Teeing off of the recent back
and forth between Rand Paul and Rick Perry on foreign policy,
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat
responds to accusations that reform conservatives—the label
adopted by a group family-friendly right-leaning domestic policy
reformers, including Douthat—are too close with Bush-era
neoconservatives on foreign policy. The gist of Douthat’s response
is that reformers are guilty of association, but not necessarily of
unified endorsement. Reform conservatism has always focused more on
domestic policy and domestic politics, and it is loosely attached
to politicians with a variety of foreign policy impulses, so its
philosophy when it comes to interacting with the rest of the world
remains largely unsettled. Indeed, Douthat isn’t even sure what it
should be.
One thing that Douthat gets at in his post is how unsettled
foreign policy thinking is across the entire right side of the
aisle. It is not just the reform conservatives who do not have a
definitive foreign policy vision, it is the entire Republican
party, and the conservative movement that makes it its core. Part
of that is due to the considerable influence of Rand Paul, who has
invigorated the right’s long-dormant non-interventionist tendency;
part of it is a result of the right’s fracturing and subsequent
loss of identity in the Obama era; and part of it is a result of
the difficult-to-deny failures of the Iraq war—arguably the single
biggest cause for Republicans in the Bush era, and just as arguably
the GOP’s single biggest failure. These strains have combined to
shake loose the right from the relatively unified hawkish
neoconservatism that defined it throughout the 00s.
So it’s not exactly surprising that reform conservatism, a
relatively new strain of thinking on the right built largely out of
domestic policy concerns, has yet to construct a fully-realized
foreign policy ideology. Indeed, it would be surprising if reform
conservatism, a cautious movement championed by cautious
individuals who favor cautious policies, was charging forth in such
a fraught and contested space.
And yet I think that caution, which Douthat admirably reflects
in his own uncertainty about what reform conservatives specifically
and the right more broadly should preach when it comes to
international affairs, actually provides the seed of a foreign
policy stance that would fit nicely with the reform movement’s
broader way of thinking, appeal to many on the right (reformers and
Republicans, libertarian populists and skeptics of government power
across the spectrum), and inject a much-needed voice into the
nation’s foreign policy.
Too much of our foreign policy conversation, on both sides of
the aisle, is conducted with a kind of chest-thumping certainty
about what we can know, what we should do, and what the results
will be if we follow through. That attitude is perhaps
understandable, given the context of war and international power,
but it’s also frequently frustrating and unhelpful, especially
given how difficult it can be to establish even the most basic
facts on the ground when it comes to the particulars of many
foreign policy conflicts and disputes.
A foreign policy of caution and humility, of uncertainty and
wariness, might help help turn down the heat on foreign policy
debates, by focusing on the limitations of America’s power and—even
more—its ability to determine foreign policy outcomes, and by
talking as much about what we don’t know as what we do.
It’s not so hard to imagine this sort of caution appealing to
many of the same middle and working class families that reformers
and libertarian populists want to serve, partly because many of
them have grown more skeptical of foreign interventions post-Iraq,
and partly because it offers an approach that prioritizes prudence
and common sense.
It would, necessarily, lean toward the non-interventionist side
of the spectrum, stressing caution about when and whether to act,
but would not be as easy to label an abdication of America’s role
in the world, because it would not take any course of action or
inaction as a must. It would recognize America’s greatness as an
institution, a people, and a world power, but be humble about what
the actual humans charged with making decisions with limited time
and resources can know and do. It would start from the certainty
that there is a lot that is unknown, and a lot that can go wrong,
especially with big ideas and bold plans, and then work slowly and
cautiously from there.
In some sense it would take some of Rand Paul’s influence, some
of the pragmatism that’s driving certain factions on the right, and
some of the lessons of Iraq, and combine them into something that
draws from all of them—a foreign policy that remains confident in
America, but practical and cautious about what it can and should do
around the world.
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