What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Dan Drezner has written a lengthy and widely-linked piece for Foreign Affairs on what’s wrong with Republican foreign policy. There are a great many things wrong with Republican foreign policy, so this ought to be verdant territory for smart criticism. But Drezner’s piece seems designed to congratulate readers who think the right sucks generally without offering any particular solutions of note, and it engages in some particularly twisted logic at points.
Drezner’s problem is that Republican foreign policy has largely become bipartisan, so the critique is one that is more of tone than policy details: the grandstanding of the Romney campaign, its single-minded endorsement of unrestricted Pentagon spending, and the simplicity of its bullet point approach to issues. But these are critiques of a campaign and a candidate who wished to contrast without offending in every policy arena, not simply the foreign policy space – it’s unfair to assign this as due to an entire party’s approach to foreign policy.
Most winning presidential candidates are governors, and therefore not experienced in foreign policy – their background is in state and federal politics, not foreign – and most voters care little about foreign policy beyond the issue of security. This means foreign policy issues on the campaign trail are necessarily simplified to the point of uselessness, and using them as the basis for a sweeping critique strikes me as unfair. I personally doubt Mitt Romney’s foreign policy would’ve been all that different from Obama’s – a bit more defense spending, a tad tougher stance on China, a few less big speeches overseas, that’s about it. This is a sign of the victory of mainstream Republican approaches in both parties, not their diminishment.
I just don’t think Drezner has a clear idea what he’s advocating for. He is correct that there’s a steady decline in experienced leaders on the right with strong foreign policy resumes. But this is in part the natural outcome of being out of power. And is the Democratic advantage in this space really that great when the long-in-the-tooth John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Partition Joe are your potential leading policy figures in the second Obama term?
Drezner criticizes Republicans for too quickly favoring military solutions to global challenges, but then praises the last Republican president for his non-military foreign policy solutions. Did I miss the point where Republicans turned against PEPFAR? Drezner longs for the halcyon days of Bush 41 – but did George H.W.’s approach, which involved far different challenges, tilt all that much more toward non-military solutions than either of the last two presidents? What exactly has President Obama accomplished thus far which represents a non-military foreign policy success? Wasn’t the absence of a sufficient military presence in Libya in part the cause of Benghazi?
The need to seem like a cuddly and helpful superpower has to be balanced against the need to protect our people – whether at consulates and embassies or through drone-based terrorist-killing – and Obama’s approach in both arenas seems highly questionable. Drezner seems to believe that voters trust Obama on foreign policy because he’s got more Vulcans – this seems a silly assumption in an election where foreign policy barely registered, thanks not to Vulcans, but to the death of Osama bin Laden and more significant domestic concerns.
Drezner also critiques the push for democracy in the Middle East, a longer-term strategy which has been part of Republican policy priorities now for a longer period. I share many of his concerns in this arena. But you can’t simply disagree with democracy promotion without offering an alternative. Drezner undermines his argument by not just coming out and saying that he thinks the Republican Party ought to return to a doctrine of “keep the Saddams and Mubaraks in place, because Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are worse now than they were before”, the upshot of his approach. The problem is that this may no longer be an applicable strategy in an era of internet technology and rapid coordination among opposition groups. In such a new arena, where dictators are less stable and must engage in greater crackdowns on their citizenry in order to rule, it seems wiser for the United States to promote people from within, an approach which demands a great deal of care and is not the sort of thing to be discussed seriously in the context of a political campaign.
One last nit to pick: someone please explain to Drezner what the word “tactical” means. As far as I can tell, every instance he cites as a “tactical” decision is in reality an operational one.
This post was adapted from today's edition of The Transom, Ben Domenech's indispensable daily news round up and commentary email. Subscribe here.
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Feb '11
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Ben Domenech:
I personally doubt Mitt Romney’s foreign policy would’ve been all that different from Obama’s – a bit more defense spending, a tad tougher stance on China, a few less big speeches overseas, that’s about it.
Not from where we sit.
Aug '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
I still don't understand what a "strong foreign policy resume" could be. Other countries give your country what it wants because they fear or envy your country. It's nothing you do or say, nothing you can put on a resume. It's what your country has achieved, and not just this week - other countries assess your country's historical capacities, which had better include a well-established and unsurprising capacity for violence. Their assessment may be romantic, or steely, or a little of both, but however foolish it is, it won't get so foolish that they'd be swayed by you. Your charm, your bluster - these will be invisible to any foreigner whose IQ is higher than Joe Biden's. And that's a lot of foreigners.
May '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
The Left does promote an alternative to democracy promotion: nothing. There are convinced that any action on the part of the US in the Middle East is futile. The people there don't want democracy, but want be led by the rings in their noses. They are comfortable with the oppression that is Islam. Once the Left has convinced the American people of that - and they are well on their way - Israel will become all but cannon fodder along with any Christians left in the region. More Christians have been martyred in the 20th century than all centuries combined, and Muslims are the ones primarily responsible for the slaughter. Denial of freedom of religion is a denial of human rights. The Republican support for Israel and freedom of religion in the Middle East and North Africa must be unequivocal. What's wrong with the Republican foreign policy is that we don't acknowledge what truly is at stake if we withdraw from the world, particularly from the Middle East: the sustainment of western civilization.
Jul '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
The idiocy of Republican and now Democrat foreign policy over the past few decades has been the utterly asinine insistence on democratic elections in majority Muslim countries. It's simple math; when the majority of a culture has totalitarian impulses, it will vote accordingly when given democracy. That is why our insistence should be more strictly focused on liberty rather than democracy, which is no more than a means. The dictatorship of the Shah contained far more liberty in it than any freely elected government in Libya or Egypt today. And this would realistically translate into completely cutting off relations with any government that is going the Sharia route.
Another very popular policy position the Republicans would be wise to court right now is the cutting of ALL foreign aid. It is a disgrace that we send money to Egypt and Pakistan, and frankly silly that we give money to both tin pot dictatorships and first world countries. Why do we as Republicans oppose welfare at home but encourage dependency abroad in the form of global welfare?
Aug '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Quite a statement in the face of the facts, re: Armenian Genocide was the worst Muslim action against Christians , but the Nazi Holocaust killed 4 million Christians, Soviet Genocides over the years-30 million, mostly Orthodox peasants. The Muslims can't hold a candle to that, thankfully.
May '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Flownover- your only referring to the 20th century stats. Muslims have been persecuting and murdering Christians since Islam began.
May '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
*you're. Can't edit on my iPhone
May '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
flownover
Okay, finally got to the computer and found the article I was thinking of. According to the study it cites, "from AD 30-2000, 70 million Christians died as martyrs... 45 million in the 2oth century... (the stats) exclude those killed for national, ethnic or political reasons who just happened to be Christian..." Of the total 70 million, nearly 32 million were killed by atheists, 56 million by the state ruling power (obvious overlap with atheists), and 9 million by Muslims. I suppose you could slice and dice the data, and your numbers might not jibe with theirs. I'll concede that state-run persecution has dominated, but Muslims out-pace the murder of Christians more than any other religious group and remain the biggest threat to Christians all over the world. Christianity is at risk of going extinct in the Middle East. At the current rate, about 100,000 Christians a year are martyred. I'd call that cause for concern.
Aug '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
karen
of course, you're right, i just grabbed the 20th century thing you used.
collectivism wasn't brutish enough to last as long as islam.
in their dreams-------
they'll lose in the end. you can't be mean to somebody else's mom or sister for long.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Ben, it's a very important question you ask in the title of your posting.
Republican foreign policy is certainly in disarray strategically, tactically, and on ideological grounds. Probably this is due to the fact the Republican party has, in many ways, lost its sense of identity, if ever it really had one. Not a fair observation, I suppose, since the Republican party is based upon an organizing principle, not an ideological one.
Clearly, Mitt Romney's foreign policy speech at VMI last October hurt as well as helped his election chances--making it a wash politically. It was a speech that could have been written by John Bolton, and one that might as well have been posted at the Project for a New American Century.
I strongly disagree, at least on the broadest strategic levels, which after all is what an American President must focus upon.
First of all, HW's signature foreign policy issue was the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Yet, it was HW's multilateral approach, his attempt to make the US into a cuddly and helpful superpower which allowed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait to take the US and the World (minus the Middle East) by surprise.
Rather than get directly involved in the deteriorating Iraq-Kuwait crisis, HW deliberately left it to the Arab League to resolve Saddam's disputes.
After all, HW had already helped to create Saddam's crises. Through cooperation with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, oil prices had fallen to the lowest levels since 1974. This occurred at the end of the Iran-Iraq War when Saddam had enormous war debt and the Iraqi economy was shattered and nearly in ruins. Saddam knew that Iraq would collapse about his head if he didn't do something fast.
Mubarak, a good American puppet, led the council, stood firm against Saddam with support of the other members, but became so incensed by Saddam during the negotiations, he walked out of a critical council meeting and refused to participate further. Saudi Arabia stepped up to the plate and offered to pay off $9 billion of Saddam's $10 billion debt to Kuwait.
Edited on January 4, 2013 at 5:26amApr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
The thing is, cancellation of 90% of his debt with Kuwait wasn't the issue. Saddam needed oil revenues. The Iraqi delegation would not accept the Saudi offer. Baghdad wanted OPEC to sanction Kuwait for undercutting oil prices and to pull back their production quotas even further. He needed $50 barrels.
After that, the only man in the Arab League Council who still had a line of communication to Saddam was Yasser Arafat, of all people. Arafat made efforts to continue negotiations with Saddam on the Council's behalf, but it's obvious he'd sided with Saddam all along.
This is pretty much what happens when the US takes the multilateral approach: it ends up with a Yasser Arafat being your only hope at a peaceful solution.
War was imminent. But even Saddam wasn't crazy enough to launch an invasion without first consulting the First Estate. He summoned US attache April Glaspie to his palace and put the question to her--was Washington going to give him a green light or a red light?
She told him that Washington was remaining neutral on his dispute with Kuwait. It was an Arab problem, and the Arabs must solve it.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Sound familiar?
Well, you know what happened next. The invasion of Kuwait, and the American led UN coalition ousted Saddam from Kuwait. Then the UN, again led by the US, leveled the most severe and effective sanctions ever levied against a nation. Iraq's GDP overnight was reduced to 1/5 what it had been on the eve of the Kuwaiti Invasion.
The sanctions would remain in place for 11 years. Clinton gladly succeeded HW as leader of the sanctions, and used Iraq as an illustration of how tough he could be when necessary.
The UN put out a report in 1995 claiming as many as 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 had died as a result of the sanctions.
In 1996 Iran began fighting back against the sanctions by having its Saudi branch of Hizbullah bomb the barracks which housed US Air Force personnel enforcing the "No-Fly Zones" in Iraq.
A few months later a Saudi millionaire and jihad benefactor declared war against the US on behalf of Iraq.
World public opinion polls showing a dropping support/approval for the US began at that juncture--not after OIF.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
So, in reality, HW wasn't confronted with "far different challenges." Certainly, in many ways, history was repeating itself during the Arab uprisings during the early part of Obama's Administration--but instead of invasions, the world was faced with the instability of chaotic insurrections and revolution.
Democrats, in general, favor multilateralism. As you point out, and as I've specifically pointed out, Republicans, at least since HW, have also favored multilateralism.
Multilateralism doesn't work to the favor of the interests of the United States. Unilateralism has it's own big drawbacks.
And that's the real point.
You shouldn't campaign on what your specific foreign policies will be. For one thing, you're merely broadcasting to your enemies what to expect should you win, giving them ample opportunity to plan around it.
What the American people should be looking for is someone they know will always negotiate with the intent that America will come out the winner.
Unilaterally when necessary. Multilaterally when appropriate. But with pragmatism the guiding principle.
And Americans will expect an American President of the United States to understand he/she is ALWAYS negotiating from a position of strength. We are the First Estate.
May '10
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Neo, do you believe the Obama admin supports multilateralism? I think he'd prefer disengagement all together with regard to the Middle East. An ambassador's death was acceptable to Obama and to the voters that re-elected him. I think that isolationists, the pacifist /anti-war Left and those who support an end to Isreal have formed an alliance to leave the ME to its own devices. If the GOP supports action of any sort, what does it look like? Do we continue to support despots and puppet regimes? The Arab Awakening makes choosing and trusting allies even more complicated. Promoting democracy was a bit of a flop. Commit more military resources when we are spread so thin and public opinion is resistant to US use of force? And any GOP-led support of influence in the region is seen as economic opportunism by the Left. The GOP strategy should co-opt the Left's language of justice, specifically human rights. I can't understand how the Left sold the "healthcare is a human right" meme, but the GOP can't sell the actual defense of human rights. We don't need more foreign policy people, we need better PR guys.
Apr '11
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Israel P.
Ben Domenech:
I personally doubt Mitt Romney’s foreign policy would’ve been all that different from Obama’s – a bit more defense spending, a tad tougher stance on China, a few less big speeches overseas, that’s about it.
Not from where we sit. · 15 hours ago
Right, and on a whole range of other issues, too. Mitt strongly endorsed free trade and stood ready to push a number of FTAs; his foreign policy transition lead was to be Bob Zoellick, ex- US Trade Representative. US support for religious liberty abroad, US taxpayer funded abortions abroad, and similar issues where Obama stands opposed to American decency were to be fixed.
Support for Eastern Europe against Russia, closer cooperation with Japan, building pipelines into Canada.... there's an enormous range of issues on which there were sharp divides. Around half of the campaign site "issues" pages were on foreign policy, along with much of his book and a good number of keynote speeches.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Karen
I believe it does, yes. It is the core of Democrat foreign policy. Even the Jurassic Zbigniew Brzezinksi has become a strict doctrinaire multilateralist--and, after all, it was his unilateral decision which triggered the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. Now multilateralism is the universal doctrine of every Democrat.
This is especially easy to see since commencement of OIF; the ubiquitous criticism was "unilateralism."
Sure, I agree with your assessment on certain levels. But the fact of the matter is, Democrats are even more enthusiastic about economic sanctions than the Republicans--and the Republicans lean pretty far in that direction to begin with.
Sanctions are economic warfare. The wizards of smart believe that sanctions are an intelligent alternative to war, but post Cold War history definitively shows just the opposite is true.
Edited on January 5, 2013 at 6:10pmApr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Interesting question, of course. I think the Dubya's legacy pretty much buried that approach for the foreseeable future.
Personally, I've never accepted his enemies' definition of the so-called "Bush Doctrine." They would have us believe it was: "Yer either fur us, or again' us." However, I think it pretty plain the Bush Doctrine was actually "We Must Make the World Safe for Democracy."
It was his administration's efforts which changed and revolutionized the Mubarak regime. Under constant pressure from the US, Mubarak surprised the world by allowing multi-candidate elections in 2005. This same year, Israel shocked the world by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza. By 2008, Mubarak had even given up on his longterm plan of having his son Gamal succeed him as President-for-Life of Egypt. Had the new US administration followed through...well, "if only" is for children.
The actual Bush Doctrine (the invisible but out-there-in-plain-sight Bush Doctrine), showed the grand possibilities of Making the World Safe for Democracy. The lingering legacy might well preclude supporting dictatorships.
Edited on January 5, 2013 at 7:14pmApr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
For now.
The only insurrection the US should have supported was the Green Revolution in Iran.
Iran, after all, is the key to everything else in the Middle East. Pahlavi proved this by showing us what DIDN'T happen in the ME as long as he held power in Tehran.
When Supreme Leader Khamenei dies, then the whole order will change again. Khamenei was reportedly dying of cancer in 2009-2010 when the Green Revolution burst upon the stage. He evidently got better, and the Green Revolution was quelled, but even an Ayatollah succumbs eventually.
He represented a sea change from Khomeini, who, for instance, had ruled out nuclear weapons as being non-Islamic. As soon as Khamenei succeeded him in 1989, that all changed...as we all know too well.
Supporting democratic regimes may not prove a flop in the long run.
A democratic government requires a civil society to be successful. The construction of a civil society takes time.
Apr '12
Re: What's Wrong with Republican Foreign Policy?
Selling healthcare as a human right was the easiest thing in the world. I guarantee that every devout Christian and Jew, not just in the US, but the entire world would agree healthcare is a human right. If Yeshua didn't teach anything else, he taught that.
If you'd like, I could quote chapter and verse endlessly, from Mosche (Moses) to Yochanan (John) on the subject. We are to protect everyone, but especially the widows and orphans.
No civilized group of human beings in a life boat would argue against throwing out a floatation device to someone floundering in the water, would they?
No.
But there are logical and acceptable safeguards we can adhere to in order to prevent drowning people from swamping our boat.
The GOP's problem is the demagoguery, of course. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
As for selling defense of human rights as foreign policy, I think we hit the brick wall as soon as we deploy our military under that guise.