Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War II

Conclusion: Republicans and U.S. Foreign Policy in theAge of Obama

Conclusion Republicans and U.S. Foreign Policy in the Age of Obama Summary and Findings The evolution of Republican foreign policy since the s is commonly misunderstood. The traditional storyline is that of a progress from isolationism to internationalism, but as we saw, this is not especially helpful analytically, and it begs more questions than it answers. Prior to World War II, even Republicans like Robert Taft did not call for the strict isolation of the United States from world affairs, any more than later Republicans embraced every form of international commitment. The real story is not progress to internationalism but rather the transition to interventionism from anti-intervention. Republicans have become much more willing over time to embrace U.S. military intervention overseas—a development that had already begun in the s and that has continued throughout the years. Eisenhower, for example, was considerably more comfortable than Taft with American military commitments abroad. The two Bushes, for their part, were the first Republican presidents over the last century to initiate major foreign wars, both of them in Iraq. The trajectory has therefore been one of escalating U.S. military intervention abroad. A close complement to this rising interventionism was an increased Republican hawkishness over the long term with regard to foreign policy. That is, Republicans became increasingly comfortable with a national security policy relying on the accumulation of American military power, and confident in the utility of armed force to address international challenges. Eisenhower, for example, was hardly a pacifist, but he had certain doubts about the wisdom of major military interventions in the developing world. Even Reagan showed considerable practical caution with regard to such interventions. By the time of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, however, that caution had given way to confident optimism and an embrace of preventive warfare as a centerpiece of U.S. national security policy. Yet it would be wrong to ascribe this long-term development simply to recent GOP leaders or ideas, since the trend toward increased Republican hawkishness began much earlier. Taft himself by the early s had undergone a striking change of heart, criticizing the Democrats for doing too little to roll back communism overseas, and accepting a much larger role for the U.S. military abroad than he ever would have envisioned in the s. Barry Goldwater, for his part, never had a chance to put his foreign policy ideas into practice, but he was far more hawkish and interventionist than Eisenhower, Kennedy, or LBJ. It would consequently be a stretch to suggest that the long-term Republican trend toward hawkish foreign policies is due, for example, to neoconservative ideas that became influential only in the s. The continuities in Republican foreign policy are as striking as the changes. The most important such continuity is a consistent, hard-line American nationalism. Republicans believe in American exceptionalism , have sought to preserve their country’s freedom of action in world affairs, and have tried to avoid what they view as excessive accommodation toward hostile or threatening nations. Even those GOP leaders who negotiated with adversaries, such as Richard Nixon, have done so with an underlying assumption of continued strategic competition. Republicans have rarely been accommodationist or truly dovish when it comes to foreign policy. Even GOP anti-interventionists such as Taft and his successors have usually been quite nationalistic in their foreign policy approach, jealous of American sovereignty and looking to promote concrete U.S. interests relative to other nations. This sense of American nationalism constitutes a connecting point between Republicans of almost every variety and explains variations that may otherwise be puzzling to outside observers. Whether the GOP pursues foreign policies characterized as isolationist or internationalist, there is always a strong impulse of American nationalism that never wavers. The tension or oscillation between realism and idealism is also a consistent theme in Republican foreign policy, although one without any F O R E I G N P O L I C Y I N T H E A G E O F O B A M A   C O N C L U S I O N obvious one-way progression. A common interpretation is to describe Eisenhower, Nixon, and George H. W. Bush as foreign policy realists, in contrast to Reagan and George W. Bush, who are described as hawkish idealists. If this were true, then the long-term trend would be toward a kind of...