sign in sign up
<<
Home , John Bolton, Paleoconservatism, Rand Paul

, Democracy, and Required Reading Fonte, John. “The Suicide of Liberal Democracy?” ...... 3 Nau, Henry. “What is Conservative Internationalism?” ...... 21 Tarcov, Nathan. “Principle and prudence in foreign policy: the founders’ perspective...... 42 Douthat, Ross. “A Hawk Takes Flight.” ...... 58 2

Sovereignty or Submission Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others?

John Fonte

with a Foreword by John O'Sullivan

ENCOUNTER BOOKS NEWYORK · LONDON 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Also by Henry R. Nau Conservative Internationalism Perspectives 011 : Power, Institutions and Ideas, 4th edition, CQ Press Worldviews of Aspiring Pnwers: Domestic Foreign Policy Dehates Armed Diplomacy in , India, . Japan and , Oxford University Press, co-editor and contributor Under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan At Home Ahmad: Identity and Pnwer in American Foreign Policy, Cornell University Press Trade and Security: U.S. Policies at Cross-Purfwses, American Enterprise Institute The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy HENRY R. NAU into the 1 YY()s, Oxford University Press Domestic Trade Politics and the Uruguay Round, with a new preface by the author Columbia University Press, editor and contributor Technology Transfer and U.S. Foreign Policy, Praeger National Politics and International Technology: Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe, Johns Hopkins University Press

Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

AMERICA'S DEFENSE DILEMMAS: II

Principle and prudence in foreign policy: the founders' perspective NATHAN TARCOV

political community that achieved independent existenceA through armed struggle, the of America is founded on principles that justify and regulate the use of force. Its policies for developing and employing its capac­ ities to use force have been defended and attacked at home in part on the basis of those principles. Geopolitical facts and technological innovations, as well as strategic and tactical imperatives common to political communities of widely differing principles, may be more important in shaping precisely how force is used and what capaci­ ties to use it are developed. But the distinctive, fundamental politi­ cal principles of a political community are especially important in shaping why force is used and why the capability to use it is ac­ quired. Why force is used in turn critically influences when, if not always directly how, it is used. Once force is used war may have its own logic, but in peacetime the ability to use force has an effect on events that depends decisively on what ends or principles are un­ derstood to justify and regulate its use. Appreciating a country's basic political principles does not enable one to predict the particular outcomes of its debates about defense

The original version of thisarticle was prepared for the Kenyon College Public AffairsConference Center. This is printed here with Kenyon'skind permission.

45 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 5/12/2020 Opinion | A Hawk Takes Flight - 58 https://nyti.ms/2pCXkw5

ROSS DOUTHAT A Hawk Takes Flight

By Ross Douthat

March 24, 2018

Now that has finally ascended from the limbo of the green room to the Valhalla of the , we need to settle the first question of his tenure: Is he a “neocon” or a “paleocon”?

I have seen both terms used, the former more promiscuously, to describe ’s new national security adviser. But they’re both misdescriptions, and explaining why is a useful way of putting Trump’s foreign policy team (and its distinctive dangers) in intellectual and historical perspective.

Foreign policy conservatives can be grouped into four broad categories. The first group, the genuine paleocons, are the oldest and least influential: Their lineage goes back to the antiwar conservatism of the 1930s, and to postwar Republicans who regarded our buildup as a big mistake.

The last paleocon to play a crucial role in U.S. politics was the Republican Robert Taft, who opposed NATO and became a critic of the Korean War. tried to revive in the 1990s; The American Conservative magazine and the carry the torch in intellectual debates. But the tendency’s only politically significant heir right now is Senator .

President George W. Bush meeting with John R. Bolton in 2006. Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Except that even Paul, wary of the label, would probably describe himself instead as a realist, linking himself to the of Dwight Eisenhower, and George H. W. Bush — internationalist, stability-oriented, committed to the Pax Americana but skeptical of grand crusades, and open to working out cynical arrangements rather than pushing American power to its limit.

This cynicism explains why realists have found their chief rivals among the neoconservatives, a group best defined as liberal anti- Communists who moved right in the 1970s as the Democratic Party moved left, becoming more hawkish and unilateralist but retaining a basic view that American power should be used for moral purpose, to spread American ideals.

Thus neoconservatives despised the Nixon White House’s realpolitik; they cheered ’s anti-Communism; they chafed under George H.W. Bush’s realism and backed humanitarian interventions under Democratic presidents; and most famously they regarded the as a chance to democratize the Middle East. And then when that war went badly, they became the natural scapegoats …

… Even though some of the most disastrous Iraq decisions were made by members of the fourth conservative faction, the pure hawks, the group to which John Bolton emphatically belongs. The hawks share the neocons’ aggressiveness and the realists’ wariness of nation building; they also have a touch of paleoconservatism, embracing “America First” without its non-interventionist implications. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/opinion/sunday/john-bolton-hawk-war.html 5/12/2020 Opinion | A Hawk Takes Flight - The New York Times But the hawkish tradition, from Douglas MacArthur down to (a realist reborn as a hawk post-9/11) and now Bolton, is 59 distinguished by simplicity: The default response to any challenge should be military escalation, the imposition of America’s will by force — and if one dangerous regime is succeeded by another, you just go in and kill the next round of bad guys, too.

Most Republican administrations have placed hawks, neocons and realists in complex internal alignments. The invasion of Iraq, for instance, was championed by hawks and neocons with realists in uneasy and soon-disillusioned support; by the end of the Bush presidency, the hawks had been marginalized and realists like Robert Gates were supervising a neoconservative-hatched strategy, the surge.

Donald Trump’s vision, though, promised a different combination, mixing a revived paleoconservatism — hence his NATO skepticism, his right-wing “come home, America” pose — with a realist desire for a Russian détente and a hawkish attitude toward terrorism. Trump made his antipathy to neoconservatives obvious, and they returned the sentiment: The most anti-Trump voices on the right belong to the democracy promoters of the Bush era.

In Trump year one, the paleocon-ish elements in his circle — , most prominently — were sidelined by H. R. McMaster and James Mattis, and Trump ended up with a realist-leaning foreign policy run by businessmen and generals, with occasionally sounding neoconservative notes at the U.N.

But Trump didn’t get along with McMaster and — and he clearly thinks he might like hawks better. So now we have an administration in which both paleoconservatism and are sidelined, and straight-up hawkishness is institutionally ascendant as it has rarely been in modern presidencies — save in the Peak Cheneyism following 9/11.

Boltonism need not be as disastrous as Cheneyism. If a realist like Cheney can turn into a “1 percent doctrine” hawk, then perhaps Bolton can transform the other way, and find a strategic prudence that his “let’s fight everyone” punditry conspicuously lacks. Also, Mattis’s military form of realism might have a restraining influence over Trump, and Trump’s bluff and bluster might not readily translate into okaying the war-on-all-fronts strategy that Bolton has tended to endorse.

But a foreign policy team managed by hawks, untouched by neoconservative idealism and cut loose from Trump’s paleocon tendencies, seems more likely than not to give us what the hawkish persuasion always wants: more wars, and soon.

I invite you to follow me on (@DouthatNYT).

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on March 25, 2018, Section SR, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Hawk Takes Flight

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/opinion/sunday/john-bolton-hawk-war.html