http://www.aei.org/publication/heres-the-problem-with-ted-cruzs-un-reaganesque-america-first-foreign-policy/Here’s the problem with Ted Cruz’s un-Reaganesque ‘America first’ foreign policyJames Pethokoukis
December 16, 2015
Ted Cruz at last night’s GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas:
I believe in a America first foreign policy, that far too often President Obama and Hillary Clinton — and, unfortunately, more than a few Republicans — have gotten distracted from the central focus of keeping this country safe.
So let’s go back to the beginning of the Obama administration, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama led NATO in toppling the government in Libya. They did it because they wanted to promote democracy. A number of Republicans supported them. The result of that — and we were told then that there were these moderate rebels that would take over. Well, the result is, Libya is now a terrorist war zone run by jihadists.
Move over to Egypt. Once again, the Obama administration, encouraged by Republicans, toppled Mubarak who had been a reliable ally of the United States, of Israel, and in its place, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood came in, a terrorist organization. And we need to learn from history. These same leaders — Obama, Clinton, and far too many Republicans — want to topple Assad. Assad is a bad man. Gadhafi was a bad man. Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us — at least Gadhafi and Mubarak — in fighting radical Islamic terrorists.
And if we topple Assad, the result will be ISIS will take over Syria, and it will worsen U.S. national security interests. And the approach, instead of being a Woodrow Wilson democracy promoter … we ought to hunt down our enemies and kill ISIS rather than creating opportunities for ISIS to take control of new countries.
Cruz, in a nutshell: Assad, Gadhafi, Mubarak may not remind one of Thomas Jefferson but at least they brought stability. Nixonian détente for the 21st century. And there is a difference between nasty authoritarian governments and death cults with delusions of greatness and a global caliphate. So we should take our friends where we can find them.
Hmm. In response, let me pull out a bit from a recent post by my AEI colleague Gary Schmitt:
When push came to shove, President Reagan pressed strongmen in both South Korea and the Philippines to stand aside in favor of a turn to democratic rule. Moreover, carried out consistently, Cruz’s willingness to live with dictatorships would have been at odds with Reagan’s larger strategic goal of bringing down the Soviet Union and freeing the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. In theory, Cruz would have been happy with the Nixon policy of “détente.” …
Cruz’s position on the overthrows of Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi is also a canard. Was the Middle East really going to be more stable with Iraq led by a dictator who had invaded two countries? Who had terrorized Kurds and Shia alike and used chemical weapons? Who had employed and sheltered terrorists? Who was only a year or so away from building a nuclear weapon in 1990 and had plans to acquire that capacity once free of the UN sanctions regime—a regime that was well on its way to falling apart by the late 1990s? Does Cruz really think either Saddam or his blood–thirsty sons were going to be a stabilizing force over time?
The real causes of the ongoing instability in the Middle East were Bush’s team taking too long to stabilize Iraq post-Saddam and then, once they got down to business, the Obama team tossing that success overboard. And, of course, the problem in Libya was making no effort whatsoever to deal with a post-Gadhafi Libya. In short, the intervention wasn’t the problem; the problem was not being serious about it.
As with any broad policy, prudence should guide how and when we promote and support democrats over autocrats, but history shows that dictatorships over the long run are not likely to be reliable partners. Staying in power is a dictator’s principal goal—a goal that prevents such a regime from being a true ally in assisting the US in maintaining a rules-based, liberal international order precisely because such an order lies in conflict with the legitimacy of the dictator’s own rule.
