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A Letter from a Parallel Universe

A story ostensibly on European views of Obama and Romney veers off into this digression: First, the ultralibertarian Tea Party movement is going to be a powerful force in the next Congress, putting a brake on new domestic initiatives as well as on any new intervention abroad. “Romney cannot ignore the Tea Party’s foreign policy,” […]

A story ostensibly on European views of Obama and Romney veers off into this digression:

First, the ultralibertarian Tea Party movement is going to be a powerful force in the next Congress, putting a brake on new domestic initiatives as well as on any new intervention abroad. “Romney cannot ignore the Tea Party’s foreign policy,” said Stephen J. Flanagan, a security expert at the independent Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The Tea Party is skeptical about foreign intervention and somewhat isolationist,” he added.

My usual objections to the meaningless word isolationist apply. Regardless, I’m not sure what this statement means. There are some Tea Party-aligned members of the House sympathetic to a more restrained foreign policy, and some have allied themselves with Rep. Paul since they arrived, but for every Justin Amash there are two or three much more like Adam Kinzinger. It can’t be emphasized enough: there is no single “Tea Party foreign policy,” and to the extent that Tea Partiers are simply very activist Republicans they tend to share the party’s prevailing assumptions on foreign policy.

There was considerable opposition in the House to the Libyan war, but the Republican leadership did as little as possible to protest the war’s illegality, and that was under a Democratic President. Unfortunately, past experience shows that most Republican members of Congress fall in line behind a Republican President on foreign policy questions, especially when it involves military action. If Tea Partiers rebelled against Romney over a military intervention, it would be an unusual departure from the normal deference that partisans give a president from their party and the excessive deference that Congress has been showing the executive in recent years.

The story goes on to speculate why Europeans might worry about this later:

The effect is that Europe, instead of worrying about U.S. interventionism, might soon become concerned about a revival in American isolationism. At the very least, no U.S. president will be willing to continue footing the bill for NATO’s military spending [bold mine-DL].

This is fascinating stuff. I have no idea why the reporter thinks any of this is true. There doesn’t appear to be a burgeoning anti-NATO funding caucus on the Republican side. If it happened, it would be a welcome development, but I’m not holding my breath. Romney claims to be very willing to keep supporting NATO, and it seems unlikely that there would be a concerted effort in the House to oppose him on this.

In reality, however, Europeans aren’t worried:

Curiously, Europe seems strangely unconcerned.

Well, it’s possible that Europeans may have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment. If Europeans aren’t concerned about phantom cuts to American support for NATO and mythical Republican opposition to future wars, I can’t say that I blame them. If Romney wins and follows through on his NATO rhetoric, there won’t be any additional burden-sharing. On the contrary, Romney’s position on U.S. military spending guarantees that European governments will be under no pressure to increase their military budgets.

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