Rand Paul needs to get his story straight on foreign policy

What is Rand Paul's view on foreign policy?

What should be one of the easiest questions in the world to answer is actually surprisingly hard. The senator from Kentucky is a frustratingly moving target. He should pick a point of view and stick to it.

Rand Paul's entire raison d'être as a politician is to put a nicer, more moderate face on his father's brand of libertarianism, to broaden it beyond a hard core of fans who are devoted but not nearly numerous enough. Among these voters, foreign policy obviously plays a big role — these are the non-interventionists within a mostly hawkish party, and post-Iraq their ideas have great resonance.

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Paul fils has tried to chart a difficult, triangulating course on foreign policy. He wants to moderate his father's extremism and get away from some of his crankishness. He also is trying avoid some GOP third rails (like offending Israel). But he still wants to articulate a critique of foreign policy hawkery.

Paul has taken a lot of heat for this from pundits. They say he should stop trying to triangulate and just own his non-interventionist self. I, for one, think his triangulation is genius, on both political and substantive grounds.

Politically, it's a clear winner. Paul will always get the non-interventionist vote, by default. Some of them might whine that they're going to stay home — until they see the alternative is Marco Rubio or King Jeb. But there are plenty of voters out there who are wary of both extreme hawkishness and extreme dovishness. Given how strongly hawkish almost all the GOP candidates are going to be, Paul has a lot of space to remain the anti-hawk candidate while still being pretty hawkish.

And on substantive grounds, it's the right idea as well, because, well, non-interventionism sucks. The simple fact of the matter is that America is the de facto guarantor of the world's security; that this state of affairs is what the world's economy and global order are built on; that any imaginable alternative is too scary to contemplate; and that, therefore, America will always be implicated in some way or another in international squabbles.

What the GOP needs is not so much an advocate for non-interventionism, but a case against reflexive hawkishness. Some situations call for hawkishness, and a lot of it. Others for dovishness. The world is complex!

The GOP's problem is not hawkishness per se, but a lack of subtlety. When all you have is a hammer, etc. When all you have is the world's biggest military...

Paul's genius was in painting himself, not as a hardcore noninterventionist, but as a realist — as someone who is going to be hard-nosed about American interests, and who is not afraid to intervene if necessary, but only if America's direct national security interests call for it. This was great politically because it moved him closer to the center, and great substantively, because it allowed him to articulate a much stronger critique of the GOP's foreign policy.

But now Paul is talking about how GOP hawks are to blame for ISIS (as opposed to, you know, radical Islam). This is the stuff of classic, crankish non-interventionism: America's enemies exist only because America goads them. You might say America is just asking for it by strutting around with its stars and stripes and aircraft carriers.

If that's what Rand Paul truly believes in his heart of hearts, then he should own it and run on that! It would be a bad thing for his political prospects, and for the party he hopes to reform, and for our public debate, but a man of principle should follow his conscience.

But if he still wants to do the realist thing, then he should stick to that. This debate is too important for his message to get muddled.

Pick one, Rand. And then give 'em hell. We're all watching.