The Republican Party

By Peter Feaver

The recent posts by Will Inboden and Philip Zelikow have got me thinking again about the difference between academic and policy debates. The Inboden and Zelikow posts were triggered by Dan Drezner's provocation suggesting that Republicans in opposition should adhere to a particular school of thought, preferably one that has already been labeled like realpolitik or neo-conservatism, and wondering which one it would be.

I was on the receiving end of a similar provocation from a good friend well-placed in the Democratic foreign policy establishment. He asked me to handicap the gotterdammerung which he was certain was about to take place within the Republican Party's national security elite. He imagined the Republican party was rife with national security factions who hated each other more than they hated Democrats and he was almost gleeful at the prospect of the bloodletting to come. My off-the-cuff and too-flip response was that such a bloodletting would only occur if the Republicans actually expected to seize the White House again, which did not look likely for the foreseeable future.

But my more considered response was along the lines of Inboden and Zelikow's, which is that there are indeed debates within Republican national security circles, but they do not seem to take the form of set-piece battles between clashing ideologies. That form, it seems to me, is far more common inside the Democratic party and seems to be playing out ... before our very eyes ... right now.

Rather, the debates within Republican circles that I recall from inside and that I have found most interesting outside tend to be fairly pragmatic -- what works, what doesn't work, what has been tried, what has the best chance of being sustainable. A quick way to drive those debates into a ditch would be to insist on invoking the kind of talmudic parsing that is so common in academic debates: "I am sorry, you cannot hold those two policy positions because the first is a tenet of offensive neo-realism and the second is a tenet of defensive neo-realism." The clash of paradigms may be a useful way to catalogue vast quantities of academic research for graduate and undergraduate pedagogy, but I can't think of many cases when it was a useful way to navigate a policy debate.

Which is not to say that the tools of academic political science are of little utility. On the contrary, I found them very useful, just not in the ways that they seem to be most prevalent in academic commentary about foreign policy. Rather than trying to classify by paradigm, I found it most useful to use basic tools of social science analysis to evaluate the merits of various policy proposals.

For instance, during the debate that ended with the President Bush's decision to do the surge strategy in Iraq, I found basic social science rigor to be very useful in sorting through the various proposals that the agencies and departments put forward. One even explicitly invoked some of the tough-mindedness of "realpolitik" in arguing that we should hunker down on the Forward Operating Bases while the Iraqis sorted out their sectarian differences with ever escalating violence. We should focus instead on our narrowly drawn long-term national interests, it was argued, and accept a number of very sub-optimal outcomes within Iraq.

In critically evaluating this proposal, I could have interrogated the authors' use of "national interest" and other academic flourishes. Instead, I just focused on the internal coherence of the argument, and especially the implicit assumptions on which the proposal rested. Once those assumptions were identified and exposed to careful strategic examination, the proposal tended to rebut itself. While the proposal was framed as a hard-headed concession to realpolitik and a rejection of the fuzzy thinking of idealism, in fact the wisdom of that approach hinged on several very rosy (but entirely implicit) assumptions. If those assumptions were true, then other approaches (including the surge) would actually produce even better results. If those assumptions were not true, then that department's proposal would likely usher in a worse disaster than alternative courses of action.

Because of this academic work of unpacking the theory behind the policy, the president had the benefit of hearing a range of forcefully argued positions and also the benefit of seeing the logic of the various positions carefully identified and evaluated. It was not unlike an academic exercise, but in the best sense of the term and without all of the labeling.

One further benefit of this type of academic debate (vice the clash of paradigms debate): I believe this sort of debate lends itself to more natural and progressive resolutions. It is possible for participants to lose certain policy fights without believing that their tribal fortunes have been put in jeopardy. And perhaps sticking to this sort of debate is the best way for Republicans to reclaim the one label that really matters: the competence label.

By Philip Zelikow

One short supplement to Will Inboden's good post on GOP foreign policy futures. The tendency to divide foreign policies into "idealist" and "realpolitik" is a telltale warning that frothy, superficial thinking lies ahead. For example, reflect briefly on the recent portrayals of the George H.W. Bush administration as one that exemplified "realpolitik."

Of course officials of that administration regarded themselves as capable and practical people. Elderly folks like me well recall when Republicans like George Shultz or Brent Scowcroft or Bob Gates or Dick Cheney (back then) regarded themselves, whatever their other differences, as the party of competence. Back then it was the Democrats who seemed trapped by shibboleths, harried by zealots, and uncomfortable wielding power.

Competence, though, did not mean indifference to deep political convictions or a commitment to preserving the status quo. The Bush administration's push for German unification and the transformation of Europe was hardly a play it safe approach. Contrast, for instance, the Bush administration's course in its European strategy with the quite different path recommended at the beginning of 1990 by Henry Kissinger himself (or George Kennan, for that matter) -- and those two men represented cautions then found across the spectrum of editorial and public commentary.

Or, perhaps there are those who think the obvious "realist" path in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was to put 500,000 U.S. troops in the Arabian desert where before there had been none. Remember, this was the war that passed the Senate, after a real cliff-hanger debate, by a mere five votes. (Authorization for the 2003 war, the one that is now regarded as so much more discretionary, passed the Senate by fifty votes.)

As a historian, I think one of the more remarkable things about the Nixon-Kissinger approach to great power relations and détente is actually how anomalous it was in comparison to the record of America's international rhetoric and goals. That administration's relative indifference to the character and governance of the other states in the international system has no equal in any other other U.S. administration of the last 120 years.

The reasons for the Nixon-Kissinger anomaly are probably to be found more in the Vietnam War challenge and the upheavals around the world bucking the general ossification of the cold war system. There was a global retrenchment among governing elites across the globe in the early 1970s (a thesis Jeremi Suri has introduced in the last chapters of his Power and Protest). These more particular explanations seem more useful than arguments finding in this period the recurrent flowering of some long-running but dormant "realist" strain in America's collective thought. And the domestic base for the "détente" policy of that era had eroded almost to the vanishing point even by the end of 1974, eaten away from both left and right.

For at least the last hundred years, most full-throated critiques of how America should approach the world regard their views as realistic, whatever their argument. They all regard their foes as naïve or venal, people who either bury their heads in the sand or exaggerate threats to chase imaginary monsters. Arthur Link wrote quite thoughtfully of the "higher realism" of Woodrow Wilson.

So as Republicans wonder where they will find a foreign policy, please don't think the problem will be solved if only Republicans will be "realists" once more. On the other hand, there is a certain nostalgia in recalling a team that took so much pride in professional competence ...

By Christian Brose

The weekend brought news that Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a serious GOP contender for 2012, is off to Beijing as President Obama's ambassador to China. This says a lot of things, I think, but none more significant than this: Smart Republican money, not to mention one of the party's brightest hopefuls, is increasingly starting to believe that Obama will be a two-term president, in large part because the GOP may not be redeemable until 2016. I think that's Huntsman's assumption, but is it warranted?

Looking at the possible field for 2012, you would've thought that all was not lost for Huntsman. And you'd be agreeing with Obama's political shop. David Plouffe told Politico on Saturday that the Obama team saw Huntsman as the only candidate who could have threatened Obama, and that this threat wasn't just an idle one. There's a decent case for thinking that.

Mike Huckabee looks poised to run again, but after spending three years as a talk show host, instead of fusing his working class populism with smart policy substance, he may find it even harder than he did in 2008 to break through as a credible national candidate. Mitt Romney will also likely run again, but this could be the final act of his political tragedy: a creative, practical problem-solver who ran away from all that in 2008 but still didn't win the nomination, and who, having flipped once, may find it a reach too far to flop believably back to his true self by 2012, when the GOP needs it most. Romney's travails may be a warning to Bobby Jindal, who could stay out of the race altogether, rather than tack away from his technocratic whiz-kid allure in order to pander to the Cheneys and Limbaughs of the party. If he does run, though, and if he runs as this Jindal instead of this Jindal, he might win the nomination but undercut himself going forward, and he's young enough to go a long way. Aside from x-factors like Newt Gingrich and still somewhat unknowns like Mark Sanford, that leaves Sarah Palin, and though she still might choose to sit out 2012 and play the long game, she will likely find the prospect of running again irresistible.

Amid this field, you'd think an experienced, reformist governor, who wears his social conservatism with humility and tolerance, who has shown creativity and pragmatism in breaking with GOP orthodoxy to tackle national problems like health care and the environment, and who has real foreign policy experience (ambassador to Singapore and Bob Zoellick's deputy at USTR ain't peanuts), would be a pretty good bet for 2012. So why would Huntsman take himself out of the race?

He probably assumes that the GOP will spend the next few years banging rocks together in the wilderness, throwing moderates like Colin Powell out of the party, and trying to wind the clock back to the early 1980s while the rest of the country moves on. He probably assumes that he's already established himself as "a different kind of conservative," that the domestic policy fights he'll face as governor will be frustrating and possibly fruitless, and that the GOP will need a few more electoral thrashings before it is ready to buy what he's selling. What's more, he probably assumes that, while the rest of the GOP tears itself apart in naval-gazing fights about the meaning of "true conservatism," he can go off and pad his resume with several years of experience managing America's largest (and increasingly, its most important) bilateral relationship, and that when he returns in, say, 2014, not only will the GOP primary voters not punish him, they'll welcome him as a practical, reform-minded leader, attuned to the problems of the 21st century, who puts the national interest above partisan politics -- that is, just the kind of guy to lead them to victory in 2016.

As far as assumptions go, these aren't bad ones in my opinion. But a lot can happen in a year (or three, or five), and as for whether Huntsman's decision bodes well for Republicans, and for Huntsman himself, only time will tell (and we may need lots of it).

By Will Inboden

Fellow FP.com contributor Dan Drezner's current National Interest column laments what he regards as the prevailing lack of strategic thinking on foreign policy coming from Republicans. And he follows up by asking if any of us here at Shadow Government (about whom he has some kind words) care to respond, particularly to "disabuse me of my pessimism." I am happy to respond, though I begin by mostly agreeing with Dan's main point: the current state of foreign policy discourse among Republicans is anemic. But only saying "you are right, Dan -- but hey, we're trying" would amount to the shortest and least-interesting post in the hallowed annals of Shadow Government. [Admit it, you were tempted to go that route anyway just to tempt Dan to link to this response. Which is why you are also shamelessly employing this Drezner-Kaus mock-editor gimmick, right? - Ed.]

While I won't disabuse Dan of his pessimism, I would like to disabuse him of a few of his premises. First, at this very early juncture in the Obama administration, the lack of a strong GOP voice on foreign policy is not that much of a story. The GOP is only a few months removed from holding power in the executive branch -- which has primary constitutional responsibility for national security policy -- and many former senior Bush administration officials are taking much-needed sabbaticals of various sorts. The current GOP congressional leadership is understandably focused on domestic and economic policy. Other emerging Republican leaders are in the gubernatorial ranks, which by the nature of the office have little involvement in foreign policy. And in general, this lack-of-ideas is not limited to foreign policy, as leading Republicans also rightfully lament our party's relatively stagnant thinking on domestic and economic issues as well. In the still-recent aftermath of being taken to the electoral woodshed in 2008, the Republican party is just beginning its sojourn in the wilderness, and just beginning to grapple with developing new ideas.    

Second, the GOP does not have a monopoly on insipid foreign policy thinking. The current state of foreign policy discourse among Democrats is equally anemic, if not more so. One can easily substitute the word "Democratic" for "Republican" in the opening sentence of the Drezner essay so that it reads thus: "Does the Democratic Party have a foreign-policy strategy?" (Not tactics, which are evident, but its strategy?) Democratic foreign policy thinking seems to careen among neo-realism, liberal internationalism, doctrinaire multilateralism, and neo-isolationism (especially on trade) -- and all those camps are represented just within Obama's cabinet and national security team. Then added to the mix is the quasi-pacifism of large swaths of the Democratic base. Even Obama himself doesn't seem to have identified what school he adheres to -- and given his still-evolving and still-forming thinking, he may not care to be so pigeonholed. While to be fair he is still just a few months into office, thus far his foreign policy seems to be a curious amalgam of maintaining the basic strategic framework developed by the Bush administration (cf. Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iran, China), mixed with Obama's reliance on his rhetoric, instincts, and personality to create a new packaging.  

The third dubious Drezner premise is that "the GOP was traditionally the party of realpolitik." But even a glance through the past six decades of the foreign policy views of leading Republicans (primarily presidents and presidential candidates) shows that rarely has one view held sway, and realism in particular was only the dominant GOP position from 1969-1977 under Nixon-Ford-Kissinger, and perhaps again from 1989-1993 under Bush-Baker-Scowcroft. Otherwise, GOP views have been diverse and often divergent, emblemized by intra-party debates from Taft v. Eisenhower in the 1950s (hawkish isolationism against anticommunist internationalism), Rockefeller v. Goldwater in the 1960s (liberal internationalism against hawkish nationalism), to Ford v. Reagan in the 1970s (realism against hawkish anticommunism with a twist of neo-conservatism). And neither of the most recent GOP presidents who served two full-terms, Reagan and George W. Bush, fit into the realist camp. Nor does the most recent GOP nominee, Senator John McCain. 

This brings me to the fourth questionable premise: "it is difficult to mount a unified and loyal opposition when there is an absence of consensus about first principles." While there is some truth to this as a matter of political tactics, it erroneously seems to imply that a party needs to adhere only to one foreign policy school in order to generate coherent critiques and creative ideas. But this has manifestly not been the case with Republicans in the past, nor does it need to be today. Even the gallery of Shadow Government writers represent a gamut of foreign policy convictions and likely a fair amount of our own internal disagreements.

If this sounds like confusion and disarray in Republican ranks, it can just as easily indicate creative ferment and exploration, especially during our wilderness years out of power. Republicans are beginning to engage in vigorous debates about what America's global posture should be, how the Republican party should articulate that position, and when we should support and when we should oppose the Obama administration's policies. Moreover, that the GOP is not currently pledged to one school of thought does not mean that GOP thinkers cannot offer creative and constructive ideas on specific issues. Nor does it prevent us from critiquing decisions or policies by the Obama administration -- especially when realists and neoconservatives can agree that some particular decisions are wrong-headed from any number of vantage points.