Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) , some say, is crippling his presidential
prospects by not loudly announcing that he’d do anything, anyway,
anywhere, anytime, to prevent Iran from getting nuclear
weapons:.
Jennifer Rubin at Washington Post
thinks the not preannouncing war on Iran thing will be
political death for the younger Paul:
No GOP elected leader or 2016 contender would agree with him. In
fact, no elected Democrat probably would, either. It has been the
position of three presidents that a nuclear-armed Iran is
intolerable. It is an existential threat to Israel. It is not
simply that it is “not a good idea” for Iran to get the bomb. He is
far, far outside the mainstream on this — and far to the left of
President Obama.• Hillary Clinton would eviscerate him on that point and
win over a chunk of Republicans…. It reveals that he
listens to no competent adviser. No knowledgeable foreign policy
adviser would urge him to say such things.
What it reveals is that so far, Paul is still at least slightly
serious about offering a fresh perspective on our willingness to
threaten and use mass-murderous force. Whether she’s right about
the electoral effects remains to be seen. (I’m afraid she might be.
Americans don’t care much about foreign policy when it isn’t
hitting them where they live, but can be all too easily roused to
bloodlust by politicans and media in the short term.)
Rand Paul himself has tried to defend not letting every
foreign threat real or perceived as sufficient to trigger a full-on
war, a policy he’s
been trying to rebrand as a fiscally conservative,
constitutional, and sane alternative GOP foreign policy for a while
now, apparently with little success with the old school pundit
class.
Paul tried to explain his current position at greater length
in the Washington Post yesterday.
While many, including me, interpreted his
comments before the Heritage Foundation last year, in which he
praised George Kennan’s attitude toward international communism as
a viable foreign policy approach to radical Islam in which words
like “contain” and “containment” were often quoted approvingly, as
meaning Paul believed it was better to contain a nuclear Iran that
start a war over it.
Paul now insists loudly he is not for containment.
Hm. Yet he is also not announcing he is for war. He’s
promoting pushing mysterious inscrutability as a non-negotiable
foreign policy plus, and bringing Ronald Reagan into it to boot.
Not terribly satisfying to this libertarian, but at least better
than an unequivocal “we will absolutely start a war to stop Iran
from getting nukes” statement.
Real foreign policy is made in the middle; with nuance; in the
gray area of diplomacy, engagement and reluctantly, if necessary,
military action.
If necessary? And when is it necessary? A real presidential
candidate, Paul implies, like a gentleman, never tells. Like Kenny
Rogers’ titular gambler, he will tell us that when it comes to
foreign policy, we gotta know when to hold ’em, and know when to
fold ’em; but he cannot and will not tell us when that might
be.
Daniel Larison on how the
real problem Rand Paul faces, if he actually wants to avoid war
with Iran, is reframing the debate so people realize that a
non-nuclear-weaponed Iran can be achieved with means like
negotiation and diplomacy, not necessarily threats and/or
war.
Reason on
Rand Paul and foreign policy.
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