Many veteran Republican foreign-policy hands have expressed alarm at the prospect of a President Donald Trump. Some, including leading “realists” such as Brent Scowcroft and “neoconservatives” such as Robert Kagan and Max Boot, have gone so far as to say they’d vote for Hillary Clinton. Others, including Mitt Romney, have more subtly suggested that she’d be the lesser of two evils. They should look closer at her record.
It’s not hard to see why neoconservatives, in particular, would see Hillary as in some ways a kindred spirit philosophically. While the term is often misused, the neoconservative foreign-policy school rests on two main pillars. First, neoconservatives are internationalists who believe that projecting American power and influence (militarily and otherwise) out into the world to shape events before they reach our shores will benefit the United States and the world at large. Second, neoconservatives are American exceptionalists who believe that spreading “the American way” (democracy, the rule of law, and civil, political, and economic liberties) increases the likelihood of a world with more U.S. allies, fewer U.S. enemies, fewer wars, and fewer of the conditions that breed terrorism.
Comments