Tony Lee: The Emergence of a Sarah Palin Foreign Policy Doctrine?

"We don’t go looking for dragons to slay"
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Human Events columnist Tony Lee observes that the first elements of what could become a Palin foreign policy doctrine emerged Tuesday in the principles she outlined in her Colorado speech:

Palin said that “we should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period.”

Then, Palin said that if America commits troops and “if we have to fight, we fight to win. To do that, we use overwhelming force. We only send our troops into war with the objective to defeat the enemy as quickly as possible. We do not stretch out our military with open-ended and ill-defined missions. Nation building is a nice idea in theory, but it is not the main purpose of our armed forces. We use our military to win wars.”

Echoing the famous Powell Doctrine, Palin then said that “we must have clearly defined goals and objectives before sending troops into harm’s way. If you can’t explain the mission to the American people clearly and concisely, then our sons and daughters should not be sent into battle.”

Palin then said that “American soldiers must never be put under foreign command. We will fight side by side with our allies, but American soldiers must remain under the care and the command of American officers.”

Palin also said America should never be in a rush to send in troops...”

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Related: Daniel Horowitz, The Palin Foreign Policy Doctrine

- JP

J.E. Dyer on 'The Palin Doctrine' and her new foreign policy advisor

Palin is talking in the terms on which we need to be carrying on the public debate
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Gov. Palin outlined a doctrine for the use of force in her speech to military families in Denver Monday evening, and, as we noted today, replaced two advisers who were holdovers the McCain campaign team with Hoover fellow and author Peter Schweizer. J.E. Dyer, in a commentary for Hot Air finds these developments to be good news:

Many volumes could be written on the distinctions between the prevailing ideas on the use of force overseas, but this passage of Palin’s speech, combined with her taking on Peter Schweizer as an adviser, argues for a more Reaganesque than progressive-activist view.

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Schweizer is a fan of Reagan’s approach, which had no compunction about trying to undermine oppressive governments, but did so by supporting freedom movements where they were indigenous, and arming the insurgents under Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. The commitment of US force was a matter of coming to blows very rarely under Reagan: besides invading Grenada, Reagan conducted a reprisal against Libya in 1986 after the Berlin nightclub bombing, and another one against Iran in 1988 for mining the Persian Gulf and inflicting mine damage on USS Samuel B Roberts (FFG-58). The US armed forces had a high and very active profile during the Reagan years, but the actual use of force was considered necessary very seldom.

I tend to share Israpundit’s view that Schweizer’s advice will involve the sparing and summary use of force – in a shooting role. If you haven’t read his books on the Reagan approach – a comprehensive one that emphasized political and economic campaigns against the Soviet Union – I can highly recommend them. Meanwhile, compare Palin’s five points to the “Weinberger Doctrine,” a rubric that played a major role in US decisions about the use of force in Desert Storm.

As is typical of her, Palin is talking in the terms on which we need to be carrying on the public discussion of national security, our national interests, and interventions overseas. There has been a very long and extensive national dialogue on these topics over the last 100 years; we have never settled most questions as if there were a single answer. Palin – alone among potential GOP candidates – is harking back to the philosophical discussions launched by presidents and candidates like Reagan, Goldwater, Adlai Stevenson (agree with him or not, he launched a substantive debate that colored Democratic positions for the next 40 years), Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt.

I believe people intuit the need for this debate, as overseas interventions seem to be stalemated in Afghanistan and Libya, and the world begins to behave as if there is no US power. Palin apparently recognizes the need to talk about fundamentals – and love her or hate her, I don’t see anyone else out there doing it.

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- JP

Benyamin Korn: A Foreign Policy Doctrine Echoing Reagan’s

"Allies should be supported, dictators reviled, terrorists hunted down and enemies defeated"
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From Benyamin Korn at JewsForSarah.com, more on the Palin Doctrine, a foreign policy philosophy much like that of President Ronald Reagan, except updated to fit the current world's template. The director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin coined the term "Palin Doctrine" (and wrote about its sharp contrast to the Obama Administration's ad hoc, ad lib method of conducting foreign relations) in a New York Sun op-ed last week:

It’s based on the principles that allies should be supported, dictators reviled, terrorists hunted down and enemies defeated. It also means the western world will not stand by at the bloody repression of a democratic revolution.

These notions might be self-evident to some, but they’re not to President Obama, who cannot bring himself even to utter the words “Islamist” and “terrorist” in the same sentence. One of his top intelligence officials actually told Congress last month that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “largely secular” organization. Ms. Palin, by contrast, denounced as a “shame” the administration’s offer to the Brotherhood of a seat at the table of power in Egypt’s newly evolving system.

Last week Governor and Mr. Palin were in New Delhi where she delivered the keynote address at a high-level political conclave. As the first visit to south Asia by a potential 2012 GOP contender, her attention was welcomed in a democracy justifiably concerned about the unstable behavior of Pakistan, its nuclear-armed neighbor to the northwest, and a China rapidly arming, under a regime where state capitalism and rigid control of political power go hand-in-hand.

The Palins’ stopover in Israel likewise came at a critical moment. In the wake of the Itamar massacre and the renewed rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, Gov. Palin expressed only solidarity, even wearing a Star of David during her tours. She promised to return soon for a longer visit.

Contrast that with the behavior of Mr. Obama, who has yet, as President, even to visit the Jewish state, pays only lip service to the threat of ceaseless Palestinian incitement, and has returned to carping about the “illegitimacy” of Jews building houses where they already live.

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- JP

Korn: Palin Doctrine emerges as Arab League calls for no-fly zone

A sharp contrast to Obama's inaction
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In a New York Sun op-ed, Benyamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, say the unprecedented request by the Arab League to the UN to impose a “no-fly zone” over Libya formalizes what Sarah Palin said three weeks ago when she proposed a no-fly zone to protect the Libyan opposition from air strikes ordered against them by the dictator Qaddafi:

Mrs. Palin also continues to link America’s energy policy — a realm in which she has experience — and U.S. foreign and anti-terrorism policies. She recognizes that the ongoing transfer of billions of U.S. petro-dollars to unstable or even hostile Mideast regimes has, since the formation in 1973 of the Organization of Petoleum Exporting Countries, been an drain on U.S. financial resources.

In a critique of Mr. Obama’s energy policies published yesterday at about the same time the Arab League was adopting her prescription for a Libya no-fly-zone, Mrs. Palin laid out how the president’s “war on domestic oil and gas exploration and production has caused us pain at the pump, endangered our already sluggish economic recovery, and threatened our national security.” Nor is Gov. Palin’s insight into complex international issues limited to areas of her immediate expertise.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin — certainly no knee-jerk advocate for Sarah Palin — wrote just a few weeks ago that Palin turns out to have been correct in the prediction she made to Barbara Walters, in a much-noted November 2009 interview. Palin stated she was opposed to Obama’s opposition to Israel’s settlement policies because “[m]ore and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead.” Now, as Rubin noted, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics confirms that the pace of immigration to Israel rose 14% to 16,633 from the level in 2009, most coming from Russia or America.

Mrs. Palin will be in New Delhi later this week delivering the keynote address to the annual India Today Conclave. She has been asked to speak on “What America Means to Me.” She will speak as a crisis is simmering between America and Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed neighbor to the northwest and will be the first high profile trip by a potential Republican contender to South Asia.

Mr. Korn concludes that Gov. Palin’s address Saturday in India will provide additional elements to the expanding outline of what he calls The Palin Doctrine:

It contrasts sharply with the foreign policy being conducted, if that is the word, by President Obama, who is perplexing not only the Arab world, to which he reached out in his Cairo speech at the start of his presidency, but even his own supporters in the liberal camp, and many in between, who are upset by what might be called his propensity for inaction. It’s an inaction that suggests the Arab League won’t be the only institution that might find itself surprised by the logic of the alert Alaskan.

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- JP