Domestic Politics? In *this* blog? It’s more likely than you think.
Of course, I really mean to discuss how American domestic politics impacts foreign policy. So it still fits the theme.
You would think that in a highly competitive primary season with both parties selecting from pools of candidates that there would be more interesting discussions on foreign policy in the United States. While it was true that Rand Paul was the torch bearer of sanity in foreign policy (if little else) earlier on, he has already become history. Donald Trump, who is grotesque and hilarious in equal measures, has at least forced a reckoning on Dubya’s legacy long delayed by the GOP-even if he has no coherent ideas of his own.
The candidates both party establishments clearly want to win are, unsurprisingly, the two most hawkish of hawks. Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio are basically indistinguishable from each other on big picture foreign affairs. American Exceptionalism, delusions of grandeur, and a blind faith in military solutions when regarding small weaker nations ruled in ways contrary to American values. They both have track records of opinions which would meet the approval of Cheney and Kristol alike.
The Democratic primary is just as much wild card vs reckoning. No one actually knows what Bernie Sanders holds as views on foreign policy, if any are coherent at all. But then a very interesting thing happened…Tulsi Gabbard resigned her post as DNC Vice Chair to endorse him.
I am definitely not yet sold on the Sanders bandwagon, nor do I think endorsements matter as much as people think they do, but I cannot contain my joy at the following two things:
1. I remain convinced that Gabbard is going places. I have mentioned her previously on this blog as one of the rare realists left in congress. We have had decades of endless and naively conducted war with little grand strategic perspective. With a Sanders nomination unlikely she took a long term calculation to back him specifically because of foreign policy issues and to build her future reputation as the foreign policy realist (who is not Rand Paul). Its her career trajectory that most fascinates me rather than his. And if he does win, she will no doubt get an interesting cabinet post.
2. I am so thankful after decades of evidence that the Clintons are basically Dick Cheney Lite that someone is making a major point of finally calling them out for it. The media never had the spine to do this. It still doesn’t. They look at the quantity of titles on her resume without looking to see the quality and results of what they describe.
There is something beautifully Roveian (in the best ways) about destroying a foe’s strength. Going after Clinton on foreign policy is like a factual and justifiable version of swift boating, you sink the opposition’s main selling point-and this time you actually do it by telling the verifiable truth. Obviously Gabbard can do this, and Sanders cannot as he has no actually articulated foreign policy views or coherent record.
Maybe, just maybe, we can have a real discussion about foreign policy in this election season…for once. After all, this is hardly an issue that primarily affects Americans. One could say in fact it primarily affects people who are not Americans. That is why non-Americans tend to know more about American foreign policy than Americans do, by and large.
Plus, while you might think a trickster themed blog does revel in the chaos-or shadenfreude- caused by Trumps’ run, I would counter that Trump is just a shuckster insider who knows how to play the system created by decades of toxic (primarily conservative) social divide and rule politics. A quite typical figure actually in the mold of William Jennings Bryan, Vladimir Putin, or Marine le Pen. Whereas the first Hindu in congress (potentially, hopefully?) running with in some capacity a Jewish candidate against a bombardment of media hostility and entrenched interests is a much more interesting upset to the system. Trump after all hardly threatens any media oligarch tax brackets and thus no doubt they could come to accommodate him.
Even if the Sanders ticket goes down in defeat, as is probable, its run will have shaken things up-specifically in the realm least expected of it, that of foreign policy.
The Trickster's Guide to Geopolitics 
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4 years later we may finally see it at last
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