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A Teachable Moment for Rand Paul?
We now have on our hands Barack Obama’s War, for our latest Middle Eastern war belongs entirely to him. And someone — let it be me! — should alert Sen. Rand Paul to this teachable moment, for Obama’s War (which Rand Paul supports) was brought on by the very policy of non-intervention that he, his father, and the Cato Institute all championed. As Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has testified in word and deed, there is essentially no difference on foreign affairs between left-wing Democratics and arch-libertarians who sometimes vote Republican.
This war might have been avoided. Had Obama taken the trouble to arrange for a few thousand American soldiers to remain in Iraq — as he easily could have — the Iraqi’s coalition government between Shia, Sunni, and Kurd would have held, despite Maliki’s perfidy. That, in turn, would have prevented al-Qaeda’s reemergence in the Sunni-dominated provinces of Iraq. Moreover, ISIS would not be in control of great swathes of Syria had the president followed the advice of his advisors and allies and backed the secular-minded opposition to Bashar al-Assad from the start.
If a statesman wants to protect the interests of his country and minimize loss of life on the part of his compatriots, he needs to do what he can to shape the international environment. For this purpose, the doctrinaire non-interventionism of the arch-libertarians is as foolish as the doctrinaire interventionism of the Wilsonian internationalists. Just as we cannot police the whole world — and certainly should not attempt to do so — we cannot afford to let things spin out of control. Both the progressive internationalist and the libertarian isolationist philosophies are pipe dreams. What is required is, instead, a prudent patriotism: a focus on the interest and security of our own country, informed by foresight and a knowledge of the ways of the world.
We cannot afford to avert our gaze. Given our size and power, the character of our economy, and the propensity for thugs of one sort or another to take over large parts of the globe, we will find ourselves involved in fights in far-away countries of which we know little. The British and the French had learned this the hard way by 1940, but time has passed and memory fades.
By the same token, however, it is not true that every fight should be ours. Only prudence can distinguish between struggles that should concern us from those we should ignore; hard-and-fast, utopian doctrines can never be a substitute for discernment and judgment. Indeed, embracing such doctrines rules out discernment and judgment. No one should be a categoricial interventionist or a non-interventionist.
If Rand Paul really wants to be President of the United States — as, I think, he does — he has to jettison the doctrinaire mindset of his father, who was only ever interested in stirring the pot. He has to remove the ideological blinders crafted by the arch-libertarians, study the actual history of international relations and great-power politics, and ponder the dictates of prudence, the limits of our resources, and the means of leverage at our disposal. In our system of government, the chief task of the executive is to defend the Constitution, the country, its way of life, and its interests to the very best of his abilities. A President who fails to take that task seriously and to address it with vigor and dispatch is guilty of malfeasance, as is the present occupant of the office.
I should say a final word about the scope of our interests. There is an international order of sorts, and it is now — and always will be — fragile. Though we did not create it on our own, we have been its chief proponent for the last 70 years and remain its mainstay. If we depart the scene, the order loses its guarantor and anarchy returns. We are, as Bill Clinton once observed, indispensable.
This international order has served us well. The trading regime we fostered and the freedom of the seas that we defended have made us (and most of our allies) wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of anyone who lived before the 1950s. The structures and practices we encouraged in Western Europe turned Germany and France into allies, brought an end to the great European wars that had proved our bane, and prepared the way for the collapse of communism and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
This achievement cost us time, patience, and treasure, and there were lives sacrificed. But they were as nothing when compared to the lives and treasure we spent in the Second World War, and they were insignificant when measured against what we gained by them. I cannot think of any period in human history in which a great power was as successful in shaping its external environment as we were in this period.
Think about it. We engaged in a long, twilight struggle with a rival coalition. That struggle went on for almost half a century, but ended without a major war and in a complete total victory for our side. Even when we found ourselves involved in skirmishes like the Korean and Vietnam wars — and that is what they were when viewed in comparison with our great wars — we lost fewer men each year on the battlefield than we sacrificed for the sake of sustaining commerce and communication on our highways. This epoch was our finest hour.
Now that international order — and, like it or not, our prosperity and our security — is endangered: in Europe by a revanchist, quasi-fascist power dismembering its neighbors with impunity; in the South China Sea by another quasi-fascist power trying to construct a new regional order modeled on Japan’s Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere; and in the Middle East by a quasi-fascist religious movement redrawing boundaries and massacring religious minorities.
Whatever wishful thinking the neo-isolationists of the Right and Left may entertain, these are challenges that cannot be ignored. The trick is to confront them in a prudent manner and at acceptable cost; the devil is, as always, in the details.
With regard to the first challenge, we should quietly introduce tactical nuclear weapons into the Baltic States and Poland in order to convey our resolve to Vladimir Putin and NATO. Then, we should join with those allies in using the levers at our disposal to bring down the Russian economy.
With regard to the second challenge — the most important, to my mind — we should quietly forge an alliance of Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and India to contain the Chinese colossus while making it clear that China remains welcome within the existing international trading regime. Put bluntly, the Chinese should be made to choose between isolation and prosperity.
The third of these challenges is a much tougher nut to crack, thanks to Barack Obama’s fecklessness and irresponsibility. We must not lose sight that Iran, with its nuclear ambitions, is a far greater threat than ISIS is ever apt to become. Eliminating the latter without strengthening the former should be our aim. But that is easier said than done. We would have a freer hand were we to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities at the outset.
To date, there is no sign that Rand Paul will ever be capable of assuming the responsibilities attendant on the presidency. If he cares for this country — as, I suspect, he does — and if he is as ambitious as he seems to be, he should set aside those ambitions for a while and devote himself to the study of international affairs. I would suggest that he begin by studying Thucydides (I recommend, for its maps, the The Landmark Thucydides), and then take the time to read both volumes of Winston Churchill’s Marlborough: His Life and Times with attention and care.
They say that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, and that was surely the case for Ron Paul. But his son? I have my doubts: catch him off guard, and you hear the accents of the old man, and incorrigible ignorance and folly may well be his inheritance. But you never know. He may be a fool, but he is not without intelligence. Then, again, his father is quick-witted as well, and that never got in the way of his lunacy.
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Published in General
Appreciable harm to our throats.
In fairness to Obama, it’s not as if the Iraqis themselves were begging us to stay. They should have — and their failure to do so doesn’t obviate Obama of his error — but they didn’t. They, he, and the American people all messed it up.
That’s why I gave up shaving.
I agree everyone involved messed it up. Here’s a real thigh-slapper from The New York Times in late 2011 (emphasis added):
I will be happy (though paranoid) each day I continue to be wrong, but I fear more attacks are coming.
Even if they are, it’s not rational to be scared of them. (You’re still allowed to be scared.) But you’re not scared of dying in an accident when you drive to the store, and that’s an infinitely bigger threat.
In fairness to Obama, it’s not as if the Iraqis themselves were begging us to stay. They should have — and their failure to do so doesn’t obviate Obama of his error – but they didn’t. They, he, and the American people all messed it up.
It’s also conjecture that the troops would have had a positive influence on the situation.
The policy was certainly sustainable. Obama came in, and it wasn’t sustained. Think about Japan and Germany after World War II. Had we pulled out in 1947, things would have fallen apart. Does that mean that the solution we devised was unsustainable?
No one is blaming Rand Paul for what has happened. Senators bear no responsibility for anything. That is their privilege. One can, however, criticize his posture. He is the sole Republican supporter of the foreign policy of Barack Obama — a policy that has made things much, much worse. One could take your argument, apply it to Barack Obama who does bear responsibility for our policy, and absolve him from all blame. That would, indeed, be intellectual laziness!
Yes, it is conjecture. But there is evidence to support it. When the troops were there, we did exercise leverage over Maliki, and he did forge a working agreement with the Kurds and the Sunnis.
Rand Paul supports Obama’s policy? Really? Here’s Rand Paul speaking for himself:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/rand-paul-how-u-s-interventionists-abetted-the-rise-of-isis-1409178958
“Our Middle Eastern policy is unhinged, flailing about to see who to act against next, with little thought to the consequences. This is not a foreign policy.
…
A reasonable degree of foresight should be a prerequisite for holding high office. So should basic hindsight. This administration has neither.
But the same is true of hawkish members of my own party. Some said it would be “catastrophic” if we failed to strike Syria. What they were advocating for then—striking down Assad’s regime—would have made our current situation even worse, as it would have eliminated the only regional counterweight to the ISIS threat.
Our so-called foreign policy experts are failing us miserably. The Obama administration’s feckless veering is making it worse. It seems the only thing both sides of this flawed debate agree on is that “something” must be done. It is the only thing they ever agree on.
But the problem is, we did do something. We aided those who’ve contributed to the rise of the Islamic State.
…”
You have left a lot out. Time and again, in the preceding months, Rand Paul supported Barack Obama’s policies — pulling out of Iraq, pulling out of Afghanistan, cuddling up to Iran. As for the last two sentences that you quote, it is a lie. And, after the execution of James Foley, Rand Paul called for intervention . . . just like Barack Obama.
Mmm. Yes. The only regional counterweight to Islamic State, since we pulled out of Iraq. If we hadn’t pulled out of Iraq, Rand Paul wouldn’t ruefully be wishes that we were helping Assad more.
Barack Obama followed the withdrawal plan negotiated and put into place by GWB. So no, GWB did not create a sustainable policy.
And there’s about a dozen reason why your analogy to Japan in 1947 doesn’t hold up. To start with, by 1947, we’d only occupied Japan for two years. For another thing Japan was culturally and ethnically homogeneous. For a third thing, we had bombed the hell out of Japan for years before occupying Japan. Fifth, Japan had something like 3,000,000 war dead.
The list goes on. But Japan in 1947 doesn’t compare in any way to Iraq in December of 2011 (or any other time).
Yeah, don’t ever speak for me.
Bush was planning to leave a contingent of soldiers in Iraq, as you well know. He left to his successor the negotiation of the forces agreement. What you say is quite misleading.
You also fail to explain why your litany of details about Japan matters. Both Japan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq were defeated and occupied. In both cases, the occupying power installed a government and arranged for free elections. There were differences, to be sure, but it is by no means clear that they were dispositive. The same argument can be made about Germany.
Paul, Abert et al. Just because Rand Paul’s policies coincide with at times with Barack Obama’s does not mean he’s supporting Obama. Just about anybody can coincide with just about anybody else from time to time. I’ll take a rash guess that both of you coincide with Karl Marx on the goodness of America’s invasion of Mexico in 1847 (8?). I certainly wouldn’t take that to mean you support Marx.
Paul, Fred’s list of the differences between Japan and Iraq are extremely significant. I can’t honestly believe that you can’t see that without requiring a long long post from him in explanation. And here’s another… Both Germany and Japan had figured out ALL BY THEMSELVES how to be productive, stable, relatively democratic nation states before the war. Yes, when we teach somebody what they already know, it stands a good chance of success. But sine then we’ve had multiple failures. The Germany-Japan metaphor has been the cause of no end of flawed American policies. (and no, they weren’t very good democracies in the 30s, as I kind of have a feeling you are already getting ready to say. But the DID know democracy and they HAD figured it out and developed it all by themselves over the previous half century. No comparison to Iraq or very many of the other countries we have tried to save since then.)
Come to think of it, one more point. Though I’m repeating myself, it’s in response to all y’all repeating yourselves. You keep saying, If only we had done it right, it would have worked! The point is, even if we know what’s “right” (highly unlikely) expecting to elect the right person to do that right thing very often is a fool’s hope. Electoral politics doesn’t work that way. You don’t often get elected for being an excellent globocop. Again, conservatives who pride themselves on being practical and realisitic are living in a dream world if they believe we can often elect the right person for this job of policing the world that they have assaigned to America.
I don’t understand. Why not? Here’s what happened: Obama pulled all US troops out of Iraq. Iraq descended into chaos. Why can I not blame non-interventionists when things go bad as a result of non-interventionism?
It means that I agree with Karl Marx on the invasion of Mexico. Rand Paul agrees with Barack Obama on foreign policy. I don’t think Paul (Rahe) was calling (Rand) Paul an Obamaboy.
That’s actually not what I’ve been saying. I’ve been saying, “Here’s what happened: Obama pulled all US troops out of Iraq and then Iraq descended into chaos, exactly as NeoCons predicted it would. I wish that Obama had not withdrawn all US troops from Iraq.”
Do you think that the world would be better if America were less interventionist?
Albert, concerning #52, of COURSE you can’t. For starters, Obama’s not a non-interventionist, he’s just highly confused about the world. For another, you’re starting in the middle of the story. This is an interventionists problem. When it goes sour (as it’s pretty much guaranteed to do) you have to blame interventionism. The only way you can avoid blaming interventionism is to (again I repeat myself) say, But we didn’t do it right! The wrong man was president! See #51 for what I think about the foolish conservative expectation that we will always elect the right man.
Hey, Albert, you snuck in 54 while I was writing 56. But I think you are still starting in the middle of the story, expecting non-interventionists to solve the problem of interventionism. Once again, the story starts in Iran in the early 50s or, at the latest, with Gulf War I. Anything after that is the interventionist’s responsibility. You can’t evade that responsibiliity just cause the wrong man was president. That’s part of the game. The wrong man will OFTEN be president so long as we choose to stick with democracy.
Obama never fully invested in Afghanistan. He played Hamlet on whether to even increase the troop level, then undercut his own strategy with publicly announcing a withdrawal date. That he even did that seemed out of grudging political necessity. He was trying to reassure the middle of the electorate that he was tough and reliable on national security. He couldn’t actually follow through on that rhetoric for fear of alienating the rigidly antiwar left, hence the withdrawal date announcement.
In other words, to Obama, Afghanistan was just another political situation to be managed.
Ask yourself: How often did Obama use the word “victory” when speaking of Afghanistan? Also: compare his speeches on Afghanistan with those on, say, raising taxes or budgetary fights with Republicans. It’s easy to tell where the passion lies and where he is just going through the motions.
I for one am waiting for the “teachable moment” for the American conservatives. Interventionism leads to unpredictable results. Just as one cannot “control” free markets by more and more intervention in the economy, one cannot “fix” or “control” the outcome in national disputes by more and more intervention.
The fix to free markets is not more or better control, more policies. And the fix for Iraq is not more military or 10 more years of intervention.
Matty Van:
Paul, Fred’s list of the differences between Japan and Iraq are extremely significant. I can’t honestly believe that you can’t see that without requiring a long long post from him in explanation.
Yeah, the big one, the HUGE one, is the homogeneity of the Japanese. One race, one religion, one culture. We spent years trying to stop Iraqis of one group from killing Iraqis of another group. We’re doing it again with ISIS. Japan isn’t like that. One race, one religion, one culture, with an emperor on top.
The other huge one is the war dead. If you want to talk about who does violence, it’s young men. Young men as a cohort are more violent. They cause most street crime. They’re who we send to war. Japan had all their (not literally all, but an enormous number) young men killed on the battle field during the war. The brief battles before we took Baghdad in the 2003 invasion didn’t kill a lot (in relative terms) of young men. So they were around to fight against us.
Hey, Albert, you snuck in 54 while I was writing 56. But I think you are still starting in the middle of the story, expecting non-interventionists to solve the problem of interventionism. Once again, the story starts in Iran in the early 50s or, at the latest, with Gulf War I. Anything after that is the interventionist’s responsibility. You can’t evade that responsibiliity just cause the wrong man was president. That’s part of the game. The wrong man will OFTEN be president so long as we choose to stick with democracy.
I’m sorry but this is nonsense. If a President McGovern had withdrawn all US forces from Europe in 1974 and the Warsaw Pact invaded in 1975, would that have been the fault if Truman? Roosevelt? Wilson?
Obama refused to leave a residual force in Iraq, the predictable (and predicted) consequences of that action are his responsibility.