Greg Scoblete raises some important questions in his comments on Rand Paul’s foreign policy and my recent column. He questions Paul’s support for withdrawal from major international institutions:

It’s one thing to make the case to the American public that U.S. foreign policy is too meddlesome in other states’ business, too quick to reach for punitive sticks and too grandiose in scope and ambition. If that was Paul’s message, I suspect it would find a lot of takers [bold mine-DL]. But this is only a piece of what is a larger, more radical frontal assault against the post WWII institutions that, for better or for worse, the U.S. has worked to shape and lead to our general betterment. Some, like NATO, have arguably outlived their usefulness. Others, like the IMF and World Bank, likely need reforms. But a blanket rejection of U.S. participation in all of them just seems ill considered.

Each of these points needs to be taken one at a time. Simply as an electoral matter, emphasizing one’s opposition to U.S. meddling in other countries’ affairs, bashing punitive policies, and criticizing American ambitions abroad are exactly the kinds of things that Rand Paul’s father did on a regular basis, and it was a political loser with the Republican rank-and-file. It may be that there are a lot of people who would respond favorably to this message, but they are mostly not Republican primary voters and Rand Paul understood that he would have gotten nowhere if he emphasized these things.

Greg says that the major institutions are ones that the U.S. had a major role in creating “for better or worse,” and he is right. The easy answer is that Paul and many of his supporters usually think it was for worse. The creation of these institutions was part of the United States’ assumption of enormous responsibilities in the post-WWII world. We can argue over how important it was that the U.S. take up those responsibilities at that time, but I think Paul would object to continued membership in these organizations because of the very activist and interventionist role the United States has played abroad in order to fulfill its obligations to them. He might also object to continued membership on the grounds that these institutions no longer need U.S. participation to function, and that whatever extraordinary role the United States may have had to fill after WWII and during the Cold War is now outdated. The non-interventionist appeal that Greg finds reasonable is closely tied to the general aversion to involvement in international institutions.

One reason why pro-sovereignty conservatives dislike membership in these institutions is the perceived and real costs membership has imposed on the U.S. For those of us who usually emphasize the costs to other nations that U.S. interventionism imposes, this may seem a bit odd, but it is a way to talk about the same problem in a language that otherwise hawkishly-inclined Republicans will understand and accept. Over the last twenty years, the United States has gone to war or deployed American troops overseas numerous times, but many of these were officially done to fulfill obligations to the United Nations, enforce U.N. resolutions or maintain the “credibility” of NATO. Sometimes American interests were also arguably at stake (Korea), and other times they clearly were not (Kosovo, Iraq). If one begins with the assumption that the United States should only use its military in national defense and defense of American interests, this seems like an intolerable imposition and a waste of American resources and lives. It is partly because of the demands made on the U.S. military and the country in the name of belonging to these institutions that many pro-sovereignty conservatives would prefer not to belong. For these reasons, even though he is often arguing for the same things as other non-interventionists, Paul’s emphasis on U.S. sovereignty resonates with these conservatives in a way that attacking U.S. interventions directly would not.

The more involved answer is that we have to remember that Paul believes that the United States should avoid entangling and permanent alliances, and so he does not approve of our government ceding any authority to international bodies. Concerning the latter point, I assume he objects to this because he regards these bodies as both unnecessary and unaccountable to American citizens. One can debate their necessity, but the accountability argument is much stronger. In this respect Paul’s pro-sovereignty position is roughly similar to that of strong Euroskeptics in Britain in their attitudes towards the EU. To the extent that Paul and his supporters already regard the federal government as too powerful and believe power is too centralized in Washington, they are going to be even unhappier with more distantly-removed organizations over whose operations they have no meaningful say. There is an important democratic self-government element to this pro-sovereignty view.

Regarding the IMF and World Bank, Paul’s opposition to U.S. participation is even easier to understand and explain. Put simply, he doesn’t want the U.S. providing funding for lending to other governments, which is an extension of his general opposition to foreign aid. This position certainly has something going for it. It removes the U.S. from institutions responsible for a different kind of intrusive intervention in the affairs of other countries, and it would keep American funds from supporting a bankrupt model of development aid that has been as much of a burden to the recipient states as it has been a help and has arguably delayed and retarded economic innovation and growth in those countries. If one agrees with Easterly that “[t]he real Africa needs increased trade from the West more than it needs more aid handouts” and if one applies that lesson more broadly, Paul’s position on ending U.S. participation in these two institutions may sound radical, but it also would seem to make sense for both creditor and debtor nations.

Perhaps if Obama had questioned Turkey’s credentials earlier, his administration would not have found itself grappling this week with Turkey’s quisling deal in Tehran. It is way past time for Washington to yank Ankara’s license as regional broker, and stop reaching out and start standing up tall to Iran. ~Claudia Rosett

How would Washington go about “yanking” a license it has no power to grant or revoke? What can it possibly mean to say that the administration should “start standing up tall to Iran”? It has been pursuing the same futile and bankrupt Iran policy of confrontation and isolation as its predecessor, and all the while it has been accused of capitulating to Tehran. Even when it is slapping down the Turkish and Brazilian nuclear deal, the administration is supposedly responsible for Turkey’s pursuit of its own foreign policy goals, and all because it did not treat a Turkish ally as insultingly as Obama’s critics falsely claim he has treated many other allies. On one of the few occasions when the U.S. actually has tried to humiliate a long-standing ally by dismissing the deal Turkey helped broker, the administration critics who cannot stop talking about his alleged “snubs” of U.S. allies are finally pleased and wished he had treated Turkey as dismissively in the past.

Yes, of course, their previous outrage about the mistreatment of allies was mostly feigned and opportunistic, but that is not the main problem. More important than that, these critics are perfectly happy to demand that our government give our allies whatever it is their governments want and go along with their policies, no matter how unwise, provocative or counter-productive they are. Then, when one of our allies does something constructive and useful that could possibly facilitate an end to the impasse with Iran, these critics are among the first to complain about the ally’s treachery. Turkey’s improved relations with Syria and Iran provide the U.S. with an opportunity, not an obstacle. If Washington insists that states have to choose between good relations with their immediate neighbors or good relations with us, there may come a time when they do not choose to be on good terms with us.

Turkey’s “zero problems” approach to its neighbors is a perfectly normal one, and one that the administration should welcome. It is the sort of thing one would think Washington would want to encourage, but of course we know that when it comes to the Near East, the former Soviet Union or East Asia it seems as if it has been standing policy to support governments that are happy to perpetuate or create problems with their neighbors and to denounce governments that attempt to minimize or resolve them. American hawks have had the same negative reaction to the election of Ma in Taiwan, Hatoyama in Japan, Roh in South Korea, and Yanukovych in Ukraine, and will undoubtedly see whoever succeeds Saakashvili in Georgia in the same “quisling” terms. Wiser observers understand that Ma’s rapprochement with Beijing is a good development, not least because it reduces the likelihood of a conflict over Taiwan, and that the warming of relations between Kiev and Moscow removes an unnecessary irritant from U.S.-Russian relations.

What Rosett finds objectionable about Turkey’s behavior is not that it has become a quisling state, which is a deeply insulting and unjustified thing to say, but that it does not play the part of an obedient lackey and puppet. Our allies are not lackeys to be ordered about and told to keep quiet, and their loyalty is not something to be taken for granted and exploited without any recpicrocity. Turkey will be an increasingly independent and assertive actor in the Near East and elsewhere, and it is going to pursue its perceived national interests. The more that Americans define Turkey’s pursuit of its interests as inimical to our own, the worse relations with Turkey will get until at some point Turkey may go from being an independent-minded ally to a state aligned entirely with other powers.

The victory of Rand Paul in Tuesday’s Republican senatorial primary in Kentucky – with the strong support of the constitution-obsessed, small-government Tea Party movement – shows that Republicans are ready to offer the public a drastic reduction in the size of government. They offered this before, of course, in 1994, but ran aground on their own corruption and the public’s shallow understanding of what cutting government actually meant. ~Christopher Caldwell

It can hardly be a bad thing after the last decade of illegality to be more Constitution-obsessed, but leave that aside. Most Republicans today aren’t ready to propose a “drastic reduction.” At most, we can say that a majority of Republicans in Kentucky apparently favor this view. Given the tendency of the Kentucky electorate to elect Republicans to statewide office over the last two decades, almost any Republican nominee would be in a good position to win in the fall there. Throughout the Midwest and the old border states, the NRSC has mostly recruited bland, presumably electable candidates such as Mark Kirk, Dan Coats, Rob Portman, and Roy Blunt, and they have no intention of campaigning on a platform of drastic spending cuts.

That isn’t meant to take anything away from Rand Paul’s success so far or from the importance of his message, but it is important to distinguish between one candidate’s fiscal conservative message that is necessary and politically viable in a particular state and the national party’s message that is basically unserious on fiscal policy but unfortunately also more competitive nationwide. Most Republicans are the new champions of the entitlement status quo, and their motto seems to be “Medicare Forever!” They cannot flee from Paul Ryan’s budget proposal fast enough, because they are terrified of being tied to its proposed cuts.

So most Republican candidates aren’t proposing any significant cuts at all, because they do not want to jeopardize their chances of winning in a favorable election cycle. There will always be the usual noises about “waste, fraud and abuse” and earmarks, but these are irrelevant to the fiscal problems we face, and for the most part Republicans are relying on the public’s ignorance about the budget to make their irrelevant anti-earmark rhetoric sound important and credible. In other words, when presented with what they claim is an unprecedented favorable election year they are content to sit back, take no serious risks, and provide no real leadership. Republican overconfidence in their political fortunes might be less annoying if it were matched by a similar confidence in proposing a relevant agenda.

The GOP did not propose “drastic reduction” in government before the ’94 election, but they did take their victory that year as a mandate for at least some reduction in spending. They were undone partly by their own misreading of the public mood and their misinterpretation of the election result, and partly by their poor leadership that was frequently outmaneuvered by a savvier Democratic President. There was corruption in the Republican majority, but it did not become an obvious, major issue until the 2000s, and even then it didn’t cost them much until 2006. The public may have a shallow understanding of what is involved in cutting government spending (in part because most people vastly overestimate how much money is spent on foreign aid), but what the majority does seem to understand is that there are some kinds of spending that it does not want reduced at all. The same Medicare spending that leading Republicans now treat as sacrosanct and untouchable was one of these. For the sake of short-term positioning, the Republican absolute defense of Medicare, which is at the core of any push for health care repeal, has made it virtually impossible to make a credible argument for getting public debt under control.

Caldwell does have a more interesting take on Tuesday’s election results than most:

Tuesday’s elections hint at a darker and more destabilising outcome: a Republican party not quite strong enough to stop the president’s plans and a Democratic party too weak and unpopular to pay for them.

This is possible. The difficulty is that a real Republican austerity agenda designed to eliminate the debt would be hugely unpopular, and their rank-and-file would not tolerate the tax increases that would probably have to be part of any solution. Having relied heavily on emphasizing how the unpopularity of a measure justifies opposition to it, as they did throughout the health care debate, they are in a uniquely bad position to argue for unpopular but necessary proposals for eliminating debt.

The GOP expects to win by default and expects to be rewarded for opposing the stimulus and health care bills. On the whole, the party leadership does not offer any proposal for how to pay off the staggering debt we are accumulating, and as I already mentioned it distances itself from the few serious attempts to grapple with that problem. Misinterpreting their losses in ’06 and ’08, they have adopted an anti-spending posture without any real fiscal conservative substance. Having lost the public’s trust during their time in the majority largely for other reasons they still cannot face, Republicans have done nothing to win it back and have been counting on weakness in the economy and the normal midterm correction to do all of their work for them. Despite the poor economic conditions and general discontent, this is why they remain the more unpopular of the two parties. That may partially avoid the destabilizing future Caldwell describes. It suggests that the public can thoroughly dislike the Democrats in Congress and will still trust their party more when it comes time to vote.

I discuss Rand Paul’s foreign policy and national security views in my new column for The Week.

Speaking of Turkish foreign policy, Foreign Policy has a contribution from the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who explains the formal guiding principles that Turkey is following when conducting its relations with other states. Anyone interested in understanding what the Erdogan government was thinking as it pursued this nuclear deal with Iran should read the entire article. Most relevant was the following passage:

The third operative principle is proactive and pre-emptive peace diplomacy, which aims to take measures before crises emerge and escalate to a critical level. Turkey’s regional policy is based on security for all, high-level political dialogue, economic integration and interdependence, and multicultural coexistence.

As well as this one:

The fourth principle is adherence to a multi-dimensional foreign policy. Turkey’s relations with other global actors aim to be complementary, not in competition. Such a policy views Turkey’s strategic relationship with the United States through the two countries’ bilateral strategic ties and through NATO. It considers its EU membership process, its good neighborhood policy with Russia, and its synchronization policy in Eurasia as integral parts of a consistent policy that serves to complement each other. This means that good relations with Russia are not an alternative to relations with the EU. Nor is the model partnership with the United States a rival partnership against Russia.

Yes, Davutoglu is stating his government’s formal position and he is outlining principles that are not going to be, and probably cannot be, observed at all times, and we should all be appropriately skeptical that any government can maintain the balance necessary to sustain a policy that is both activist and, as he puts it, multi-dimensional. As we have seen over the last two years, Turkey’s efforts to engage in its “proactive and pre-emptive peace diplomacy” have irritated some of its close allies. Despite the hope that relations with Russia and the U.S. or the U.S. and Iran can be complementary, in practice Washington views improving Turkish relations with Iran as coming at the expense of U.S.-Turkish ties. This is largely a product of our flawed Iran policy, but it remains a difficult diplomatic problem for Turkey.

Even though Ankara may not intend for its “zero problems” model to be interpreteted as a tilt towards Russia and Iran and away from the U.S. and Europe, this is how many people in the West perceive it. The Western reaction to this nuclear deal is a case in point. It is not just that Turkey has irritated its Western allies by inserting itself into the process, but that they regard it as effectively having taking the Iranian “side.” These Westerners are mistaken to perceive Turkey as they do, but that doesn’t change the problem for Ankara that its intent of cultivating good relations with all of its neighbors and partners can be and will be misunderstood by its long-standing allies that have been accustomed to a reflexively loyal Turkey.

Will this hurt U.S. efforts down the road when, at some unforeseen moment, Washington needs Ankara or Brasilia? Perhaps. But that’s the point: A multi-polar world doesn’t guarantee a less divisive one where everyone gets along and hugs out their problems. Quite the contrary. ~Kevin Sullivan

The real difference between a multipolar world and a bipolar or unipolar one is that many more states are now able to pursue their interests openly and independently. While most states had to align themselves to varying degrees with one of the two superpowers during the Cold War, and most states accepted U.S. leadership in the ’90s even when it did not necessarily suit their particular interests, many of the rising powers no longer feel compelled to follow the lead of U.S. and other Western governments. There was a time when no Turkish civilian government would have risked being seen as antagonistic to Washington for any reason, and there was a time when Brazil was so preoccupied with its own internal problems that it would not have expended any energy on affairs on the other side of the world, but Washington can’t count on reflexive Turkish obedience and Brazilian passivity, just as it can’t count on automatic Japanese support or “slavish” British loyalty anymore.

The problem is that this is hardly the first time that Turkey in particular has been treated shabbily by the U.S. I make no excuses for Erdogan’s penchant for demagoguery and whipping up crowds against other countries, but it is important to understand that he is able to do this because Turks feel neglected and ill-used as allies and most of them recoil from U.S. and Israeli policies in their neighborhood. We exhausted whatever reserve of goodwill towards the U.S. existed in Turkey with the Iraq war, and our government has done precious little to repair the damage that has been done. In the meantime, Turkish politics has changed permanently and isn’t going to return to the Kemalist-dominated system of the past. This isn’t another lament about how Turkey has been “lost” to the West or has become too Islamist. Washington fails to appreciate how useful a more openly Islamist Turkish government can be in mediating disputes and negotiations for the U.S. and other allies, and it jeopardizes the long-term health of the alliance if it insists on making the AK government in Turkey into an obstacle to better relations. Instead of recognizing that Turkey is now ideally placed as a U.S. ally with credibility throughout the region, Washington has opted for dismissing and insulting them instead. And for what? A round of sanctions that most observers agree will do nothing to change Iranian behavior? This is folly.

On a related point, the British coalition government released its proposed agenda yesterday. The foreign affairs section is mosty pretty bland, but there were a few interesting items. In addition to promising a “frank” relationship with the United States, which is in keeping with the rhetoric of both Cameron and Clegg, the government there proposed working towards reform of the Security Council to bring many of the world’s other major powers in as permanent members. They mentioned India, Japan, Germany and Brazil as new permanent members, as well as proposing a seat to represent Africa. Sooner or later, this kind of reform at the U.N. will have to happen or the organization will lose a lot of whatever credibility it still has, as I discuss at greater length in my column this week. Just imagine how different and probably more constructive the debate over Iran sanctions would be if all of these permanent members were already on the Council.

This is not because an expanded Security Council wouldn’t mean less divisiveness and disagreement, and that is exactly why expanding the Council would be valuable, especially when it comes to contentious international issues such as Iran’s nuclear program. The P-5 are pretending that they embody some sort of global consensus, but they don’t and haven’t for decades. Even two of the permanent members don’t really care very much for this new round of sanctions, and until earlier this week Russia was actively encouraging Turkey and Brazil to follow through with this deal. Outside of these states, there are very few that actually care to impose sanctions on Iran. What annoys Washington about what Turkey and Brazil have done is that it exposes this phony consensus for what it is, and it shows that there are credible democratic governments that take a dramatically different view of the Iranian nuclear issue. This undermines the fiction that it is the “international community” punishing Iran, and it shows that Iran is not isolated in the world, and it also shows that democracies and Iran’s authoritarian government do not automatically have to be adversaries. This is dissatisfying to many people here in the U.S. who rely on one or more of these fictions to justify our approach towards Iran.

Update: I hadn’t read this until a few minutes ago, but Leslie Gelb’s column makes many of the same points and explains very well the rest of the world’s impatience with our Iranian nuclear obsession:

In the first place, many, if not most, nations around the world simply do not feel anywhere near as threatened by Iran (or North Korea for that matter) as do the United States, Western Europe, Israel and other American allies. In private, they lift their eyes toward the ceiling when the Americans and Israelis levitate about an Iranian nuclear weapon. They just don’t believe Tehran would be stupid or self-destructive enough to launch a nuclear attack. You can even include China in this group.

This is what I have been saying for years, but I do find it encouraging that this common sense observation is catching on.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture — a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement. ~Charles Krauthammer

This prompts a laugh from Greg Scoblete. It is admittedly pretty amusing that Krauthammer expects us to believe that Turkey and Brazil are continuing to pursue the increasingly independent foreign policies they have pursued for seven or eight years because of things Obama did or did not do. Had Obama taken a harder line with all authoritarian states, changed nothing from the practices of the Bush administration, pursued a purely confrontational approach with Iran, and given speeches celebrating American hegemony, Turkey and Brazil or some other interested rising powers would have taken the initiative to insert themselves into negotiations with Iran. These states have their own interests and agendas that they are going to pursue whether or not Washington approves of them, and they will pursue them regardless of how confrontational or accommodating any particular administration is.

Iran has many trading partners that are interested in improving their relations with Iran’s government, and much of the rest of the world does not believe Iran’s nuclear program is a major threat, so it was a matter of time before our obsession with this issue would generate dissatisfaction and action from other states. Had Obama continued every Bush policy and conducted himself in the same way, he would not have delayed this from happening, and instead might have made sure that it happened almost immediately after he took office. Hegemonists believe that an assertive, aggressive U.S. abroad helps to guarantee global stability and peace. Even though I think this is mistaken in important ways, there is an even greater flaw in hegemonists’ thinking, which is the assumption that U.S. allies and non-aligned states must see these things in more or less the same way that the hegemonists do. If Turkey and Brazil try to prevent Iran from being sanctioned, the only way hegemonists can see this is as an expression of anti-American rebellion. It does not seem to occur to them that Turkey and Brazil want to preserve peace and stability in the region and simply have no confidence in going the sanctions route, which they and everyone else have seen fail time after time in numerous cases.

Turkey has been building strong ties with Iran for several years, and this rapprochement predates Obama’s time in office. Turkey has important energy interests in Iran, and wants to find a way to resolve the nuclear issue without sanctions. The Turkish government was fiercely opposed to the Iraq war, and they are likewise opposed to any confrontational policy towards Iran that could lead to another conflict. They obviously have a vested interest in stability on their borders. The Iraq war was responsible for alienating a lot of Turks from the United States and allowing Erdogan to pursue a more assertive and independent course. Brazil has been becoming a regional power with its own foreign policy agenda for some time, and Brazil is becoming more active internationally now that Lula is nearing the end of his term. Riding high at home, Lula has been taking steps in recent years to raise Brazils’ profile internationally, and this nuclear deal with Iran is just one of those efforts. Turkey and Brazil are emerging as significant powers in their own right, which would have happened regardless of what any administration following Bush did or didn’t do. Washington needs to learn how to cope with this without slapping them down and trying to humiliate them.

But these days, the political center is a feckless shell. It has no governing philosophy. Its paragons seem from the outside opportunistic, like Arlen Specter, or caught in some wishy-washy middle, like Blanche Lincoln. The right and left have organized, but the center hasn’t bothered to. The right and left have media outlets and think tanks, but the centrists are content to complain about polarization and go home. By their genteel passivity, moderates have ceded power to the extremes. ~David Brooks

This is so misleading and offensive that I don’t quite know where to begin. There is nothing more precious and absurd than the “centrist” pretense that the political extremes dominate our politics. Please, tell progressives that they dictate the content of health care and environment policy, and tell Rand Paul’s supporters that they are the ones who influence monetary, fiscal and foreign policies. We could use a good laugh. I would expect the people with almost all of the influence and power in this country to mock and dismiss their critics as “fringe” and “kooks” and “extremists,” but it is incredible that anyone in a position of influence can seriously argue that these are the people with the political clout and importance.

This nonsense is particularly rich coming from someone who has regularly lauded virtually every establishment initiative, yearned for a “McCain-Lieberman Party” to embody fully the corrupt, warmongering, corporatist policies that “centrists” favor, and denounced the establishment’s opponents as “nihilists.” Two-thirds of Congress backed the financial sector bailout that both progressives and conservatives hated, and most mainstream media outlets and prominent pundits, including Brooks, rallied behind the forces of socialized risk and the too-big-to-fail rationale for rewarding catastrophic failure. The vote to invade Iraq was even more lopsided, and the opponents of the invasion were dismissed as lunatics and apologists for despotism or otherwise ignored. The political center has been making policy and wrecking this country for at least the last decade. Would that it had become nothing more than a “feckless shell”! Perhaps then our country would not have suffered from so many disastrous, unwise decisions.

I’m linking to this a bit late, but here is my column for The Week on Bakiyev’s overthrow in Kyrgyzstan.