A relentless theme in the commentary on Ron Paul is that he
is not really a Republican, mainly because he dissents from the
party on foreign policy. People now associate the Republican Party
with crazed war-mongering, massive military spending, and relentless
conflict-seeking, to the point even of a messianic global crusade
on behalf of American imperial control.
This is madness, and Ron Paul does dissent. But is he really
departing from Republican tradition? In the 1990s, the GOP opposed
Clinton's wars in Somalia and Serbia. It denounced nation building
as an extension of the domestic planning state. But those were
short-lived moments. The party reverted to its war-mongering self
after Bush came to power.
So for a genuinely non-interventionist policy within the Republican
Party we need to go back further to the last of the great statesmen
of mid-20th century America: Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, also
known as Mr. Republican. His 1951 book A Foreign Policy for Americans
was a huge seller and exercised vast influence.
These were highly confusing times when Republicans were sure
that FDR's wartime alliance with Russia, and especially Yalta's
empowerment of Stalin in Europe, were grave errors. So on one
hand, they wanted to show that Russia was not a force for good
in the world, and, in fact, represented a threat to liberty as
grave as that of Nazi Germany. On the other hand, they strongly
suspected that Truman was "triangulating" the issue
of the Russian threat to Europe as a way of stealing a Republican
issue for Democratic policy advantage. They were aghast at the
flip-flop on the issue and feared playing into the hands of a
new form of Democratic nationalism.
So Taft, in this book, it walking a fine line: warning against
the Russian threat as a way of scoring anti-FDR points but also
being careful not to exaggerate it in a way that would bolster
the Truman plot to use the fear of Communism to extend the American
empire. More on the complexities here can be found in Rothbard's
seminal work, Betrayal of the American Right, which everyone who
seeks to understand this period in American political history
must certainly read.
Hence, what is striking about this Taft book is not so much the
specific policy recommendations but the principles that underlie
what Taft considered to be the true Republican foreign policy.
I offer, then, words from the first Mr. Republican on the true
principles of a Republican foreign policy:
The truth is that no nation can be constantly prepared to undertake
a full-scale war at any moment and still hope to maintain any
of the other purposes in which people are interested and for
which nations are founded.
In the first place, it requires a complete surrender of liberty
and the turning over to the central government of power to control
in detail the lives of the people and all of their activities.
While in time of war people are willing to surrender those
liberties in order to protect the ultimate liberty of the entire
country, they do so on the theory that it is a limited surrender
and one which they hope will soon be over, perhaps within a
few months, certainly within a few years. But an indefinite
surrender of liberty such as would be required by an all-out
war program in time of peace might mean the final and complete
destruction of those liberties which it is the very purpose
of the preparation to protect.
Furthermore, the destruction of that liberty in the long run
will put an end to the constant progress which has characterized
this country during its 160 years of life, a progress due more
than anything else to the freedom of men to think their own
thoughts, live their own lives, and run their own affairs.
It would require a complete surrender of all of our material
and humanitarian aims to increase the standard of living of
our people and of the people of our allies. All of those standards
of living would have to be reduced, because even the most optimistic
do not feel that we can have all the guns we want and all the
butter we want at the same time.
It would be impossible to conduct any such all-out program
without inflation. In World War II, in spite of complete controls,
we saw an increase in prices, apparently permanent, of about
70 per cent, a depreciation of the dollar to sixty cents. I
doubt if any government spending program calling for half the
national income could be undertaken which would not involve
an increase in prices of at least 10 per cent every year and
a corresponding depreciation in the value of the dollar.
This would mean the destruction of savings and life insurance
policies. It would mean a constant race between prices and wages.
It would mean hardship for millions, and doubt and uncertainty
for many millions more. It would mean constant domestic turmoil
and disagreement.
Finally, it would interfere with the very production which
is the great basis of the strength of the United States and
to which not only our own people but all of our allies look
for ultimate victory if there should be a war with Russia.
The truth is, also, that the most foresighted person could
not set up a preparation that would protect us against every
conceivable contingency. One or two Pearl Harbors might lay
us open to a dangerous attack. We have to choose those measures
which will give us the most complete protection within our reasonable
economic capacity.
In short, there is a definite limit to what a government can
spend in time of peace and still maintain a free economy, without
inflation and with at least some elements of progress in standards
of living and in education, welfare, housing, health, and other
activities in which the people are vitally interested.
The question which we have to determine, and which apparently
nobody in the Administration has really thought through, is
the point at which we reach the economic limitation in time
of peace on government expenditures and a military program.
After that we must choose between the various measures contributing
to our defense, to determine which are of first importance and
which can be ignored without serious danger. (pp. 69–70)
An unwise and overambitious foreign policy, and particularly
the effort to do more than we are able to do, is the one thing
which might in the end destroy our armies and prove a real threat
to the liberty of the people of the United States....
And when I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred
to as "free enterprise." I mean liberty of the individual
to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires
to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how
they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for
dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a
man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those
ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to
the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its
children shall be educated, how its local services shall be
run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to
choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own
business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does
not interfere with the right of other people to do the same
thing.
We cannot overestimate the value of this liberty of ideas and
liberty of action. It is not that you or I or some industrial
genius is free; it is that millions of people are free to work
out their own ideas and the country is free to choose between
them and adopt those which offer the most progress. I have been
through hundreds of industrial plants in the last two or three
years, and in every plant I find that the people running that
plant feel that they have something in the way of methods or
ideas or machinery that no other plant has. I have, met men
said to be the best machinists in the industry who have built
special machines for a particular purpose in which that company
is interested.
Thousands of wholly free and independent thinkers are working
out these ideas and have the right and ability to try them out
without getting the approval of some government bureau. You
can imagine the difference between the progress under such a
system and one in which the government ran every plant in the
country as it runs the post offices today. There would be one
idea for a hundred that are now developed. If any plant employee
had an idea for progress and wrote to Washington, he probably
would get back a letter referring him to Regulation No. 5201
(c), which tells him exactly how this particular thing should
be done, and has been done for the past fifty years.
It is clear to me that the great progress made in this country,
the tremendous production of our people, the productivity per
man of our workmen have grown out of this liberty and the freedom
to develop ideas. We have the highest standard of living, because
we produce more per person than any other country in the world.
After the American Revolution and the French Revolution the
whole world became convinced that liberty was the key to progress
and happiness for the peoples of the world, and this theory
was accepted, even in those countries where there was, in fact,
no liberty. People left Europe and came to this country, not
so much because of the economic conditions as because they sought
a liberty which they could not find at home. But gradually this
philosophy has been replaced by the idea that happiness can
only be conferred upon the people by the grace of an efficient
government. Only the government, it is said, has the expert
knowledge necessary for the people's welfare; only the government
has the power to carry out the grandiose plans so necessary
in a complicated world.
Those who accept the principle of socialism, of government
direction, and of government bureaucracy have a hard time battling
against the ideology of communism. Our labor union leaders cannot
effectively fight communism, as such, because they favor a socialist
control that comes very close to communism in the actual measures
which are to be undertaken. Even our statesmen seem to be handicapped
in the same way.
Thus, Secretary Acheson only a year ago stated: "To say
that the main motive of American foreign policy was to halt
the spread of communism was putting the cart before the horse.
The United States was interested in stopping communism chiefly
because it had become a subtle instrument of Soviet imperialism."
With this point of view I emphatically disagree. I believe
that we should battle the principles of communism and socialism
and convince the world that true happiness lies in the establishment
of a system of liberty, that communism and socialism are the
very antithesis of liberalism, and that only a nation conceived
in liberty can hope to bring real happiness to its people or
to the world. (pp. 155–117)
Robert Taft understood that freedom at home was tied to seeking
peace abroad and avoiding entangling alliances that lead to war.
Would that today's Republicans would listen to him – and
to Ron Paul.
