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On domestic policy, the Republican candidates in this month’s primary debate seemed to speak with one voice: Cut taxes, cut spending, repeal Obamacare, declare victory.
On foreign policy, though, they sounded a more uncertain trumpet. There were flashes of the post-9/11 confidence—as in Tim Pawlenty’s declaration that post-Saddam Iraq represents a “shining example” to the Middle East. But there was also pessimism about Afghanistan, skepticism about the Libyan intervention, and a general sense that the United States is bearing too many burdens overseas, and paying too high a price.
For the first time in a decade, it seems, the Republican Party doesn’t know where it stands on foreign policy. Instead of being united around George W. Bush’s vision of democratic revolution, conservatives are increasingly divided over what lessons to draw from America’s post-9/11 interventions.
But while this division shows up in the current presidential field, it’s distilled to its essence in two high-profile Republicans who aren’t running (not in 2012, at least): Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Rubio and Paul both were discouraged from running for the Senate by party leaders. Both rode Tea Party support to unexpected primary victories. In Washington, both have defined themselves as stringent government-cutters.
But on foreign policy, the similarities disappear. Rubio is the great neoconservative hope, the champion of a foreign policy that boldly goes abroad in search of monsters to destroy. In the Senate, he’s constantly pressed for a more hawkish line against the Mideast’s bad actors. His maiden Senate speech was a paean to national greatness, whose peroration invoked John F. Kennedy and insisted that America remain the “watchman on the wall of world freedom.”
Paul, on the other hand, has smoothed the crankish edges off his famous father’s antiwar conservatism, reframing it in the language of constitutionalism, the national interest and the budget deficit.
In a recent address at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Paul presented himself as the real foreign-policy “moderate” who believes we should be “somewhere some of the time” without trying to be “everything to everyone.”
But even this measured critique of interventionism makes a striking contrast with Rubio’s worldview. Where Rubio talks sweepingly about America’s mission in the world, Paul expresses skepticism about nation-building and democracy promotion. Where Rubio invokes World War II and the cold war, Paul invokes the founding fathers’ fears about executive power and overseas entanglements. Where Rubio borrows Ronald Reagan’s expansive rhetoric, Paul praises Reagan’s caution in committing U.S. troops to foreign wars.
They do share some common ground. Both emphasize peace through strength. Both are skeptical of international institutions. And Paul has been at pains to express support for operations like the one that killed Osama bin Laden.
But the right’s two rising stars would ultimately take the Republican Party in very different directions. Both senators have criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the Libyan intervention. But Rubio has argued that we should be striking harder against Gadhafi, while Paul has dismissed the war as unwise and unconstitutional.
Among conservatism’s foreign policy elite, Rubio’s worldview commands more support. But in the grass roots, it’s a different story. A recent Pew poll found that the share of conservative Republicans agreeing that the U.S. should “pay less attention to problems overseas” has risen from 36 percent in 2004 to 55 percent today.
This doesn’t mean that Paul’s vision is destined to win out. The country is weary of war, but the story Rubio tells, with eloquence and passion, is still tremendously appealing—the story of a great republic armed and righteous, with no limits on what it can accomplish in the world.
This is a story that many conservatives—and many Americans—want to believe. Once, I believed it myself.
But that was many years and many wars ago, and now I think Rand Paul is right.•
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Douthat is a New York Times op-ed columnist. Send comments on this column to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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