A rather interesting topic with far-reaching implications has cropped up as a result of an online debate between Mark Levin and Peter Wehner writing at Commentary. Wehner claimed Reagan as "the Gold Standard" of conservatism. The debate touched on foreign policy, important not just today because of Libya, but also for 2012. Ricochet points that today: The Conservative Schism on Libya. One can see the neo-conservative influence to which I refer in my headline in that piece.
This bit from Troy Senik refers to what can best be described as those with a Reagan-ite view on foreign policy. But was Reagan someone filled with doubt when it came to American might? Of course not. So, how did this happen? See below.
More than anything, this group embodies a foreign policy of doubt – doubt at America’s ability to fundamentally reshape alien cultures and governments, doubt at the notion of democracy promotion and nation building as unalloyed goods, and doubt about the integrity of military adventures that have amorphous goals from day one.
It just so happens Real Clear Politics has a great, yet brief, concise item on Reagan's foreign policy.
Since Republicans seem to agree that Reagan set the standard, it is worth asking: what exactly was his approach toward democracy promotion abroad?
... Conservatives, of all people, understand that political revolutions frequently end up leading to violent, terrible outcomes unanticipated by the liberal, the idealistic and the well-meaning.
Certainly Reagan understood this. Revolutions create power vacuums that are often filled by relatively small groups of well-organized political radicals, militants and extremists. During the Cold War, the most important such groups internationally were Communists. Today the most important such groups are Islamist extremists. To be sure, today's radical Islamists do not control a global superpower, but they do command the sympathy and support of millions of Muslims, and constitute a kind of loose transnational insurgency with a demonstrated capacity for violence.
As you read this, keep in mind, Reagan's foreign policy worked. Democracy was consistently on the rise around the world when he left office, as also noted at RCP.
... The main lines of Reagan's record on democracy promotion can therefore be summarized fairly briefly: Reagan distinguished between allies and adversaries. In relation to U.S. adversaries, Reagan issued ringing and sincere denunciations of undemocratic practices in order to indicate moral concern as well as to weaken hostile regimes. In relation to American allies, on the other hand, Reagan was usually much more circumspect, because he understood that to destabilize an autocratic but U.S.-aligned government might very well lead to something worse. There was certainly some movement toward more pointed forms of pro-democracy pressure on U.S. allies during Reagan's second term, but even then, Reagan's first instinct was always to bolster, support, and reassure allies, rather than to critique them.
Now, while Mickey Kaus sees the action in Libya as a step toward one world government, the main reason neo-conservatives are objecting to it is the role Obama is allowing the UN to play. However, in theory, they don't generally object to employing American hard power to advance democracy around the world, especially in the Middle-east given its current dynamics.
Here's how they got there: Toward a neo-Reagan-ite Foreign Policy. I'd swear neo-cons were all Matrix fans, given the way they throw the word neo around - if the usage didn't pre-date the movie. But read this section below from near the bottom of page 30 in the above linked pdf file. Then, also be sure to read Stanley Kurtz on Obama, Samantha Power and the emerging foreign policy doctrine on the Left.
Below is how Kristol, Kagan and Co. began co-opting the Reagan legacy in 1996 for neo-conservatism. Call it human rights, or democracy, in some ways, the foreign policy of the neo-conservative below - one I doubt we can afford going forward - has more in common with today's Left as described by Kurtz, than it does with Reagan's. In a sense, some number of intellectuals from the Left broke with them years ago. Unfortunately, their intellectual tradition seems to have landed them in the very same place all these years later. Sure, the politics are different given the D vs R divide. But that's simply the window dressing. The foundational principle is inherently the same - and progressive - one could argue, its merely expressed differently purely for political purposes.
Reagan's foreign policy was built on strength and faith in America and democracy, not doubt. It's a foreign policy that worked and one to which conservatives should revert - not allow to be twisted, or perverted, which is precisely what Kristol and Kagan do below. No wonder The Weekly Standard tries so hard to run down emergent conservatives of the Reagan strain. Were they to reclaim Reagan's foreign policy for the GOP, along with his domestic views, neo-conservatism would have nowhere to go but Left, again - or, they'd simply go away. Frankly, neo-conservatism may do that anyway, given the results of recent years. And we can't always have 2, or 3 wars going on year after year, what with the cost of ammunitions today.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS July/August 1996
Republicans are surely the genuine heirs to the Reagan tradition. The 1994 election is often said to have represented one last victory for Ronald Reagan's domestic agenda. But Reagan's earlier successes rested as much on foreign as on domestic policy. Over the long term, victory for American conservatives depends on recapturing the spirit of Reagan's foreign policy as well.
Indeed, American conservatism cannot govern by domestic policy alone. In the 1990s conservatives have built their agenda on two pillars of Reaganism: relimiting government to curtail the most intrusive and counterproductive aspects of the modern welfare state, and reversing the widespread collapse of morals and standards in American society. But it is hard to imagine conservatives achieving a lasting political realignment in this country without the third pillar: a coherent set of foreign policy principles that at least bear some resemblance to those propounded by Reagan. The remoralization of America at home ultimately requires the remoralization of American foreign policy. For both follow from Americans' belief that the principles of the Declaration of Independence are not merely the choices of a particular culture but are universal, enduring, "self-evident" truths. That has been, after all, the main point of the conservatives' war against a relativistic multiculturalism. For conservatives to preach the importance of upholding the core elements of the Western tradition at home, but to profess indifference to the fate of American principles abroad, is an inconsistency that cannot help but gnaw at the heart of conservatism.
Conservatives these days succumb easily to the charming old metaphor of the United States as a "city on a hill." They hark back, as George Kennan did in these pages not long ago, to the admonition of John Quincy Adams that America ought not go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy." But why not? The alternative is to leave monsters on the loose, ravaging and pillaging to their hearts' content, as Americans stand by and watch.
What may have been wise counsel in 1823, when America was a small, isolated power in a world of European giants, is no longer so, when America is the giant. Because America has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world's monsters, most of which can be found without much searching, and because the responsibility for the peace and security of the international order rests so heavily on America's shoulders, a policy of sitting atop a hill and leading by example becomes in practice a policy of cowardice and dishonor.
And more is at stake than honor. Without a broader, more enlightened understanding of America's interests, conservatism will too easily degenerate into the pinched nationalism of Buchanan's "America First," where the appeal to narrow self-interest masks a deeper form of self-loathing. A true "conservatism of the heart" ought to emphasize both personal and national responsibility, relish the opportunity for national engagement, embrace the possibility of national greatness, and restore a sense of the heroic, which has been sorely lacking in American foreign policy—and American conservatism—in recent years.
