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Republicans and Foreign Policy Restraint

There is a peace constituency in the GOP.

Noah Millman makes some bleak observations about the electorate and foreign policy:

Meanwhile, I increasingly suspect that there is no actual peace constituency in the Republican party, but rather a below-the-surface unease about the kinds of people who are making decisions about war and peace for our country. And part of the price of admission to proving you are the right kind of person to trust with our national security is believing in American exceptionalism and standing with our allies and all of that – that is to say: speaking the language of the hawks.

Millman could be right about this, but I don’t think that’s true. The peace constituency in the GOP is obviously not a majority of the party’s supporters, but it exists and existed even during the Bush years. At least a fifth to a quarter of Republicans were against the Iraq war from fairly early on, and by last year only 58% of Republicans were willing to say that invading had been the right decision. That number is appallingly high, but it continues to drop as the failure of the Iraq war becomes harder for its former supporters to deny. That doesn’t make for a huge Republican constituency against unnecessary wars, and so far it doesn’t have many people to represent it, but it’s there all the same. I also suspect that there is much more support for foreign policy restraint among Republicans than there would be for any particular “peace candidate.” There is no great appetite among Republicans (or any other Americans) for prolonged nation-building missions, perpetual war, or the constant meddling in virtually every crisis that hegemonists insist on, but that is what their party leaders keep backing at every opportunity.

When Republican voters are consistently presented with arguments that show that our many wars of choice have been and continue to be unnecessary for U.S. security, we may find that there are many fewer hawks among than anyone supposes. One problem is that there is almost no one making those arguments to Republican voters, and those that do are heavily outnumbered among elected officials and conservative pundits. Almost all movement and party elites insist on knee-jerk hawkishness as the default and only appropriate view, so that is the view that most Republicans encounter on a regular basis. Until these voters are regularly presented with a clear alternative to what their leaders have been offering them, the hawks will continue to drive the debate.

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