Rand Paul And The Ignorant Arrogance of Non-Interventionism

Note: Originally Written December 2011

Amid the political squalor over the McCain-Levin Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Bill and the myriad number of domestic issues currently plaguing the country, a recent exchange between Sens.Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rand Paul (R-KY) nearly went softly into the night of forgotten postal name changes and fuzzy resolutions.

   After Sen. Rubio offered an overwhelmingly bipartisan resolution trumpeting closer NATO ties with the tiny Caucausian republic of Georgia, doing so much as to place it for unanimous consent, his measure was blocked by the cantankerous Paul the Younger. Paul hurriedly admonished the action as possibly leading to military conflict with Russia, whose 2008 invasion of the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia elicited widespread American support for the underdog government in Tblisi.

   This spat nearly went unnoticed but for the good graces of the paleoconservative/libertarian Right, whose feelers were all abuzz with hyperbolic relief and hushed reverence.     

Noted paleoconservative (and Buchananite) commentator Jack Hunter was aglow with admiration for Paul, “the only Capitol Hill leader who tried to prevent a war with Russia last week”.  Conversely, he had nothing but admonition for Rubio, claiming “some Republican senators attempted to lay the groundwork for a shooting war with Russia. I wish I were exaggerating.” Wish granted. Hunter then quotes foreign policy juggernaut Pat "Amen Corner" Buchanan, who waxes conspiratorial on ties between individuals in the Federal government and the Georgian state.

Likewise, the paleoconservative/libertarian blogosphere was awash with praise, marking Paul’s single-handed stop to what would inevitably result in nuclear war with Putin’s Russia. With characteristic rhetorical flourish, Paul was painted as a paleoconservative Mr. Smith in a conflict-itchy Capitol, a Samson pushing away the pillars of warmongering edifices with naught but his force of will.

But as with most non-inverventionist bally-ho, facts and logic can be escaping little buggers.

To begin, Rubio’s amendment would not have automatically granted NATO membership to Tblisi; rather, it would have recommended that a strategy for Georgia’s eventual entry into the organization, first promised in 2008, would be presented at the succeeding NATO summit. Yet typical of the hyperventilating non-interventionists, Rubio’s modest proposal somehow spelled the dawn of war between the US and the Russian Federation.

 To follow on the footstool of Paul’s argument, it is simply ludicrous to assume that NATO membership would somehow spur Russia into conflict with Georgia or the United States. Russia would not only risk attacking Georgia because of the threat of NATO involvement, but is wholly unprepared for containing its own citizens protesters  much less assailing a neighbor over its well-known intentions to enter NATO.

 Russia’s actions in 2008 were built on the myth of invincibility for Putin and United Russia (his party), where satellites would be relegated to a status similar to their pre-1991 relations with the Kremlin. Even before United Russia’s embarrassing defeat at the polls these past few days, Russia’s economic woes and insecurities in the hinterlands leave them ill-equipped to react aggressively to closer NATO-Georgian alliances.

 Additionally, for those on the Old Right who accuse Georgia and the Tsakashivil regime as instigators of the conflict, NATO membership for Georgia would also curtail their ambitions to, as fantastically asserted, attack Russia. What, and receive an automatic Article V invocation from the whole of NATO?

 This little spat, while marginal in its geo-political importance, illustrates several underlying propensities of the non-interventionist conservative. First is the arrogance to assume that anti-war conservatives are noble sentinels dutifully guarding the Republic against warmongers of both parties. Anti-interventionist sentiment has left the United States woefully unprepared for conflict and morally ambigious in our foreign dealings, such as the Lindberghite Old Right during the 1930s that made British appeasement seem hawkish and forthright by comparison.

Furthermore, non-interventionists are insistent that an American removal from conflicts in the world, and its withdraw of the diplomatic rattling saber to a rusty hilt, will prevent other nations from seizing the initiative in their own designs. The hyper-triumphantalism for which the old Right has so long criticized neoconservatives is far less utopian than a foreign policy that too often sees American action as the cause of furthering conflicts throughout the globe, and that peace can be assured by avoiding conflict at at costs.

 These deficiencies are clearly evident in Paul’s knee-jerk position on the issue. While an admirable Senator in many facets, he has fallen into the antiquated, sullied idea that the slightest action on behalf of an ally would be another case of American militarism creating problems abroad. The arrogant ignorance of non-interventionism is in its full-frontal and wholly serious belief that simplicity, cookie-cutter neutralism, and paranoia are adequate substitutes for a measured, exceptionalist foreign policy where regimes and actions are weighed not by the monochromatic lens of “No action”, but on their merits.