There is a shift in foreign policy going on in the GOP. Conservative voters have had it with wars for Muslim Democracy. It’s become apparent, they don’t want democracy in Islamic nations. They want Sharia law states. This nation is also broke and can’t afford these missions. Realizing the shift, every major Republican candidate rejected Wilsonianism and now embrace a cautious foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine based on nation building, is being rejected by Republicans.
As the Republican Party grapples with a broadening schism over the role of the U.S. military in the world, several of the GOP presidential contenders appear to be veering further away from the neo-conservative, nation-building wing of the party — a trend that could deepen as more candidates enter the race.
At last week’s debate in New Hampshire, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney best exemplified the extent to which party orthodoxy has evolved from the interventionist foreign policy notions that predominated in Bush’s post-9/11 presidency: The front-runner for the 2012 GOP nomination called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan “as soon as possible” and said of the current state of the nearly decade-long war there, “Our troops shouldn’t go off and try to fight a war of independence for another nation.”
[….]
“If you believe that politics is a marketplace of ideas, there was an under-served market of people wanting to get out of Afghanistan and not enough people selling that,” Chris Preble, the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, told RCP. “When you ask the American people, ‘Do you want to be the world’s policeman?’ they say no. Rank-and-file Republicans hate nation-building.”
Though Preble’s views have to be considered with the understanding that he is a leading noninterventionist thinker, a growing pool of data appears to back up his conclusion that the Republican base has indeed shifted substantially on foreign policy from where it initially stood in the post-9/11 world.
America is broke and can’t afford these nation building project. The whole idea of spreading Democracy in the Islamic world was a Progressive concept anyway. What we need is a foreign policy based on national and economic interest. Spreading Democracy should not be our priorities. I would take 10 Pinochets over 100 Hamid Karzai. We should not care the nature of another nation’s government, only that they are allied with our interest. Realism is what a Conservative foreign policy should be base don.
The Bush doctrine has failed, it’s time to put it in the ash heap of failed Progressive ideas. We need the Reagan Doctrine of peace through strength.
Tags: Bush Doctrine, Jacksonianism, Wilsonianism
