Barack Obama
Michele Bachmann
Herman Cain
Newt Gingrich
Jon Huntsman
Ron Paul
Rick Perry
Mitt Romney
Rick SantorumFour different Senate Republicans have four different ideas on how to alter U.S. aid to Egypt, in a struggle that is also becoming about the future of Republican leadership on foreign policy. Read More »
Sure, non-binding party platforms may have a limited impact on the positions presidential candidates take and the ways Americans vote, but they nevertheless highlight the issues at the center of a party's effort to define its international posture; in this case, the GOP's struggle to reconcile presumptive nominee Mitt Romney's embrace of American exceptionalism with Texas Rep. Ron Paul's considerably more modest vision of American power. Read More »
Ron Paul's treatment by mainstream media, other Republican hopefuls, and the punditry makes me think the W.B. Yeats lines "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" also describe the year 2012 in the United States. Indeed, Paul's experience in the nomination campaign suggests U.S. politics lacks reasoned substance, common sense, and an understanding of what America's Founding Fathers intended. Read More »
This week, the campaign was unexpectedly dominated by a debate over Russia policy. The back-and-forth was sparked by an embarrassing "hot mic" incident on Monday at a summit on Seoul, when President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "space" to tackle controversial issues such as missile defense after the election. "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility," he told the outgoing Russian leader, who promised to "transmit this information to Vladimir." Read More »
While the congressman from Texas has changed his views on certain issues over time -- Paul, for example, has become increasingly skeptical of climate change and increasingly tough on immigration, and now touts his ties with Ronald Reagan even though he denounced the Gipper's policies in 1987 -- he is, in many ways, a rare breed in politics these days: a sturdy sandal in a sea of flimsy flip-floppers. Read More »
Paul served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, spending time on the ground in countries like Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, and Turkey. He also sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Paul's libertarian, noninterventionist, empire-shunning foreign policy is often described as Tea Party isolationist, but he sees it as defending and strengthening the homeland within budgetary and constitutional constraints. “Isolationism is -- is something that the protectionists want,” Paul explained in June. “They want to close borders for people coming in, and they want to close trade, and I have no desire to do that all because I’m a free trader and I want as much travel and communication with other countries as possible. This is what the Founders advised. We were never given the authority to be the policemen of the world.”
The campaign hasn’t released much information about who's advising the congressman on foreign policy, but it did announce in August that it had hired constitutional and international-law expert Bruce Fein to advise on legal matters and the “dangers to national security of an increasingly interventionist foreign policy.”
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