"That brings us to Santorum and “strong foreign policy,” which means something radically different to him than it does to most of the rest of us. [George] Will doesn’t talk about Santorum’s foreign policy in the column, because there is probably nothing complimentary Will could say about it. If Romney’s foreign policy agenda last year could be fairly described as “omni-directional belligerence,” Santorum would probably say that Romney was far too timid and cautious in what he said. Santorum would probably agree with Bolton et al. that Romney agreed with Obama too often and didn’t attack him enough on these issues.
While someone could argue that Romney was just pandering to hard-liners during the campaign, Santorum truly is one of the hard-liners on foreign policy, so much so that he turned his re-election campaign into a referendum on his alarmist views and thereby guaranteed a landslide defeat. Shortly following his defeat in 2006, he restated the hard-line views that did so much to doom his campaign in this article. As Santorum saw it, even Bush and Gates were too weak-willed and feeble...
...Nothing has changed for Santorum in the years between his 2006 loss and today. If Santorum is the one defining what “strong foreign policy” means, we should very much hope that the GOP will be rid of it soon."
5 comments:
Hey, this is serious.
"Hey, this is serious."
Then it's above my pay grade.
I think a third Obama term is more likely than a first one for Santorum.
Regardless of the merits of it strategically, I don't think there is much demand for a "strong foreign policy". A lot of us are worried about Iran in particular and how that will effect nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and the inevitable powder keg resulting with Israel, but even there I don't think the American public has any stomach at this point for another war. That attitude alone is probably the most dangerous fact of all, because our enemies know it, and we will confirm it in the next election. It will take Iran going all in to change our perspective. Regardless, we have spent and diverted ourselves into impotency anyway.
Oh, I agree, we need to cool things down, not ramp them up. I was so relieved Obama took the lifeline Putin threw him to get out of bombing Syria.
I think a weak U.S. foreign policy will lead to very bad things, and be much more costly in the long run. It always is, but we don't have much choice at this point. Being active and assertive is not popular or affordable right now. We will have to depend on luck.
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