August 27, 2012
CAN'T SEE THE BODY FOR THE WINGS:
On Foreign Policy, An Enigma (David Ignatius, August 26, 2012, Washington Post)
The case that Romney (and the Republican Party, in general) has been captured by the neocons is made by Robert Merry, editor of The National Interest, a magazine that is a voice for the "realist" camp. Merry argued in his 2005 book "Sands of Empire" that modern Republican foreign-policy thinking has had three wings: the pragmatists, represented by such figures as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker; the nationalists, embodied by hawks such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld; and the neoconservatives, whose prominent voices included Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams and Eliot Cohen.What happened after Sept. 11, 2001, Merry explained in an interview, was that the nationalists and the neocons joined forces, creating a foreign policy that was at once idealistic and militaristic, which led to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This ascendancy of what Merry calls the "militant Wilsonians" seemed to have been reversed during Bush's second term, but with Romney they seem to be back, stronger than ever. "No doctrine that counters the neocons had any sinews in the GOP, so it became a default position," contends Merry.
Of course, the problem for folks who would prefer a Realist foreign policy--one where we ignore totalitarianism, since it keeps the natives quiet--is that the overwhelming bulk of the GOP is simply Christian and takes the words of the Founding seriously. It is the sinew of the Party that the neocons latched onto.
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 27, 2012 9:54 PM
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