Section: The American Conservative (USA)
I’m Gonna Miss This President When He’s Gone
The foreign policy that President Obama describes in his extraordinary series of interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg is pretty much exactly the foreign policy that I would support – far more so than the foreign policy that the Obama Administration has actually followed. To some degree, that divergence exists because the President himself has changed...
A Sea Island Conspiracy?
Over the long weekend before the Mississippi and Michigan primaries, the sky above Sea Island was black with corporate jets. Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Napster’s Sean Parker, Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, and other members of the super-rich were jetting in to the exclusive Georgia resort, ostensibly...
The Eleventh Republican Debate
The eleventh Republican debate didn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know, and it reconfirmed most of the bad things we knew about the different candidates. Trump was confronted with a number of his position changes, and did his best to spin them as evidence of his “flexibility.” He and Rubio spent a significant amount of time...
Why Southwest Virginia Is Trump Country
“To make America great again, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?” A person from the back of the hall—no doubt a college student—shouts “Biscuits!” That was the kind of irreverent fun I was looking for at a Trump rally, and in fact was the high point of the event, taking place long before the candidate himself appeared on stage. (The...
Foreign Policy and the Tenth Republican Debate
The tenth Republican debate last night was an embarrassing display for all involved. Leaving aside the frequent shouting, hectoring, and whining from the different candidates, the discussion of policy was even more insipid than usual. The treatment of foreign policy seemed especially bad, but I suppose it was mostly the same things we’ve...
The Many Weaknesses of the Rubio Campaign
Noah Millman sums up the weaknesses of the Rubio campaign in response to a recent Douthat column: But Rubio hasn’t been Kutuzov, retreating into Russia and waiting for winter, because he never held Russia. Lots of people bought into the idea that he was the “stealth” front-runner, but he was never anywhere near to having a commanding...
The Hawkish Cult of “Leadership” (II)
Joe Lieberman wrote a predictably tedious op-ed calling for American “leadership.” One interesting thing about it is that he repeated a claim that Sens. Sasse and Ernst made in their own appeal for hawkish “leadership” last week: In a conversation with the leader of a European ally, some of us asked what the United States could do to be most...
A 2016 Foreign Policy Report Card
Presidents have more latitude in foreign affairs than in domestic policy, and the trend over the past two administrations has been for presidents to be more hawkish than their campaign pledges led voters to expect. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy.” Instead, he gave us the Iraq War. Barack Obama was elected in part to end...
Kasich and the Missing Foreign Policy Debate
At the entrance to a John Kasich event at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia Monday morning, I was asked by a radio reporter why I was attending. I didn’t say “journalist” (my usual answer) but replied instead, “I’m not satisfied with a three candidate race of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio.” I’m aware that Kasich barely...
The Hawkish Cult of “Leadership”
Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) repeated some boilerplate hawkish nostrums on foreign policy in a recent op-ed. They concluded: We say this delicately, as we work hard to respect the office of the presidency, but our allies everywhere are baffled. We asked one head of state, What single lesson would you like us to report back...
