Rand Paul's flailing search for a hawkish foreign policy
The junior senator from Kentucky wants to be both hawk and dove. Instead, he winds up looking like a turkey.
Rand Paul this week derided President Obama's approach to ISIS, then explained what he would do differently if he were president. It turned out, though, that the Republican senator from Kentucky and the president pretty much see eye to eye on the issue.
In a Time op-ed, Paul wrote that he would have "acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS" by launching airstrikes, arming the Kurdish rebels, bolstering Israel's Iron Dome missile defense, and securing the U.S. border.
One problem: Obama has already done just that, or most of it, anyway. Obama has ordered more than 125 airstrikes in the past month against ISIS; shipped arms to Kurdish forces; provided $225 million in emergency funding for the Iron Dome; and, in the face of GOP obstructionism on immigration, eyed executive action to strengthen the border.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The only area where Paul diverges from Obama is that he would order Congress back from vacation to hear his plan. Given Congress' apparent reluctance to take on this issue, this is the foreign policy equivalent of Vanilla Ice's claiming that adding one more note to Ice, Ice, Baby meant he wasn't ripping off Freddie Mercury.
Paul's excoriation of Obama is remarkable given that only a few months ago, he explicitly defended the president and blamed ISIS' proliferation on former President George W. Bush and his gung-ho interventionism.
"I don't blame President Obama," he said in a late June appearance on Meet the Press. At the same time, he threw cold water on the idea of a U.S. military intervention, saying, "I'm not so sure where the clear-cut American interest is."
And as recently as August, Paul wrote a column arguing that hawkish interventionists had "abetted the rise of ISIS."
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
On the one hand, it's not surprising Paul is cribbing the administration's ideas. Grandstanding aside, almost everyone is pretty much on the same page about how to handle ISIS.
But Paul's newfound hawkishness is remarkable given his past tendency toward isolationism, which formed the heart of his unique appeal within the GOP. It was also the greatest obstacle to his winning the GOP presidential nomination in a party full of foreign policy hawks.
That dovish position grew even more problematic once Russia invaded Crimea, and once ISIS began swarming across Syria and Iraq. Though Pew last year found Americans' appetite for foreign entanglements waning, that trend has now reversed, most sharply among Republicans.
Paul is now racing to shed the "isolationist" tag that dogged his proto-presidential candidacy. His Time op-ed even bears the none-too-subtle headline, "I am not an isolationist."
But Paul is also spitting the same anti-interventionist lines that boosted him in the first place among his war-weary, libertarian faithful. Paul is speaking out of both sides of his mouth, and as a result his Time column reads like a bunch of flip-flopping nonsense.
Paul insists he is merely adapting: "I am not an isolationist, nor am I an interventionist," he wrote in Time. "I look at the world and consider war, realistically and constitutionally."
It's certainly possible for changing circumstances to alter one's global calculus. But they can just as easily alter one's political calculus, too. In Paul's case, it's hard to see his abrupt about-face as anything but a bid to remain relevant as his party lurches rightward on foreign policy.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.
-
Scottie Scheffler: victory for the 'pre-eminent golfer of this era'
Why Everyone's Talking About Masters victory is Scheffler's second in three years
By The Week Staff Published
-
Crossword: April 20, 2024
The Week's daily crossword
By The Week Staff Published
-
Sudoku hard: April 20, 2024
The Week's daily hard sudoku puzzle
By The Week Staff Published
-
Arizona court reinstates 1864 abortion ban
Speed Read The law makes all abortions illegal in the state except to save the mother's life
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Rwanda plan is less a deterrent and more a bluff'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week UK Published
-
Henry Kissinger dies aged 100: a complicated legacy?
Talking Point Top US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered as both foreign policy genius and war criminal
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Last updated
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published
-
More covfefe: is the world ready for a second Donald Trump presidency?
Today's Big Question Republican's re-election would be a 'nightmare' scenario for Europe, Ukraine and the West
By Sorcha Bradley, The Week UK Published