Many politicians and pundits are criticizing the president for embarrassing the U.S. by failing to defend his own country’s intelligence community before a foreign power.
Few are talking about this: Attempting to establish fresh diplomacy with Russia is one of the most important foreign policy steps President Trump has taken to date.
That’s a pretty big deal.
Virtually no other Republican or Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 would likely be engaging Russia right now. It was only two years ago that Hillary Clinton wanted to establish no-fly zones in Syria, essentially guaranteeing a U.S.-Russian conflict. Every Republican candidate except Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., (including the likes of Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, and John Kasich) all also supported a no-fly zone. The last Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, called Russia America’s “number one geopolitical threat.” It’s been a long time since former President George W. Bush saw Vladimir Putin’s “soul.”
[Also read: Rand Paul: ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome has officially come to the Senate’]
Why was the Democratic nominee in agreement with every Republican (except Trump and Paul) that an aggressive stance more likely to provoke war with Russia was preferable to basic diplomacy?
Because they all subscribe to the same group-think. The hawks and neoconservatives that have long dominated Republican thought on foreign policy are largely indistinguishable from the liberal internationalists of the Hillary Clinton variety. From the politicians, to the think-tanks, and throughout the swamp, the bipartisan Washington foreign policy consensus has leaned far too often, and for too long, in the direction of war and away from diplomacy.
Trump is trying to swing the pendulum in the other direction. He vowed to. More than half of Washington didn’t think the president should have met with Putin to begin with. Rest assured that if Trump didn’t make his unfortunate U.S. intelligence comments, the political class would have certainly found something else to pounce on. They deeply believe Trump is getting American foreign policy completely wrong precisely because he’s challenging their long-established policies and conventional wisdom.
Which is why Paul is standing so firmly, so stubbornly even, in Trump’s corner. As a libertarian, not only is generous diplomacy key to implementing the kind of realist and less aggressive foreign policy that Paul has always advocated, but the senator is seemingly the only member of Congress who sees immeasurable value in what Trump is doing.
[Rand Paul unloads on ‘bigoted’ John Brennan for attacking Trump]
“Dialogue with our adversaries is just as important as with our friends, perhaps more so,” Paul said in a video released by his office Wednesday. “We have so many issues to deal with—Iran, Syria, North Korea … We need an open dialogue and engagement.”
“Trump haters and hawks from both sides of the aisle are quick to denounce the president’s actions, but I for one am glad he went,” Paul added. “The world is too dangerous to threaten war over hacked emails, and it is too dangerous to choose isolation when confronted with challenges to our relations and world peace.”
Paul continued with a history lesson. “Throughout history, including during the height of the Cold War, both sides maintained constant dialogue and communications,” Paul noted. “Even during the Cuban missile crisis we had diplomatic relations and constant communication.”
The senator then chastised those who fail to see the big picture, including hawks on both sides of the aisle eager to cast the complicated business of foreign policy in stark black and white narratives.
“Foreign policy is difficult. It comes in many shades of gray, and those who treat it as a team sport do harm to our safety and to our politics,” Paul said. “This week Trump said he would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Paul added. “Millions of lives could be at stake.”
One could take issue (and many have) with Paul not addressing Trump’s failure to stand by his intelligence community head on. However, Paul has spent much of his political career challenging that same intelligence community for spying on Americans, millions of unsuspecting people, something that significantly undermines the moral authority of so many of Trump’s current deep state critics right now. Who was it, exactly, that assured us Saddam Hussein had WMDs?
As a libertarian, a tea partier, a constitutional conservative, Rand Paul has challenged Washington’s conventional wisdom on so many fronts, foreign and domestic, since he was elected to the Senate. It was often him, solo, against everyone else.
Now we have a Republican president who is carrying out, often solo as well, much of what Rand Paul would have done as president regarding foreign policy diplomacy. Observers left and right are shocked that Paul continues to stand by Trump, post-Helsinki.
They should be shocked if he didn’t.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Senator Rand Paul.
