The Russia hawks were right

Putin’s Russia, the Taliban, Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq — you can always find some sort of allegedly “realist” foreign-policy thinker who insists that those countries were just standing there, minding their own business, when the big bad Americans came along and picked a fight.

It’s always our fault; as Jeanne Kirkpatrick accurately assessed, “They always blame America first.”

You know what’s great about hawks? We never blame America first. (Admittedly, it’s rare we ever get around to blaming America for anything at all.) Hawks rarely get blindsided. Hawks will almost never look at a simmering potential crisis overseas and conclude, “Eh, it’s not that bad.” We don’t count on luck or on problems to solve themselves. Maybe we do come across as paranoid, but it’s partially because we have long memories.

We generally believe that deterrence is the best policy; if you have sufficient military assets in a geopolitical neighborhood, and everyone believes you’re willing to use those military assets in that geopolitical neighborhood, very few people want to start a fight. You don’t see many thieves robbing the doughnut shop across the street from a police station.