The foreign policy of the first tea party president

The first Tea Party president, transcending today’s sterile confrontations between ‘interventionism’ and ‘isolationism,’ between ‘moralism’ and ‘realism.’

Reverence for the Constitution being perhaps Tea Party America’s most distinctive feature, and opposition to rule by executive order at home being one of its principal objectives, a Tea Party president’s foreign policy may be expected to reduce the number of executive agreements and to submit more and more of U.S. commitments to the Senate’s “Advice and Consent.” Instead of using agreements with foreign governments as a means of advancing policies against the wishes of the people’s elected representatives, a Tea Party president’s foreign-policy-by-treaty would try to make foreign relations into one more set of circumstances in which the Congress would, as James Madison wrote, “refine an enlarge the public view.”

Peace is Tea Party America’s primary objective with regard to foreign nations. But, since it distrusts all of them, its consensus—unspoken and overwhelming—is that U.S. military power, rather than any alliance or arrangement, is the key to our peace. Hence a Tea Party president, unlike a Progressive, would not expect the “third world” in general to become friendlier to us—never mind traditional enemies. For example, as our time’s struggle within the Muslim world rages, he would impress on its contenders the deadly consequences of harming Americans. Unlike a Libertarian, he would not trust in economic interest to secure America’s access to the Western Pacific, but would react to China’s military preparations to exclude us from the region by building and basing a military force to secure that access no matter what China might do.