I strongly disagree with them, but I respect foreign policy writers such as Curt Mills who favor a far smaller U.S. military footprint around the world.
I do not, however, respect Rand Paul’s foreign policy sentiments. The senator from Kentucky embraces an utterly ridiculous world view. At once both ignorant and devoid of strategic foundation, Paul styles himself the righteous bearer of the banner in a blood-crazed struggle against conservative hawks.
Anti-interventionist arguments demand serious consideration. Too many hawks appear to want conflict with Iran and North Korea, even though diplomatic opportunities exist with both. Even if unlikely to succeed, those opportunities demand pursuit. And even as they rightly support Israel, too many hawks defer too casually to Israeli policy, even where our ally acts counter to American interests.
And even as they condemn his pointless insults, too many hawks wrongly condemn President Trump’s rightful demand that U.S. allies support greater burden sharing.
Anti-interventionist voices have a role in tempering dangerous policies. But Paul isn’t one of those voices.
Take Paul’s Thursday tweet in support of Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria. “If we can save one American soldier from losing their life or limbs in another senseless middle eastern war,” Paul proclaimed, “it is worthwhile. Trump knows this. Yet the bloodlust of the neocons knows no bounds.”
It might sound good, but it’s utterly hypocritical. Paul’s own record on the counter-ISIS fight proves as much. Consider, after all, that Paul supported U.S. air strikes against ISIS when they first began back in 2014. So if Paul is right and it’s senseless bloodlust to keep a small number of U.S. forces in northern Syria to keep ISIS tamped down — not even engaged in active combat operations — then why did Paul support counter-ISIS operations in the first place? Or does he want ISIS to come back so that he can again unleash his “realist hawk” credentials?
Paul’s divergent attitudes on Iran and Saudi Arabia also stand out. Where Paul is broadly sympathetic toward Iran, even though that regime continues to plot attacks against American citizens around the world, he despises Saudi Arabia. That hatred might be fair if we were in 2002. After all, the Saudi regime was then committed to exporting Salafi-Jihadism. But it’s not fair today.
Today’s Saudi regime is a key American trade and counterterrorism partner. And for his terrible flaws, Mohammed bin Salman is pursuing economic and social reforms that are necessary to avoid Saudi Arabia becoming a nuclear ISIS 2.0. Is it realism to risk that whirlwind by abandoning bin Salman? As with Trump, Paul has no serious answer to that question.
This speaks to the other problem with Paul’s foreign policy. Namely, that it’s unbound from any principle of realist interest.
Take Paul’s approach towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Uniquely in the U.S. Senate, aside from Bernie “Chernobyl” Sanders, Paul resists any and all efforts to pressure Putin. Considering Putin’s litany of actions against American interests — from attacking the U.S. election, to trying to kill American soldiers in Syria, to shooting down passenger airliners, to throwing nerve agents around the streets of our closest ally, to supporting Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro — Paul cannot support Putin and seriously call himself a realist.
Instead, Paul’s foreign policy is basic populism without a strategy.
