08/14/12 – Daniel Larison – The Scott Horton Show

All right, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Daniel Larrison, contributing editor at the American conservative magazine and writes the blog, you know, Mia at their website, the American conservative.com.
Welcome back to the show, Daniel.
How are you doing?
I've been fine.
Thanks for having me back.
Well, you're welcome.
Very happy to have you here and I'm happy to recommend to people your article in the week.
That's the week.com Paul Ryan's foreign policy speeches, what they say about Mitt Romney's running mate.
And then, uh, over at the American conservative magazine, it's, uh, the American conservative.com/Larrison.
You have Paul Ryan's bad history and worse foreign policy.
Is it one, two, and three here?
Uh, lots and lots on the Republican campaign.
Uh, so urge everybody to take a look at that.
What all do you know about Paul Ryan and his horrible foreign policy?
Uh, well, um, one main source that we have for the way that Paul Ryan looks at the world and America's role in the world is the speech that he gave last June, I believe to the Alexander Hamilton society, uh, in which he specifically outlined an argument taken from a Charles Krauthammer article in the, uh, in the weekly standard called decline as a choice.
And he frames, uh, all of his budget arguments in this speech and his foreign policy arguments in terms of continuing us hegemony versus going quote unquote decline, which he sees as the, uh, as a disaster, uh, because he engages in a great deal of alarmism, uh, about other countries taking over.
Uh, the hegemonic world that we currently have.
And so he's trying to paint a picture of a world dominated by Russia or China.
And it's something that he's doing so that he can continue to justify the enormous military budget that he wants to keep having.
Well, now just how silly is that?
I mean, you know, China, they got a billion people and their flag is red and I hear they don't mean well.
And what if they want to rule the world and make America third rate power, wouldn't we all die or something?
There are two problems with this one.
There's not a lot of evidence that China has the capability of projecting power all over the world in the way that the U S does currently.
And there's not a lot of evidence in Chinese history that they have ambitions on that scale.
Uh, they've typically been content in the past to be a regional hegemon, certainly in East Asia.
And I think there is a move going back towards that, but there's, there's certainly nothing on the scale of, of trying to dictate to the rest of the world that they have to follow China's policies and the same goes for Russia even more so, although Russia is not even a, a rising power in the same sense that China is, uh, it's, it's to some extent, uh, a second rate power now, uh, although it does have, of course, a large nuclear arsenal.
Uh, the point is that these other major powers are in no position to replace the U S what's going to take the place of a U S dominated world would be a world of multiple states that would be balancing each other and sometimes competing with each other, but they're not going to know one of them is going to, to take over and dominate the world, much less dominate us.
And so I think a lot of it is based on this unreasonable fear that somehow if we don't continue hegemony around the world, that we're going to be subjected to the sort of treatment that we dish out to other countries.
And I think that's just wrong.
Hmm.
Yeah.
It's almost a, it seems as a pretty self-defeating, a pretty obviously self-defeating policy.
You know, like a toddler doesn't want to go to bed, throws a temper tantrum, makes him that much more sleepy, you know, we're just, uh, we, we don't want to be a declining power.
So we spend our every last cent on militarism.
We stop making anything but weapons.
And then we wonder why we're broke.
Then we wonder why we're not the first rate power we used to be.
Well, and then that's really the problem.
Ryan, the attempt to pair his fiscal message with a very hawkish foreign policy message.
The hawkish foreign policy message represents massive and unsustainable spending that's going to continue to, to drain all the sources and exhaust us over the long term.
Uh, of course, the military spending by itself is not the whole of our fiscal problems or even the largest part of it, but it is a significant part of it.
And Ryan, uh, because of his deference to neoconservative and hawkish ideas, doesn't want to accept that.
And he doesn't want to make the reduction to the military spending that would make sense as part of, uh, a larger reduction in government spending.
All right.
Now, um, I wonder that there's people make a lot of hay about the differences between the neocons, for example, the nationalists, the realists, the, um, the liberal internationalists, I guess, or the neoliberal types who maybe emphasize the UN and multilateral institutions more and whatever.
But, uh, really the consensus is for the same policy, right?
Those are pretty much just brand names for that, that same sort of Cheneyite, uh, you know, exclude near peer competitors forever kind of thing.
Right.
And then on the other flip side of that, isn't that really just the collective security mandate of the UN since, you know, and, you know, since world war two, American policy since world war two.
Well, let me take that in two parts.
First of all, I agree that pretty much all of the main schools of foreign policy or the foreign policy consensus that exists in the U S do share a great number of things in common.
Uh, so they're all basically committed to us preeminent, uh, us power projection around the world.
Uh, even, uh, reasonably sensible realists are committed to this idea of a balancing force in different regions of the world, uh, as if it's vitally important to the U S to prevent any one region from being dominated by its natural regional power.
And so we have these, these constant preoccupations to keep, uh, balancing Iran, balancing China, balancing Russia in their own backyard.
Uh, and I think those are things that unite people across the spectrum, regardless of their particular tradition.
The differences that you see between them tend to be, uh, mostly tactical, uh, disagreements about how best to manage this system or manage this approach rather than fundamental disagreements about the way that the U S should be acting in the world.
Uh, to follow up on the second point about collective security, uh, certainly you also see that pretty much everyone in the, the main bipartisan discussion or debate, such as it is, uh, is committed to the ideas of liberal internationalism in that they are firmly committed to international institutions and, and, and using those international institutions as a vehicle for projecting U S power.
And as a fig leaf too.
Well, that's, yeah, that's often the way that it works.
Um, we often see, uh, the UN used very, uh, a one-sidedly or for the purposes of, uh, U S and allied governments, uh, to penalize those states that get in our way, whereas, uh, that's not the case in, in when other states that are aligned with us are engaged in some sort of, uh, undesirable or brutal behavior.
Uh, you simply don't have the kind of scrutiny or international pressure brought to bear, um, a U S allied authoritarian regimes, right?
Well, and it's hard to get people to pay attention at all.
It said, but the height of a war, the first few weeks of it or something like that until the regime falls.
Um, no, that's right.
And I mean, you're even seeing in the case of Syria where the U S was largely behind the scenes or, or fairly minimal, uh, attention to what's going on in Syria has already faded away, uh, which I mean, in some ways can be good because it's going to prevent agitation for greater U S involvement as we get closer to the election.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
We'll have to leave it there and, uh, we'll pick it up right there.
Interesting point.
Uh, on the other side of this break, it's Daniel Larrison from the American conservative.
That's the American conservative.com/Larrison.
We'll be right back.
All right.
So welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm talking with Daniel Larrison contributing editor at the American conservative magazine, where he writes the blog, you know, Mia at their website.
They're the American conservative.com/Larrison.
It's been writing all out.
Uh, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's candidate for vice president.
He's got an article about them at the week.com called Paul Ryan's foreign policy speeches, what they say about Mitt Romney's running mate.
And, uh, when I was reading some of the block quotes here, Daniel, I thought this guy sounds so far to the right.
I wonder if he's a former Democrat.
Is he a neocon or just a typical right-wing kind of nationalist type running with them here?
Uh, well, it seems that, uh, based on the people that he's been listening to and the people that he's fighting in his remarks, that he's definitely more aligned with neoconservative than, than simply with, uh, say hawkish nationalists.
So he's definitely much more, uh, aligned with someone like, uh, Dan Senor, uh, who's one of Romney's top foreign policy advisors that he would be with, uh, let's say, uh, John Bolton, although they would obviously agree on a lot of things all the same.
And then one of the reasons for that, or the way that we can tell is that Paul Ryan put a lot of emphasis on a kind of strong moralizing rhetoric in his foreign policy remarks.
And he talks about promoting American political principles in every nation around the world.
And he thinks that this is an essential part of what American foreign policy is supposed to be.
Uh, this morning, for instance, Brett Stevens, one of the Wall Street journalists columnists praises his Alexander Hamilton society speech as a neocon manifesto.
So certainly neoconservatives see him as one of their own or see him as someone under their influence.
And that certainly seems to come through in what he says.
Yeah.
Whenever I hear a conservative or Republican talk about a morality based foreign policy, where we're not going to let our national interests or even reason have anything to do with our policies.
Just, you know, whether a bill crystal can get people whipped up enough about something or not is the only threshold for whether we should do something or not.
I want to run the other way.
Right.
Well, it's a clear signal of a kind of missionary and crusading foreign policy, one that's driven by ideological concerns first and, uh, national interest concerns second or not at all.
Uh, and one of the things that really stood out for me in one of, uh, Brian's earlier speeches from 2009, he says it's always in the interest of the United States to promote our principles in other nations.
Uh, when it's clearly the case that sometimes national interests and that sort of democracy promotion or promotion of liberal principles are intentional or even at odds with one another.
And so it, uh, it certainly speaks to how strongly Paul Ryan is committed to thinking of American foreign policy in the ideological terms.
And you can even see that in the way that he talks about America as a country.
He just says, America is an idea.
And so he thinks it's an idea that needs to be actively promoted and he sees the government as the vehicle for that.
Uh, that's, it seems to me that that's been a recipe for a lot of trouble, especially over the last 20 years.
And it, it will be again, if they get their way.
I wonder if any of these people really believe any of that.
I mean, I guess during the Iraq war, somehow I was made to believe that Paul Wolfowitz really believed they were going to have a democratic Iraq.
That would be a model for the region or whatever, but he was the only one who really believed that, right?
The rest of them, they were just lying us into war talking about, this is going to be in the best interest of the people of Iraq.
What the hell does Richard Pearl know about the best interest of anybody?
Well, that's a good point.
Uh, I think some of them really were sort of enthusiasts who were caught up in their own rhetoric or believe their own propaganda.
But I think, I think a lot of them, uh, simply saw it as, as instrumental or a way to, uh, cover up or provide political cover for the, the objective of the war, which was at least in their minds, uh, uh, to serve as a, uh, a model of US power projection and a way of, of trying to be of greater influence in the region.
Of course, as we've seen over the last decade, uh, US influence has, if anything, uh, shrunk dramatically in that region, uh, and, and other states, uh, particularly Iran, but also others, uh, have ended up taking, uh, the place of the US influence as a result.
Yeah.
Well, now what do you make of the whole, uh, I mean, you quote him here, uh, criticizing Obama for having a Nixonian approach, which means, you know, a modicum of, of, uh, rationality rather than just, uh, which excluding Vietnam, of course, but I guess we're thinking of, uh, you know, shaking hands with Mao Tse Tung, making peace with Mao, detente with the Soviet union, that kind of thing.
Um, but, uh, I wonder what you think about the possibility that Romney is actually in a pretty good position to maybe even ignore this guy and act more like Richard Nixon.
Of course, all the political pressure on Obama is to act more like a Republican on foreign policy.
And he never has to worry about his base deserting him because they just don't care who he murders.
They love him anyway.
And so he's got them in the bag.
He's, he can move as far to the right as he wants.
Um, but it seems like if we have a Republican president, uh, he's, you know, perceived to be plenty imperialist, no matter what, then he can do surprising like make peace and get away with it.
Cause he's got the blood on his hands to prove what a tough guy he is.
You know what I'm getting at?
Uh, what do you think about all that?
Well, that would certainly be a better outcome than the one I'm hearing in the event of a Romney presidency, uh, because I assume that Romney will continue to be, uh, inclined to follow hard line policies, uh, in order to satisfy the people that he's been trying to satisfy throughout the election.
Uh, he's been pandering to national security hawks throughout his career as a presidential candidate for the last five years.
And I, so I'm, I'm skeptical that he would suddenly turn around and change on them.
Uh, but if anyone could turn around on a dime and change from that position to, uh, I'll say a more restrained one, uh, Romney might be in a position to do it simply because he can read polls and can see where his political advantage lies.
Um, although I think because he is, uh, so new to foreign policy in the, in the sense that he doesn't have that much personal credibility on these issues that he would find it very difficult to break with the people that helped him get into office.
And so I, I, I'm doubtful that he would be in a position to do what Nixon did because Nixon was able to make the move for reconciliation rule or opening to China because he was perceived as a hardliner, uh, and, and actually had a long history of being a hardliner to back it up.
Whereas Romney's history as a hardliner is mostly rhetorical, which is why a lot of people don't take it seriously.
But it's also not the kind of record that would keep his national security hawks from turning on him if he started making gestures of, of being more conciliatory towards Iran or some other pariah state that they think is deserving of being attacked.
Well, you know, there was an article back, um, I guess toward the end of the Bush years about, um, no, I guess maybe halfway through or so somebody had a piece anyway about, there was a big party, may have been Hirsch, there was a big party with the neocons talked about, well, you know how we got away with bloody murder in the eighties was we ran everything out of George H.W.
Bush's office.
The law hardly reaches there at all.
So we need to do that again.
And so that was how they organized the entire Bush junior, at least the first term and all their foreign policy and how they lied us into war and everything.
It was the vice president's men and then the network, the neocon network at the state department and the Pentagon, of course.
And so, uh, we could really see that exact same model here, all the appointees.
I mean, Dan Senora could be the national security advisor, the secretary of state or something like that.
You could have every deputy assistant, all the, all the, uh, you know, uh, washouts and leftovers from the office of special plans could be back running the Pentagon again.
Uh, yeah, it's certainly possible that there would be a lot of, uh, repeat appointments or, or people who served in some important capacity in the Bush administration being appointed to fairly important positions in Romney administration.
Uh, there's an entire inner circle is not made up of very hawkish people.
So it stands to reason that his administration would be heavily staffed with people like that.
And certainly, uh, Brian would be amenable to working with them.
I don't see any evidence that Ryan has any skepticism about their way of looking at the world.
Well, I wonder if it'll be quite as easy for them to get away with it as last time.
I guess probably it would, at least we could have the anti-war left back, huh?
There, yeah, there might be some of that.
Uh, although I think it would depend on what it is that we're talking about.
Uh, if it were another attempt to have some sort of large scale invasion, then I think they wouldn't be able to, uh, rule people over quite as easily as they did.
But if they want to engage in, uh, covert operations or airstrikes or something like that, uh, you're going to, I think we would see unfortunately less resistance to that, uh, simply because there's so much power already vested in the executive to get away with that.
Yeah, true.
And they love the executive over on the left there.
I'm not sure why, but they do.
All right.
Uh, we're all out of time.
Thank you very much for your time.
Daniel Larrison, everybody, the American conservative, you know, me a block.