An interesting analysis. the comments at the end are also worth some time to review.
How to Fix the GOP’s Foreign-Policy Problem
Republicans will lose wars and elections alike until they stop treating world affairs as an arena for ideology.
Dan Drezner has written a valuable essay for Foreign Affairs on the need to repair Republican foreign policy thinking. He argues that Republican credibility on foreign policy has been badly damaged by the party’s fixation on the “war on terror,” the tendency to hype and inflate threats, its refusal to come to grips with complexity in international affairs, and a bad habit of treating foreign policy issues as extensions of domestic political and cultural fights. Here is the core of his thesis:
Since 9/11, however, Republicans have known only one big thing — the “global war on terror” — and have remained stubbornly committed to a narrow militarized approach. Since the fall of Baghdad, moreover, this approach has produced at least as much failure as success, leading the American public to be increasingly skeptical of the bellicosity that now defines the party’s foreign policy.
Republicans need to start taking international relations more seriously, addressing the true complexities and requirements of the issues rather than allowing the subject to be a plaything for right-wing interest groups. And if they don’t act quickly, they might cede this ground to the Democrats for the next generation.
The essay is mostly a diagnosis of the party’s ailments and a recounting of how it came to be in its current predicament, but there are some suggestions for how Republicans might start to climb out of the hole they’ve dug for themselves. As the things that created the Republican advantage on foreign policy have gradually disappeared or been abandoned, not surprisingly the advantage has vanished along with them. That is why there is now a good chance that the Democrats’ newfound edge on these issues may be an enduring one.
The three main things that Drezner believes went wrong with the GOP on foreign policy can be summed up as excessive militarization of foreign policy, insufficient flexibility in responding and adapting to events and changing circumstances, and a lack of specialized knowledge among the party’s would-be political leaders. To correct these imbalances, Drezner urges Republicans to start “relearning flexibility and nuance,” employing a wider range of foreign policy tools, and scaling back their bellicose rhetoric (which, Drezner notes, is the only thing that the party can fully control while it is out of power). Most important, he writes that “Republican politicians need to start caring about foreign policy because it is important, not because it is a cheap way to rally their supporters.”
Drezner’s recommendations are good ones, and some of them can be put into practice fairly easily if Republican elites are willing to follow this advice. While the party out of power has some short-term incentives to engage in cheap demagoguery and threat inflation in order to embarrass the incumbent, these things erode the party’s credibility with the public and with foreign policy professionals over time. They ultimately make it harder for the party to hold office and influence policymaking, and they virtually guarantee that the party’s time in the wilderness will be longer than it otherwise has to be.
Unfortunately for the party, many of the people most interested in foreign policy end to favor the very absolutist, hard-line, and demagogic arguments that do the party’s reputation and its ability to conduct foreign policy competently the most harm. In other words, many of the Republicans that believe foreign policy is important have also been the ones inflicting much of the damage on the party. One way for Republicans to start remedying this is for the party’s younger elected officials to realize that foreign policy is too important to be left to the enthusiasts and ideologues and to make the effort to understand these issues on their own.
Reducing the triumphalist and bellicose rhetoric is the easiest repair to make, and that in turn should reduce threat-inflating arguments, since these rely heavily on rhetorical excess. Relearning flexibility and nuance will be much more difficult, because there is a built-in antagonism to both concepts in contemporary movement conservatism. That is part of the detritus left behind from the Bush-era GOP’s disastrous attachment to the Iraq war and Bush’s “freedom agenda,” both of which Republican hawks defended in absolutist, moralizing terms while treating the words flexibility and nuance as terms of abuse. Undoing the distortions of the Bush era will begin when most Republicans stop treating the resort to coercive policies as evidence of “moral clarity” and a preference for diplomacy as evidence that one “lacks a moral compass.” Until that starts to change, advocates for flexibility and nuance will continue to be ridiculed as appeasers.
One of the larger obstacles to repairing Republican foreign policy thinking is that the party has had little else to offer its voters other than its candidates’ assertions of national greatness, which makes it more difficult to give up on aggressive and hard-line policies and exorbitant spending on the military that are supposedly dedicated to advancing that greatness. As Noah Millman said in late 2011, “foreign policy, at least on the GOP side, is now basically a branch of the culture war: a way of convincing the white working class to support a party that is not pursuing their economic interests by flattering them with the implication that, in the memorable words of Edward Wilson, they’ve got the United States of America.” Especially because conservatives have been losing the culture war at home, the temptation to continue treating foreign policy issues as culture war battles will likely grow, and as a result there will be even less interest in flexibility and nuance than before.
The initial reaction to Chuck Hagel’s nomination from many movement conservatives and elected Republicans suggests that there is not much more room inside the party for deviations from hard-line positions than there was five or ten years ago. The natural response to such a stifling environment has been for people to abandon the party, which is one reason why Hagel will be serving in a Democratic administration rather than in a Republican one. If the party’s hawks do not make substantial room for the ideas of the skeptics, realists, and non-interventionists that they have spent the last decade condemning, the GOP will keep losing supporters it already has as well as alienating new voters for years and perhaps decades to come.
Another Israel hating liberal. Why am I not surprised. This article is worse than the smell at the bottom of the cesspool.
When Republicans are in office we have the support of our allies and generally the fear of our enemies. Nuance gets people killed at home and abroad.
We have a “nuanced” president. It’s doing us so much good isn’t it?
Our current complainer in chief has utilized exactly what this article calls for. What has it gained? We have offended and alienated almost all of our allies. We are an embarrassment on the world stage. We receive the acclaim and love of Dinnerjacket, Chavez, and Castro.
Under both president bushes, no matter how incompetent or progressive they were we were able to bring together coalitions of most of the free countries in the world. Our enemies hated us and said nothing good about us, our allies knew we supported their goals and general freedom.
Under Klinton we worked with an organization that hates us in order to support our enemies in an illegal and undeclared war.
Under the Won we have offended Great Britian at every turn, have denigrated people who share our belief in freedom and have empowered, supported, and agreed with those who would see this country fall.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2012/01/laughingstock-of-the-world.html
Last year.
“relearning flexibility and nuance,”
Nuance!
What utter crap.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/obamas-giveaway-oil-rich-islands-to-russia/
Last year.
Drill here, drill now, just not us.
NUANCE!
eaglesoars wrote:
“Foreign Affairs” is the journal for the Council on Foreign Relations.
That group IS one of the global elitist policy groups that wants international World Government.
Explains a lot about their point of view. They ARE Agenda 21, along with a bunch of other groups of DIGNITARIES.
@ yenta-fada:
You don’t need a tin foil hat to look up the members who are on the Council On Foreign Relations. I hope I have that name accurately.
There is also the Trilateral Commission, the Bilder-cheese-burgers, and a bunch of other movers and shakers attached to the media, the Governments, and the International Monetary organizations. It’s not all happening by accident. These people know each other and are insiders in almost every area of modern life.
http://usamericanfreedom.com/2012/01/16/harry-reid-republicans-need-to-ditch-the-tea-party-extremism/
Here’s another guy with ideas on how to help our party. Maybe we should listen to him?
NUANCE!
@ yenta-fada:
Tim Geithner, the outgoing Secy of the Treasury used to work for the IMF or the World Bank, as well as Goldman Sachs. It’s no accident that Susan Rice is the daughter of a Federal Reserve Governor and ended up at the UN. These people and their families go to school together, marry into each other’s families, know the CORRECT people to get the power they attain. I don’t call it a conspiracy, but an international club of insiders who are above the laws they make for other people.
Mars wrote:
I’m glad I’m talking to somebody. I was about to change my name to “Lily”. lol
Mars wrote:
Harry Reid got exemptions from Obamacare for his constituents. I’ll look around for my link.
yenta-fada wrote:
Let’s not forget that we have Jarrett/Jarrett/Davis/al-Monsour/Sutton/Khalidi/Rezko/Ayers/Obama/Saudi connections too. Libs love these huge inbred setups.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324081704578234010962821032.html
Lol
@ Mars:
at PJTV they Israel’s foreign ministry head on for an interview, and his statement went something like this, they can not understand why we hear in America would believe that Hagel hates Israel.
He may, or may not, but the Israelis that I’ve heard talking, and mostly from Israel’s conservatives by the way, seem to be cool with it. Remember that the rap on Nixon was that he was an anti-Semite, and he was the guy who formalized Israel’s official status as an ally, against by the way the advice of his Jewish National Security Adviser.
This site is just too long for my computer to go through properly. There are a wild number of exemptions to Zerocare.
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/if-obamacare-is-so-great-why-the-waivers-for-unions-mega-insurance-companies_072012
Mars wrote:
As Rodan always points out, there is a real leftist/Islamist alliance. That starts at the top, from all these indications. As tfk pointed out today, it also takes place with the drug cartels and Islamic radical groups. It’s all business, and it crosses borders everywhere. Money travels around the world in a second.
Flyovercountry wrote:
This is from Debka, BUT you cannot ignore internal politics & posturing before a close election.
“• Right-of-center bloc gaining 12 days before Israeli vote
Less than two weeks before the Jan. 22 general election, the 120 Knesset seats divide roughly between 71 seats for the right-of-center plus religious parties bloc versus 49 for the left-of-center factions plus Arab parties, according to a new opinion poll broadcast by Kol Israel national radio Thursday.
Nettanyahu’s Likud-Israel Beitenu is shown to be lleveling out of its decline with the prospect of 34-35 seats. It is followed by Labor under Shelly Yacimovitch steady at 17; Naftali Bennett’s Bayit Yehudi with 14+ ; the ultra-Orthodox Shas dropping to 9 – level with rising Yair Lapid’s new Future; and Tzipi Livni’s Hatenua down to 7 -- matched by the second ultra-Orthodox Torah Judaism party.
The former ruling Kadima and right-wing Otzma are both down to two mandates each and battling for the threshold minimum of three. Left-wing Meretz may expect four seats while the Arab parties are stable at a total of ten.”
There’s definitely an echo in here, and it’s me. /
@ yenta-fada:
Geithner was also the head of the NY Fed during the financial meltdown.
Which explains the promotion, obviously.
//
The O admin is run just like old mafia Chicago. Everything is about paying people back for favors done. Or granting favors in exchange for other favors.
Mars wrote:
Like this?
By Lisa Myers and Mike Brunker
NBC News
Two U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents “facilitated a sexual encounter” between a prostitute and a U.S. Secret Service agent days before President Barack Obama visited Colombia for a summit meeting in April 2012, according to a Justice Department investigation obtained exclusively by NBC News.
A summary of the findings of the investigation, included in a Dec. 20 letter from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General to Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, indicated that a third DEA agent present on the night of the incident was not involved in procuring the prostitute for the Secret Service agent.
@ Mars:
you missed the point.
frankly, the bush nation building never ending quest for democracy is crap that gets american gi’s killed, for what?
i am a jacksonian realist. and if i go to war i want utter destruction of the enemy, not coddling and rebuilding. and there better damn well be a great reason that war is in our national interest. the war in afghanistan hasnt been in our national interest for years now. and iraq? wtf is that? we got USED like lackies to settle old scores now the christians are driven out and iraq is falling into the hands of the radical islamists. how is that good for america?
the gop foreign policy is a joke. nation building is a failure and spreading democracy to those who neither want it or deserve it is a fools errand.
destroy the enemy and leave with the threat that if they act up again we will exterminate their entire country. hows that for nuance?
yenta-fada wrote:
Yep, that’s at least part of it.
Mars wrote:
You know what I don’t understand? How is it sane to remain unaware of the possible consequences of messing around with radicals who own nuclear weapons? Do they think they won’t have to drink the water and breathe the air if things go out of control?
Hurry and ban knives!
coldwarrior wrote:
I love how you always say I missed the point. Then you single out one tiny little bit of logic in a steaming pile of shit and try to say that’s the point. Bullshit. That wasn’t the point of the article and you’re fooling yourself if you think it was.
Read everyone else, I’m not the only one. I singled out the actual point of the article. You’re looking for the pony in a stocking full of horse crap.
yenta-fada wrote:
They could care less, they are too cool and too hip to even consider that anyone would do this to them. They are just too well liked by our enemies for this to possibly happen.
@ Mars:
Remember after 9/11 when Michael Moore complained about al Qaeda’s choice of target, since nobody in NYC even voted for Bush?
Don’t get me wrong ColdWarrior. I’m not disagreeing with what you said in your comment. You are exactly right. But, that has nothing to do with the article you posted. This is just another crap article by a liberal giving us the “secret” to saving the GOP by becoming them.
Look at the examples I posted. The one mistake both Bushes made in those examples, they didn’t fight to win. Too much hearts and minds crap. Destroy your enemy and ensure they no longer have the capacity to wage war against us.
The author of the article makes it perfectly clear that in his world there is all happiness and rainbows. We need to see more grey areas and less black and white.
I would say our problem is the opposite. We try too damn hard to see the good in our enemies and we don’t draw the line between good and evil clear enough. There is nothing to be saved in the ME. If we must go to war with them, ensure that they don’t have the capability to act up for another hundred years or more.
lobo91 wrote:
Yep, that’s actually the crap they believe. They also fail to recognize that it’s the liberals own total lack of morals and Hollywood lifestyles that the Muzz use as justification on why to hate the US.
http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/01/federal-serfdom-and-food-freedom/
Read the dem response here and tell me what exactly they have to offer us?
@ Mars:
lets go to the actual essay itself:
it is as i said an interesting analysis, something to think about.
@ coldwarrior:
I’ve been saving this classic for you.
@ Mars:
the actual essay is worth the read.
@ yenta-fada:
a classic indeed.
That’s an awful small pony to ride.
The rest of the article is the same old hate that I read and see every day in the media. Finishing the article by trying to sound reasonable doesn’t repair the discredit the author did to himself with the parts I’ve already quoted, plus this gem of sterling decency.
If this author truly believes that O is a great foreign policy genius and hasn’t had any fiascoes, then frankly the discussion is over.
coldwarrior wrote:
Timely.
bbl
@ Mars:
just because your political foes point something out does not mean they are wrong. that is why i always post these sorts of articles that go against the grain of the blog. gets people thinking, shakes the trees a little.
coldwarrior wrote:
I would recommend a different section of the article for the excerpt above then. The section you put up did not say anything that you wanted to say. Anyone who based their perception on the excerpt you provided would have the same reaction I did, and would not have any interest in further pursuing anything else in the article.
This would have helped.
The excerpt in your comment would have helped.
It also doesn’t help that the author is pretty clearly a nation builder.
Stand by conservative principles? No problem just eject them.
Apparently we are going to be attacked by a giant aerosol can.
Oh, NOES we insulted the Palestinians.
Yep, nothing to see here.
Our foreign policy should be an offshoot of our domestic policy. WTF does he think it should be, an offshoot of UN policy?
Another brilliant nugget. Let’s cut the one thing the fed is responsible for and keep funneling money into things that they have no responsibility for.
Also he has gone to three separate Chicago think tanks to write this article. Seems odd that there aren’t any other foreign policy sources.
Seriously? Yep because getting us into a war under UN orders supporting our enemies was a great professional thing to do.
Bullshit, all the won does is downplay threats.
Damn Republicans are seeing Unicorns and Rainbows as threats.
Must be nice on his planet.
There’s the pony.
But, I’m not going to ride it, it’s covered in horse crap.
@ Mars:
This article is very truthful though. Leaving Hagel aside all the GOP calls for is nation building. It’s a turnoff even to many Conservatives.