What is a liberal or conservative stance on Foreign policy? (user search)
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  What is a liberal or conservative stance on Foreign policy? (search mode)
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Author Topic: What is a liberal or conservative stance on Foreign policy?  (Read 919 times)
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CrabCake
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« on: October 05, 2018, 01:01:49 PM »

There are lots of different axes to consider. One of the more pertinent in my mind is the internationalist Vs nationalist mindset. Nationalists, who tend to be right-wing, emphasise the right of the nation to make unilateral decisions. They believe that nation-states need to struggle against each other, and that alliances should be primarily transactional. This can be rooted in a mercantist approach, that views national struggle as a quest for material and economic superiority; or an idealistic approach that states the country in question is a moral beacon of sorts; or a combination of both mindsets simultaneously. Internationalists view things a little differently, and they tend to be on the left. They will emphasise the importance of mulitaleral discussions, abiding by international law and formal structures like the UN. Left wingers will often regard national struggle rhetoric as deeply suspect, as they are sympathetic to notions of universal human rights held by all members of mankind (while right wingers are more attached to cultural relativism: Judeo-Christian values, muslim values etc).

Rand Paul is a good example: he is by all means a man disdainful of interventionism, but what unites him with his Republican colleagues is his dislike of the notion that the United States and its ruling elite/military should ever be made subordinate to the "international community".
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CrabCake
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« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2018, 11:55:44 AM »

while right wingers are more attached to cultural relativism: Judeo-Christian values, muslim values etc.

The perhaps great exceptions to this have been imperialism and more modern attempts by America to export its values. In the debates over intervention in, I want to say, Sudan in the 1880s, Liberals (in the formal party sense) argued against a war of Christianity against Islam in North Africa while Conservatives wanted, of course, to maintain the Empire. In a strange reversal of conventional wisdom, the George W. Bush administration did make the argument that American values could be universalized, and that freedom was something every soul strove for. Liberals on the other hand were forced to argue about the merits of "democracy at gunpoint" and debate sort of got distracted from more conventional arguments (such as whether or not America could even be called a force for democracy). There is a certain sort of conservative arrogance involved in thinking that the "Judeo-Christian West" could march anywhere and remake that place in its own image. In many casses (of course), conservatives themselves, as I'm sure you know, have long derided this approach, but it nevertheless has a historical current.

I would argue, though, that the distinction between idealistic conservatives and pragmatic conservatives are less important than you would think. Both the Bush administration and imperialism are good examples of that. Although both the invasion of Iraq and the imperialists had their share of people who truly believed that they were helping spread civilisation, both were also supported by conservative elements who believed that the US would be placed in an advantageous position by intervening. What unites them together (along with paleoconservative strands) is the belief that the nation state has a right, or even obligation, to make moves unilaterally. The fundamental difference between liberal interventionists and the Bush administration was that the former bases its values on a "universal human rights" system that (in theory) is shared by all peoples, while the latter believed that the United States acts as vanguard for such rights. To a liberal or left mindset, a nation using force without consent from the international order and its structures is a rogue bully; to a conservative, a nation that kneels before other countries is a cowed and controlled one.
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