Senator Rand Paul came out of the gates swinging this week, and one of his biggest swipes was at foreign aid, development and diplomacy funding. While his stated reason of cost doesn’t pass the sniff test—foreign aid costs about what Americans spent on $1 smartphone apps last year—that isn’t the worst thing about Paul’s plan. The real problem is that Rand Paul’s national security policy is a mismatch both for the world we live in and public opinion about what America’s role should be.
A basic premise of security spending is that we should buy the tools we need to meet the threats we face. The 21st century is full of challenges that don’t respond well to bombs and bullets. We can’t bomb nuclear knowledge out of Iran. We can’t send in a tank to deal with Ebola. And the F-22 is little use against a terror cell plotting in the heart of London. Paul’s approach would cut the very tools we need to address those threats: diplomacy with Iran, public health in Africa and public diplomacy in Pakistan.
This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise; Paul’s neo-libertarian worldview is a bit odd. What with its survivalists and preppers and tri-corner hats, it’s all a bit fetishistic for a real-world version of The Walking Dead where you hole up with your rifle, live behind a big wall and wait for the grid to go down. Applying that view to the international sphere becomes an exercise in overly simplistic analogy: the libertarian supplants the man in his castle with the nation surrounded by oceans and becomes an isolationist. These roots lie in corrupted nostalgia for the 1700s—an era of kings and mercantilism, when transatlantic trade took a month and transpacific trade didn’t exist. In those days, the vast geography of our continent offered opportunities for growth that today can only be met by trade beyond our shores. Paul’s views can’t adapt to a hyperconnected world of Internet communication and global economy.
President Paul would have at his disposal a big military, but no real diplomatic corps, no foreign aid and few tools of economic statecraft—the sanctions, summits, prods and pressures that grease international relations. Yet the problems of the world would not go away. And here lies an even bigger rub: With only force to use, Paul is more, not less, likely to become involved in military adventures overseas.
Without trade leverage, how does President Paul protect significant trading partners like Japan and South Korea from Chinese aggression in the South China Sea? Without sanctions available to him, Paul has few choices to confront Russian aggression on the border of the EU, our fourth largest trade partner. Without UN resolutions and the alliances to enforce them, how does Paul prevent a nuclear-armed Iran? Much of international relations is about creating more options when the set available to you looks bad. But when all you have is a bomber, everything starts looking like a target. By refusing the modern tools of statecraft and power, Rand Paul would tie one hand behind our back and then force us to fight with the other.
American feelings of weariness towards the world have had an impact on our policy preferences. From opposition to intervention in Syria and Ukraine to worries about military moves against Iran, hawkish choices today seem more off the table than on it, at least for voters. The assumption of neo-isolationists like Senator Paul is that voters who want less government at home also want less America in the world.
It turns out that this a simplified caricature. Rather than becoming truly isolationist, Americans have instead become skeptical of military intervention alone. Since 2001, American global engagement has been defined by the use of force, and we have learned costly lessons about the limits of American military power. It should be no surprise that when Americans are asked about “global engagement,” they actually hear “war.”
Yet dig into the particulars of the data and there is strong support for civilian tools of power. With Iran, Americans prefer negotiations to attack. In Syria, they prefer humanitarian support to air strikes. Americans give more private donations to international development projects than any other people in the world. These aren’t the views of a country that wants to withdraw; they are the views of people grasping for alternative ways to engage with the world.
Successful leaders will embrace the lessons of American leadership earned during the 20th century through clarity of values, diplomatic engagement, international development, and capable defense when necessary. That approach fits our world and our people much better than Senator Paul’s.
David Solimini is a Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and an independent consultant. Views expressed are his own. Follow him on Twitter: @CommsDirector.
