Mark Whittington: Gov. Palin a Modern Cold War Hero in the Making

Schweizer's critique of Obama's Libya policy may help explain why Sarah hired him
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Yahoo! Contributor Mark Whittington finds it significant that Sarah Palin not only has a foreign policy advisor in the first place, but that she chose Peter Schweizer for the position:

Palin has not even announced a run for the presidency, not to speak of actually winning the office. But it may well be that we already know whom her National Security Adviser will be should she attain the Oval Office.

This suggests that a President Palin's foreign policy will be at once less and more aggressive than what has been conducted during the past 10 years. Noting the five-point "Palin Doctrine" articulated recently, there would be fewer deployments of conventional American forces overseas. Those that occur will be engaged in sharp, overwhelming campaigns of limited duration and clear, measurable goals. These campaigns would more resemble Grenada during the Reagan administration and Panama and the Gulf War during the first Bush administration than Afghanistan, Iraq, or especially Libya.

At the same time, a President Palin would strike at the enemies of the United States, such as Iran, and assist her friends with a whole panoply of tools, ranging from economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and support for protesters and insurgents. In short, Palin would deal with Iran, Syria and North Korea, among other countries, the same way Reagan dealt with the Soviet Union, as Schweizer chronicled in his book on Reagan's strategy to end the communist regime in Russia, "Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union."

Palin would learn from the successes of Reagan's Cold War strategy and adapt it for the realities of the 21st Century.

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- JP