GOP Foreign Policy Fight: Rand Paul vs. Rick Perry Edition

With the 2016 election now less than 28 months
away, something is happening in the Republican Party that doesn’t
appear yet to have a counterpart on the Democrat side—potential
Republican contenders are arguing substantively over what kind of
foreign policy the party and its 2016 standard-bearer should
support. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) got the ball rolling last month
when he
blamed the unrest in the Middle East on George W. Bush’s Iraq
war.

Eight years ago, Paul’s father, then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) was
the only Republican candidate that questioned the wisdom of George
Bush’s hyper-interventionist foreign policy. Republicans lost the
2008 election with a candidate, John McCain, who openly embraced
the bulk of Bush’s foreign policy. Four years later they lost again
with another candidate, Mitt Romney, who openly embraced the bulk
of Bush’s foreign policy.

In the 2016 election, it’s the Democrat candidate that’s all but
guaranteed to openly embrace the bulk of Bush‘s Obama’s Bush-based
foreign policy. And while a lot of the potential candidates on the
Republican side are ready to reject Obama’s foreign policy as not
enough like Bush’s, Rand Paul is doing his best to show that the
Republican party has alternatives—alternatives that are good for
its electoral success, good for America’s fiscal health, and good
for world affairs.

Texas Governor Rick Perry will have none of it. Writing in
The Washington Post Perry likened the threat of a bunch of
religious extremists waging a way against governments in the Middle
East with the existential threat to the free world the Soviet Union
posed,
arguing:

In the face of the advancement of the Islamic State, Paul and
others suggest the best approach to this 21st-century threat is to
do next to nothing. I personally don’t believe in a wait-and-see
foreign policy for the United States. Neither would Reagan.

Reagan led proudly from the front, not from behind, and when he
drew a “red line,” the world knew exactly what that meant.

Paul is drawing his own red line along the water’s edge,
creating a giant moat where superpowers can retire from the
world.

Paul rejected Perry’s contentions in an op-ed published by
Politico, arguing that he has not, in fact, advocated
doing nothing in Iraq, and that his and Perry’s and Obama’s views
on what to do in Iraq aren’t
all that different:

Perry says there are no good options. I’ve said the same thing.
President Obama has said the same thing. So what are Perry’s
solutions and why does he think they are so bold and different from
anyone else’s?

He writes in the Washington Post, “the
president can and must do more with our military and intelligence
communities to help cripple the Islamic State. Meaningful
assistance can include intelligence, surveillance and
reconnaissance sharing and airstrikes.”

The United States is actually doing all of this now. President
Obama has said he might use airstrikes in the future. I
have also been open to the same option if it makes
sense.

I support continuing our assistance to the government of Iraq,
which include armaments and intelligence. I support using advanced
technology to prevent ISIS from becoming a threat. I also want to
stop sending U.S. aid and arms to Islamic rebels in Syria who are
allied with ISIS, something Perry doesn’t even address. I would
argue that if anything, my ideas for this crisis are both stronger,
and not rooted simply in bluster.

If the governor continues to insist that these proposals mean
I’m somehow “ignoring ISIS,” I’ll make it my personal policy to
ignore Rick Perry’s opinions.

It’s an old story—during the 2012 election many of the
Republican candidates supported a residual force in Iraq, something
Barack Obama supported too, yet during the election cycle
Republicans and Obama supporters both
pretended otherwise. In the end Obama benefited while
Republicans sunk another election. The trouble with basing foreign
policy on appearing “strong” is that it ignores whether the foreign
policy is sound, choosing to bank on nationalist fervor
instead.

The urge to “do something” in the face of Islamist advances in
Iraq is strong, especially for politicians who fear looking “weak”
in the eyes of what they assume is a militant-minded voting
population. But as I
argued last month, “doing nothing” in Iraq could be the best
option for combatting ISIS—we will keep being drawn into slaying
monsters overseas until the people overseas learn to slay them
themselves. In the 2000s American men and women fought and died for
Iraqis freedom. For the Iraqis to keep and preserve it, they will
have to learn to fight for themselves.