After dozens of contests featuring cliffhangers,
buzzer-beaters and a ton of flagrant fouls, we’re down to the Final Four:
Sanders, Clinton, Cruz and Trump. (If Kasich pulls off a miracle, he’ll get his
own column.) The world wants to know: What are their foreign policies?
Herewith, four
candidates and four schools: pacifist, internationalist, unilateralist and
mercantilist.
1) Bernie Sanders, pacifist.
His pacifism
is part swords-into-plowshares utopianism, part get-thee-gone isolationism.
Emblematic was the Nov. 14
Democratic debate ,
which was supposed to focus on the economy but occurred the day after the Paris
massacre. Sanders objected to starting the debate with a question about Paris.
He did not prevail, however, and answered the first question with some
anti-terror pablum that immediately gave way to an impassioned attack on his
usual “handful of billionaires.”
Sanders boasts
of voting against the Iraq War. But he also voted against the1991 Gulf
War. His reaction to all such dilemmas is the same
anti-imperialist/pacifist reflex: Stay away, but if we must get involved, let
others lead.
That’s for
means. As for ends, Sanders’ foreign policy objectives are invariably global
and universal, beginning above all with climate change. The rest is
foreign-policy-as-social-work do-goodism, most especially undoing the work of
U.S. imperialism.
Don’t be
surprised if President Sanders hands Guantanamo Bay over to the Castros,
although Alaska looks relatively safe for now.
Closest
historical analog: George McGovern.
(2) Hillary
Clinton, internationalist.
The
“Clinton/Obama” foreign policy from Ukraine to Iran to the South China Sea has
been a demonstrable failure. But in trying to figure out what President Clinton
would do in the future, we need to note that she often gave contrary advice,
generally more assertive and aggressive than President Obama’s, that was
overruled, most notably keeping
troops in Iraq beyond
2011 and early arming of
the Syrian rebels.
The Libya
adventure was her grand attempt at humanitarian interventionism. She’s been
chastened by the
disaster that followed.
Her worldview
is traditional, post-Vietnam liberal internationalism — America as the indispensable
nation, but consciously restraining its exercise of power through
multilateralism and near-obsessive legalism.
Closest historical analog: the Bill Clinton foreign
policy of the 1990s.
(3) Ted Cruz,
unilateralist.
The most
aggressive of the three contenders thus far. Wants post-Cold War U.S.
leadership restored. Is prepared to take risks and act alone when necessary.
Pledges to tear up the Iran deal, cement the U.S.-Israel alliance and carpet
bomb the Islamic State.
Overdoes it
with “carpet” — it implies Dresden — although it was likely
just an attempt at
rhetorical emphasis. He’s of the school that will not delay action while
waiting on feckless allies or farcical entities like the U.N.
Closest
analog: Ronald Reagan.
(4) Donald
Trump, mercantilist.
He promises to
make America strong, for which, he explains, he must first make America rich.
Treating countries like companies, he therefore promises to play turnaround
artist for a foreign policy that is currently a hopeless money-losing operation
in which our allies take us for fools and suck us dry.
You could put
the Sanders, Clinton and Cruz foreign policies on a recognizable ideological
spectrum, left to right. But not Trump’s. It inhabits a different space because
it lacks any geopolitical coherence. It’s all about
money. He sees no particular purpose for allies or foreign bases.
They are simply a financial drain.
Imperial Spain
roamed and ravaged the world in search of gold. Trump advocates a kinder,
gentler form of wealth transfer from abroad, though equally gold-oriented.
Thus, if Japan
and South Korea don’t pony up more money for our troops stationed there, we go home.
The possible effects on the balance of power in the Pacific Rim or on Chinese
hegemonic designs don’t enter into the equation.
Same for NATO.
If those free-riding European leeches don’t give us more money too, why stick
around? Concerns about tempting Russian ambitions and/or aggression are nowhere
in sight.
The one
exception to this singular focus on foreign policy as a form of national enrichment
is the Islamic State. Trump’s goal is simple — “bomb the s--- out of
them.” Yet even here he can’t
quite stifle his
mercantilist impulses, insisting that after crushing the Islamic State, he’ll
keep their oil. Whatever that means.
Closest
historical analog: King Philip II of Spain (1556-1598).
On Jan. 20, one of these four contenders will be sworn in
as president. And one of these four approaches to the world will become the
foreign policy of the United States.
Don’t say you
weren’t warned.