Kagan Sums Up Rand Paul Foreign Policy

Robert Kagan writes:

With Polonius-like wisdom, he [Rand] calls for a strategy that “balances but does not appease,” that is “robust but also restrained.” He does not want America to be “everywhere all the time” or “nowhere any of the time” but thinks that “maybe, we could be somewhere, some of the time.”

Kagan also explains, quite correctly, Ronald Reagan foreign policy, that Rand claims to support:

Paul insists that his foreign policy is nothing more than a continuation of the policies of Ronald Reagan. That is a problem, too. Reagan ordered the largest peacetime military buildup in U.S. history, deployed a new generation of nuclear missiles in Europe, tried to build his “Star Wars” missile-defense program and refused to trade it for an agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons. He toppled dictatorships in the Philippines, Haiti, South Korea and Chile; provided hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to rebels (including radical Islamists) seeking to overthrow regimes in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and Cambodia; founded the National Endowment for Democracy; and increased foreign assistance spending to the highest levels since the Truman administration. He invaded Grenada, sent troops to Lebanon and bombed Libya. Yet Paul describes Reagan’s foreign policies as the model of the “restraint” he favors.