OPINION:
Establishment Republican candidates for president, backed by Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and former Vice President Richard Cheney want to restore the Bush administration’s foreign policy: raising the Pentagon budget and adopting a more aggressive stance around the world. Regardless of who is president, tough talk, military spending and more Americans in harm’s way cannot stop China from overawing the Western Pacific, Russia from bending Eastern Europe to its will, or Islamists from beheading Americans.
To secure our peace requires following Theodore Roosevelt’s recipe: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Use it sparingly. But so fashion your stick, and use it so that those whom you hit can cause you no further trouble. By contrast, Establishment Republicans promise to double down on our bipartisan foreign policy of loud words, unrealistic ends and incompetent means — a combination that has convinced the world that America is ripe for the taking.
Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, speaks of “support[ing] the spread of economic and political freedom by reinforcing our alliances, resisting efforts by large powers to subjugate their smaller neighbors” and “advanc[ing] the rights of the vulnerable.” He sees such things as “the human face of America’s influence in the world.” That is the definition of speaking loudly. Mr. Rubio wants to be tougher against the Islamists as well as against the Chinese and Russians while increasing military spending. But he seems not to realize that no one has ever been impressed, much less killed, by percentages of gross domestic product. Like George W. Bush, his recipe for stopping the Islamists seems to be sending Americans endlessly to drive around the Middle East’s replenished minefields. Nor can mere military spending convince the Chinese that they cannot treat the South China Sea as sovereign territory. Doing that, and avoiding war with China, would take U.S. military equipment and plans designed to win such a war. There is no evidence that Mr. Rubio, any more than the Bushies or Obama-ites, thinks about what it would take to do what.
The Wall Street Journal, rightly worrying that China’s de facto seizure of the world’s busiest shipping lanes portends the greatest trouble for America, and noting that China has ballistic missiles that can target ships, advocates building a bigger U.S. Navy to send into the area to challenge China’s claim. Fine. But the Journal’s editorial board seems not to notice that we Americans have zero means of protecting ships or bases — and above all, the United States itself — from missiles fired from China. We do not have serious missile defense because Republicans — from Henry Kissinger to George W. Bush — have quietly agreed with the Democrats’ historic demands that we not build strategic defenses against China or Russia. Challenging China’s looming land-based dominance of the Western Pacific while we are unable to protect against China’s ballistic missiles courts disaster. Nevertheless, the Journal toes the Establishment line on missile defense.
Mr. Cheney wants to send a signal to Vladimir Putin by putting token American troops in Eastern Europe. But Russia’s hierarchy leaves no doubt that it backs its moves with nuclear weapons, while Mr. Cheney, as secretary of defense and vice president, decided to leave America naked to Russian missiles. If Russia moved against these Americans, they would have to surrender. Some signal.
America’s adversaries know they have nothing to fear from Establishment Republicans.
By contrast, Tea Party Republicans are heirs to a legacy of foreign policy that stretches from Washington and Adams to Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Intellectually several notches above the Establishment, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are also rooted in the American people’s common-sense commitment to squaring ends with means, reach with grasp. Just as prudent Americans do in private life, Tea Party presidents would make commitments only after having planned and equipped for whatever it would take to fulfill them.
If a Tea Party president had committed to destroying the Islamic state, it would long since have ceased to exist. Whereas recent foreign policy has consisted of big commitments to the interests of others pursued with insufficient force, Tea Party presidents would commit to defend America’s own interests with whatever force might be required to succeed — quickly. They would react to China’s military preparations to exclude us from the Western Pacific by tailoring a military force to secure that access. A serious missile defense for America would top the list.
Today’s confrontations between “tougher” and “softer,” “interventionism” and “isolationism,” between “moralism” and “realism,” are sterile. Tired of pretense, Americans yearn for foreign policy as defined by George Washington: “Choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.”
• Angelo M. Codevilla is professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University.
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