This article is in response to “The Duties of a Free Citizen,” by Kevin Gutzman and is part of the symposium on “What’s Wrong with Conservatism?”
Dr. Gutzman correctly identifies a number of debacles that the intellectual inheritors of Thomas Jefferson face: a hasty foreign policy, insolvent entitlements, and the need to more honestly discuss religion.
I’ll focus on the foreign policy front because, in our post-Iraq (pre-Syria?) era, it encompasses the widest range of views across the “conservative” spectrum and is most in need of debate. On one end are the foreign adventurists, whom we might label “neocons” or, as Gutzman prefers, “West-Coast Straussians,” who believe that the American military can maximize good in the world. On the other end are the oft-derided “isolationists,” who long for an earlier age when the Atlantic Ocean separated a young America from virtually all foreign threats. Gutzman doesn’t discuss Jefferson’s starry-eyed confidence in the French Revolution, but it seems fair to assume that conservatives of Gutzman’s persuasion don’t see feckless idealism as much of a foreign policy, either.
So what kind of foreign policy should we prioritize? Though he notes the tremendous costs of wayward foreign policies, Gutzman doesn’t offer much of an alternative. As the Obama years have proven, the absence of a principled policy for employing our military and exerting American influence is exceedingly dangerous. Ad hoc foreign policy gives way to poorly articulated “red lines,” Libya campaigns, Russian manipulation, and Congressional confusion. Conservatives, in contrast, must present a true foreign policy. My suggestion is a robust realism.
The realist is honest about the fallenness of human nature and understands that nations on the world stage seek their own self-interest. Yes, it’s rather Hobbesian. Yes, it’s rather brutish. But pretending otherwise leads to a UN-styled nationalism that’s even more deadly.
Just as our Constitution tempers the human thirst for power on the national level, realism checks power in the international arena. Conservatism, Russell Kirk emphasized, is the rejection of ideology. Similarly, the conservative realist does not address foreign adversaries in terms of ideology but, instead, in terms of their degree of power and the scope of their threat. Lest this sound like some Foucaultian alternate-universe where principles and morality are subservient to raw power, realism actually stabilizes decision-making, demands an economic calculus, and forces political leaders to be clear about their priorities.
In this respect, George Washington was a realist when he urged the new America, which then had few foes, to avoid foreign entanglements. So too was Henry Kissinger when he steered clear of arms control during the Cold War. Realism helps us comprehend history and make rational decisions in the present. It would mean an end to reckless “quagmires” like Vietnam or Iraq. It would mean a sharper focus, at the national level, on the civic health of the polis.
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