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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Rand Paul explains his foreign policy

Rand Paul just gave one of the most important foreign policy speeches in decades - Vox - Zack Beauchamp:

October 24, 2014 - "Sen. Rand Paul just gave one of the most important speeches on foreign policy since George W. Bush declared war on Iraq. But instead of declaring war on another country, Paul declared war on his own party. Or, at least, its entire approach to foreign policy.

"In his address last night at the Center for the National Interest — a think tank founded by Richard Nixon — Paul gave, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of how he thinks about foreign policy. His moderate non-interventionism is a far cry from his father's absolutist desire for America to exit the world stage. But Paul's stance is light years away from the hyper-hawk neoconservatism that's dominated Republican foreign policy thinking for decades....

"The real target of Paul's speech were the neoconservatives: the wing of the GOP that believes that American foreign policy should be about the aggressive use of American force and influence, be it against terrorist groups or Russia. Paul's unsubtle argument is that this view, dominant in the GOP, is a departure from what a conservative foreign policy ought to be....

"Until this speech, Paul's 2016 foreign policy position hadn't been clear. Now it is. Rand 'clearly wants a more restrained US foreign policy,' says Dan McCarthy, the editor of The American Conservative magazine. According to McCarthy, who's talked about these issues with Paul's staff, Paul has been engaged in a 'trial and error' experiment. The idea is to figure out how to make a less aggressive foreign policy politically viable in the Republican Party.

"After this speech, the testing phase appears to be over. According to his advisors, this speech represents the final, overarching framework for Paul's worldview. Rand has developed a strategy for wrenching conservatives away from the Bush legacy, and it's now a question of implementing it. "

Read more: http://www.vox.com/2014/10/24/7053561/rand-paul-foreign-policy-speech
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