Rand Paul plays a useful role in our politics. He is the first somewhat broadly credible conservative spokesman for a certain strain of foreign policy thinking. This kind of thinking is called isolationism by its critics and non-interventionism by its friends. It is skeptical of long-term collective security arrangements and of having the US play a role in balancing regional state systems. This distinguishes isolationism/non-interventionism from conservative “realists” who might think that the Bush administration was too idealistic and aggressive, but who also believe that US plays an indispensable global role. Rand Paul represents the views of millions of Americans and even more, Paul is able to voice questions that occur to millions more who have no particular theory of foreign policy and no attachment to any political faction, but who wonder about the value of a given alliance or American security guarantee. But useful as he is, Rand Paul should not be president.
Prior to Rand Paul, it was his father Ron Paul that was the foremost spokesman for isolationism/non-interventionism. The problem with Ron Paul was that he was too dogmatic to confine himself to prudential arguments against a particular conflict. Ron Paul’s opposition to a particular war were wrapped up in a master theory that opposed most American military interventions since World War II. And here is what Ron Paul wrote about World War II:
America entered the Second World War, largely as a consequence of Franklin Roosevelt’s interventionist foreign policy. An excellent description of this can be found in Charles Callan Tansill’s Back Door to War. From this outstanding historic documentation of what transpired prior to the war, it is clear that the United States deliberately provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor for economic reasons. Since the United States had broken the Japanese code, Roosevelt knew exactly what the Japanese were planning. FDR did nothing because of his own political ambitions and his desire to unify the country in support of the war. By the early 1940’s only a small minority stood on principle and objected to our becoming allies with Soviet murderers.
This dogmatism made Ron Paul a weak critic of any given American military intervention. If the median person had to swallow opposing Reagan on Grenada, the first Bush on the first Gulf War and embrace a conspiracy theory of World War II in order to support Ron Paul, then it wasn’t going to happen. There was also Paul’s ugly habit of rhetorically simplifying issues so as to condemn the US and exonerate America’s enemies. Paul could have made the more nuanced point that the American oil embargo forced the Japanese government to either scale back their imperial ambitions or militarily confront the United States. But no, Roosevelt had to deliberately provoke the Japanese in order to help the Soviet Union (rather than defeat Nazi Germany).
The main problem with Paul’s dogmatism was not that his flaws made him irritating, but that his flaws made him weaker than he might otherwise have been. The other, more interventionist, candidates in the Republican primaries of 2008 and 2012 spent more time condemning and dismissing Paul than in actually answering his arguments. Paul’s appeal was too limited to be a real threat.
Rand Paul has a chance to be something better. Rand Paul is better than his father at crafting alliances that push the center in his direction. Where his father courted racists, Rand Paul worked on sentencing reform. Rand Paul has tried to find the common ground between conservative realism and isolationism/non-interventionism. In a major Rand Paul foreign policy speech, Paul rhetorically accepts the principles of conservative realism, but he consistently tries to push it one or two clicks in the direction of less US involvement. He emphasizes the danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb and goes on to describe the need for a diplomatic solution, but does explain how such a solution might be gained in the (likely) event of Iranian intransigence.
In all of this, Rand Paul is doing the country a service. It isn’t just that Rand Paul is giving voice to millions of non-interventionists that supported his father. By offering prudential arguments, Paul is giving voice to the concerns of millions of other Americans who get left behind by the foreign policy discussions on the right. These Americans don’t share the presumptions of either the James Bakers or the John Boltons. They wonder if the global balance of power would work out better for us if we let distant regional state systems take their own course without our involvement. They wonder why the United States should be providing security guarantees to allies that most Americans can’t find on a map. These Americans aren’t isolationists. They aren’t anything. They have questions that aren’t being answered because no credible politician on the right has been raising them.
But that doesn’t mean that Rand Paul should be president. Just because he tries to find common ground with realism doesn’t make him a realist. He often strains himself to make realist-sounding arguments in favor of isolationist/non-interventionist policies. Paul opposed giving aid to the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Fair enough, but he tried to dress up his opposition to aiding Ukraine as a method of opposing Russia. That’s just too cute. Under pretext of declaring war on ISIS, Paul submitted a congressional use of force resolution that would have hampered (or perhaps more precisely was designed to hamper) US military operations against ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Rand Paul came very close to suggesting that Dick Cheney supported the Iraq War because of the influence of Halliburton. As with his father, the main problem is not that Rand Paul was making himself obnoxious. Hard and untrue things get said in politics. If Hillary Clinton had said the same thing, one could dismiss it as a liberal internationalist trying to appeal to Elizabeth Warren groupies, but with Rand Paul, one has to wonder it was a glimpse of a submerged worldview.
Rand Paul has a chance to make or national discussion of foreign policy both more inclusive and more nuanced. On the available evidence, he should not be managing American collective security arrangements and he should not be commander-in-chief. He is already in the place where he will do the most good – and the least harm.