Foreign policy may help determine the next president — but how do we figure out the foreign policy differences between the different Republican contenders?
To many, most of the potential and declared GOP contenders seem very similar on foreign policy, with nearly all promising a more engaged America that will more meaningfully stand up to the world’s bad guys, from the Islamic State to the Islamic Republic. But what does that exactly mean in practice and exactly how do the GOP contenders differ from each another?
Despite what many in the media predicted in 2013, the Republican foreign policy debate is not between Rand Paul-style non-interventionists and John McCain-style hawks, largely because there are very few Republican non-interventionists in elected office. And even Paul seems to be trying to transform himself into much more of a hawk these days, at least in rhetoric. (RELATED: Forget Syria, The GOP Is Not Becoming A Non-Interventionist Party)
Instead, the Republican foreign policy debate is between various degrees of hawkishness. Most of the GOP contenders believe the U.S. should act tougher with Iran (with perhaps the exception of Paul) and most believe the U.S. should more robustly stand up for freedom and liberal democracy abroad.
But how far will a candidate be willing to go to support a democracy movement in a foreign land? Will they be willing to throw a pro-American dictator under the bus in support of a “democracy” revolution? Would they intervene militarily to stop the bloodshed of a civil war where there is little obvious strategic American interest?
Here are three questions that, if answered by the candidates, could begin to help delineate the foreign policy differences of the 2016 GOP primary field:
1.) What would you have done in during the 2011 Egyptian revolution? Was it right for the United States to help push longtime Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak aside? Or should the U.S. have stood behind America’s longtime, if often unsavory, ally?
2.) It’s March 2011. Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi are moving on Benghazi, where the revolution against the longtime Libyan dictator began. Some are warning that a massacre of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands will take place if the international community, led by the United States, does not act militarily to prevent it. President Obama, prodded by Hillary Clinton, reluctantly authorized the use of military force, which ultimately aided in Gaddafi’s overthrow. Gaddafi was of course a sadistic and brutal dictator, but at the time of his overthrow, he posed little threat to the United States and was in fact helping the U.S. in its fight against al-Qaida. Since his fall, Libya has become a failed state, where Islamist terrorists are able to freely roam. But let’s go back to March 2011 when many in the international community were calling on the American president to act to save Benghazi. How would you have responded as president — or not have responded?
3.) How should America have responded in the Syrian civil war? Should the U.S. be backing the rebels in Syria more robustly against the Iranian-backed dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad? If it’s too late to do so now because you believe the rebels have been overtaken by Islamists, is there a point where you would have supported getting fully behind the rebels? And if you believe the U.S. should not support either side, is there any role the U.S. should be playing in the conflict?
These are not simple questions and will likely elicit a range of answers from the GOP contenders. On Egypt, a candidate might say that there was no choice but to support the Egyptian revolution because there was no way the U.S. could have saved Mubarak — and besides, America should stand on the side of democracy, not dictators. Or, a candidate might argue the U.S. needed to stand by Mubarak because Egypt was not ready for liberal democracy, was helpful to American interests and, what’s more, by abandoning a longtime ally, it sent a message to other allies in the region that the U.S. could at any moment abandon them too.
On Libya, some candidates will probably say that there was no compelling American interest in aiding in Gaddafi’s overthrow, even if he was a despicable leader. Others will argue that whether he was still a threat to America or not, Gaddafi had American blood on his hands and that the U.S. correctly stood on the right side of history by aiding with his overthrow, even if they would have acted differently than the Obama administration to prevent the chaos that came afterward.
Of course, these are not the only answers to the questions and these are obviously not the only questions that could help distinguish various Republican candidates from each other. But they’re not a bad place to start to find some differentiation.