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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
My position is that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the foreign policy posture of Rand Paul and that of Barack Obama. Both are doctrinaire non-interventionists inclined to believe that most of the trouble in the world is of our making. Both, moreover, are highly sensitive to public opinion, and both shifted to an interventionist stance when ISIS began beheading American journalists. This does not make RP a supporter of BHO. He wants to replace the man . . . with himself.
Your picture of Germany and Japan each as “a productive, stable, relatively democratic nation states before the war” is not born out by the history of those two nations in the 1920s and 1930s. Iraq had a functioning parliamentary regime of sorts from the 1920s well into the 1950s also.
Fred’s case does not seem to me to be very strong. The relative homogeneity of Germany and Japan could easily have made for resistance had the Governor-Generals we appointed mismanaged things as badly as Bush’s initial viceroys. The divisions in Iraq could have been of advantage to us. Indeed, the fact that the country was not leveled could also have eased our task.
Obama’s decision to pull out, which was widely criticized at the time (though not by Rand Paul), was fatal to the endeavor.
Amen.
You are absolutely right on one point: Intervention leads to unpredictable results. But you fail to grasp that non-interventionism leads to predictable results. The international arena is not like the market. As Hayek points out, the latter cannot properly be managed. If left alone, it is a more or less self-governing mechanism, always correcting itself. Trying to manage it from the top distorts the price signals necessary for self-correction and produces inefficiency and chaos.
In the international arena, non-interventionism produces anarchy, and anarchy plays into the hands of thugs. Prudent intervention is no panacea. It is no cure-all. It can, however, fend off trouble . . . for a time. That is all that one can expect in an imperfect world.
The error of the arch-libertarians is to suppose that in the international sphere there is spontaneous order of the sort that exists in market societies governed by the rule of law and characterized by the enforcement of contracts. The error of the arch-progressives is to suppose that we can ever fully impose order on the international sphere. There is no substitute for prudence, and the world will always be a dangerous place.
Matty, you have a point here. Our efforts in Vietnam and Iraq were turned to naught by the Democrats in Congress and by Obama. Those efforts required consistency in policy, and partisan politics gets in the way.
On the other hand, there was consistency in policy with regard to the Soviet Union from 1946 to the 1990s — not perfect consistency, mind you, but considerable consistency — and this was the achievement of a democracy, and it culminated in the collapse of communism and the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
We have also — until now, at least — consistently fostered since 1941 an international regime based on free trade, freedom of the seas, and stable borders. That, too, has been a great success.
In any case, as I argued in my post, there is no alternative to a policy of prudent intervention. If we do not act to shape the international environment in such a way to favor our interests, the thugs will once again have a free hand — as they did in the 1930s — and we will once again find ourselves operating in a world organized against us.
The key is prudence — knowing what matters and what does not, knowing one’s limits, and reckoning the costs . . . the costs of intervention, and the costs of non-intervention. I am inclined to think that China poses the greatest threat to the international system that we have sponsored, that Russia is also a serious problem, and that Iran is a far greater threat than ISIS.
As for Rand Paul, just like Barack Obama, he is flailing about.
I agree with Fred that Germany and Japan probably aren’t representative models of what can be done, and certainly poor ones for dealing with a fractious place like Iraq or a tribally dominated one like Afghanistan.
Professor Rahe is right that the (relative) homogeneity and order that both the major Axis powers were know for could have worked against us under other circumstances, but those circumstances were not in place. As it was, not only did both Germany and Japan suffer casualties unlike anything the Iraqis or Afghanis were subject to, their legitimate political leaders genuinely surrendered; having the Soviets next door and in a foul mood didn’t hurt, either.
Well put. One of the goals of any right-thinking (or Right-thinking) administration should be to help expand the part of the world which can be subject to prosperous self-control.
As was discussed on another thread, this would probably be better accomplished by increasing the prenatal and childhood nutrition of poor nations, thereby increasing their net IQ, and making them more accepting of stable, constructive democracy, rather than trying to figure out the right people to bomb when.
Paul/Tom, many points are well taken. I don’t categorically deny that American policing of the world has been good for the world. But…
I advocate the non-interventionist position anyway because I think it needs advocating; becaue it’s constitutional; because it’s moral (or rather not immoral, which interventionism inevitably becomes); because no matter how much we think we know about other places, interventionism genenerally teaches that we really don’t as we get mired in ancient blood feuds and alien ways of thinking; because policing the world is too expensive to maintain forever and yet it must be maintained forever; because it inevitably turns twisted minds in our direction who would otherwise be absorbed in the abovementioned ancient blood feuds; and because it requires the political impossibility of always electing the right person.
You confirm that last statement, btw, every time you say, “We were doing it right until those darn Democrats messed things up!” When you say “It requires consistent policy” you are saying, in essence, it is not something within the realm of possibility for a democracy. And you don’t want to give up democracy, right?
On the other hand, a consistent 45 year policy towards the Soviet Union is a good counter argument. But isn’t it the only good counter argument? Maybe we can be consistent only when the threat is existential.
PS, and I don’t know much about the history of Iraq in the 1920s but I’m pretty sure that whatever parliamentary system they established was through the overlordship of the British and probably limited to a small class of the elite. Germans and Japanese, on the other hand, really did do it all by themselves. To repeat, when we taught them at the end of WWII, we were only teaching them what they already knew. THAT’S a formula for successful teaching!
There is another counter-argument — and that is that we tried non-intervention in the years stretching from ca. 1920 to 1941; and, predictably, things spun out of control in a fashion that endangered us. The cost of setting things right was immense.
I do not deny that interventions are messy. That is why we should pick and choose our fights. I am only suggesting that they are unavoidable — and that non-interventionism as a policy means that the fights that do come our way are truly awful.
The price we have paid in treasure and lives since 1946 is nothing in comparison for the price we paid in treasure and lives between 1941 and 1946. Moreover, we have profited big time from the world order that we have fostered.
Think about the options we have and the consequences of non-interventionism.
Paul, you are up quite early, aren’t you? And looks like you might be keeping me up late.
But I would suggest that your second counter arguement is not nearly as good as your first. Though it’s super complicated, and not a debate I’m ready to get into now, pointing out the history of the 20s and 30s could well work against your position. Again, it’s starting in the middle of the story rather than at the beginning. Americans were so ferociously isolationist precisely because they they were disgusted at being lured into a foreign war in 1917. We went into Europe clueless, with the intention of making the world safe for democracy with a war to end all wars, and instead made the world safe for Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, a facilitated an even bigger war.
Well, G’ night!
So, just to be clear, what interventions between 1920 and 1941 would you have favored? Did you want to go to war with Germany in 1939? Would you have gone to war with Japan in 1936?
Handily, the Wikpedia has a list of US military actions. Here’s the sections starting in 1920. The reality of the numerous US interventions in China and Latin America does not match your claim that we tried non-interventionism.
Additionally, you conveniently skipped over the US’s involvement in the First World War. If there was ever an intervention that was unnecessary to US interests, it was WW1. (And we don’t have a counter factual time machine, but would the subsequent century of history played out the same way if the US had stayed out?)
I am in Michigan on eastern time. So it is 10:23 a.m., and I am holding office hours. I agree with you that Woodrow Wilson’s ridiculous, utopian rhetoric did a lot of damage. Our leaders need to level with the American people. No war will end all wars, and none can make the world safe for democracy . . . except in the short run.
I will start with World War I. We could not afford to allow a single power to dominate the European continent. Such a power would have been in the long run a serious threat to us. So I do not regard our intervention as unnecessary. Pitching our intervention as a war to end all wars was absurd. As I said above, no war can end all wars (unless, of course, it ends the human race), and a war may make the world or at least part of the world safe for democracy . . . but not forever.
I regard the Republican refusal after the war to sign on to the League of Nations project as reasonable and Wilson’s instructions to the Democrats to vote against the Versailles Treaty if there were reservations as criminal. Had we formed a defensive alliance with Britain and France, as was contemplated, the subsequent history would have been quite different.
As for Hitler, he should have been stopped when he broke the Versailles Treaty in 1936 by remilitarizing the Rhineland. We should have been party to the treaty and to its enforcement.
As for Japan, we should not have waited for Pearl Harbor.
In general, prudence dictates that one anticipate problems and head them off. Those who fail to do so pay dearly.
And, yes, we did intervene in Latin America in the 1920s and 1930s — and, by and large, to good effect.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to know where Rand Paul stands today and how he got there, there is a useful piece by John McCormack entitled “Where Does Rand Paul Stand?” His conduct (and, for that matter, Barack Obama’s) exemplifies a failure to anticipate. Both are reacting to the beheading of James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Perhaps, however, Rand Paul is beginning to learn. He does not want us to become Iran’s air force, and he is right to be thinking about the Iranian threat. If, however, he were to take that seriously, he would have to revisit his inclination to embrace Bashar al-Assad.
Obama has gotten us into a godawful mess. To judge by his statements over the last few years, had he been President, Rand Paul would have done the same.
Right! Exactly.
I will consider this proof that you answer affirmatively to my previous question: “Do you think that the world would be better if America were less interventionist?”