oil that everyone else needs under their feet.
I do think, however, we will leave–because we will no longer be able to afford it, and because overreliance on oil is skewing political and economic reality to the point where we are becoming exhausted with ourselves. But paleoconservatives must do more to outline what a transition away from this situation should look like–we cannot go “cold turkey” off of Middle Eastern oil or even leave the region without making some provision for how our economy will function or dealing with nations which will fill the power vacuum we leave. Britain had the advantage in the 1940′s of having us to fill their role; who do we have? How do we come home?
“The Revolution” by Ron Paul, and Buchanan’s book about WWII both illustrate the negative effects of an interventionist foreign policy. The evils of the Soviet Union and the Iranian Revolution both resulted from or were at the very least encouraged by the interventionist actions of the West. Who’s to say the results of non-involvement would have been worse.
It’s time to break the cycle of an interventionist foreign policy. The US needs to stop interfering with other nations. We need to establish a strong defense and only use it to retaliate if we are attacked We need to disengage militarily from the rest of the world. It’s time limit foreign entanglements. It may seem counter intuitive, but in the long run we can reduce our defense expenditures and stop antagonizing the rest of the world. We should lead by example and not by force.
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Foreign policy does and should matter most to conservatives, but unfortunately the creator of this piece does not understand what real conservative foreign policy is all about. America is swimming in a see of terrorism and if we do not stand up and take the fight to the terrorists over there, we won’t even be able to have the debate about small government versus big government over here. The wars are also providing a lot of people with jobs and giving the economy a much needed boost, if these wars end the economy will collapse.
Just how many wars do you want Nate? justifying wars as creating employment …well. You could justify anything with that. I’m with Ron Paul and the founders of the Republic on this. these wars are not making us safer and they sure arn’t making Usrael safer either. Someday something awful will happens and we’ll really find out the true cost of war the hard way. We had these wars for many years before W drove the econmy into the ditch … Maybe spending the money at home wil be more stimulating than spending it in Iraq?
CDK,
I completely understand the emotional response that you described on and after 9/11. No question that we needed to ‘do something.’ Indeed, I can personally remember the utter disdain I felt upon reading about some event or story not long after 9/11 asking “why did they attack us?” At the time, I didn’t care and thought it was a waste to even contemplate such things. I naturally assumed our foreign policy had no connection with these barbaric attacks.
Thanks to having my eyes opened with what I’ve learned in the pages of American Conservative, Antiwar.com, Cato, etc., I know that, while my emotions were justified, our unfocused GWOT response is neither justified nor productive.
“But paleoconservatives must do more to outline what a transition away from this situation should look like–we cannot go “cold turkey” off of Middle Eastern oil or even leave the region without making some provision for how our economy will function or dealing with nations which will fill the power vacuum we leave.”
This is a common misunderstanding. But we don’t need to ‘be there’ to have them sell us oil, anymore than we need to have troops stationed in China to have them sell us computers or cell phones. Japan imports 90% of their oil from the region, yet Japan doesn’t have warships cruising the Persian Gulf. They sell us oil, not because they like us, but because it is profitable for them to do so.
For more detail: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2007/nov/05/00006/
Peace be with you.
Well said Mr. cfountain72. As you know, Cesar Chavez in Venezuela sells us oil even though he hates our guts.