This one’s for Arthur Gilroy:
In recent weeks, [Sen. Rand] Paul has substantially toughened his line against Russia, ruled out containing a nuclear Iran (a position with which he had previously flirted), pledged support for U.S. aid to Israel (another flip-flop), and remained open to bombing Iraq. He’s also hired one of John McCain’s foreign-policy advisors.
Paul is not staking out these positions to win over actual voters. Given that ordinary Republicans oppose arming the rebels in Syria, want a negotiated deal on Iran, and want America to refrain more from intervening militarily overseas, Paul would probably gain greater public support by sticking with a more dovish line and thus distinguishing himself in a multi-candidate field. What’s motivating him is not the New Hampshire primary but the invisible primary. Paul has been ardently wooing GOP donors, who tend to be far more hawkish than Republicans as a whole, and who have threatened to mobilize against his candidacy. And according to Politico, he’s told several of them that his foreign-policy views are “evolving.”
I’ll say they’re evolving.
On the other hand, when it comes to foreign policy, it’s much less important what the public thinks than what they will support over the long term. They might support starting a war that will wind up being a quagmire that they don’t support. They might oppose taking a military action when it could be successful and decisive and then blame political leaders for not acting before it was too late. The one area where public opinion should be strongly taken into account is this: will your military effort have any chance of succeeding before the public turns decisively against it?
At the moment, the people are keeping our policymakers on a very tight leash, which means any endeavor that will require much time and sacrifice to achieve, should not be attempted. It will fail.
What does this mean for managing problems in the Middle East? It means that the answer must lie in multilateral solutions, and that any military action, whether air strikes or the use of special forces, must be done on a limited basis and in concert with a more comprehensive regional diplomatic strategy. I would not advocate a containment strategy for combating the Islamic State, but one that unites all the regional players against them. At the same time, where America needs to take leadership is in steering all parties away from strategies aimed at winning sectarian battles. This most definitely includes getting Saudi Arabia to chill the fuck out with their promotion of anti-Shiite jihadists. We can see where that has led, and it’s become at least a big of a threat to world peace as a potential Iranian nuclear bomb. Both threats need to be dealt with simultaneously, and with equal seriousness.
For all the faults of the Baathists, Syria and Iraq were pluralistic ecumenical countries not known for religious fanaticism, where religious minorities led quality lives and intermarriage was frequent and unremarkable. If anything close to that Humpty Dumpty can be put back together, the prerequisite is that the Sunni emirs of the Gulf stop attempting to wipe out the Shiites in Syria and Iraq. Then, on the other side, the government in Baghdad has to be inclusive so that the Sunnis don’t feel so beleaguered that they feel the need to support the Islamic State.
The number one priority should be sectarian reconciliation.
