Kochs Spend Big On Foreign Policy Realism...Should Neocons Be Worried?
Are the foreign policy "Realists" the answer to our rampant foreign interventionism? The Koch Institute thinks so and according to a recent Washington Post report is spending several million dollars to promote "restraint" and "selective engagement." But isn't "Realism" just another form of interventionism? Who gets to pick and choose when to intervene and on whose behalf? Realism and its problems on today's Liberty Report...
Are the foreign policy "Realists" the answer to our rampant foreign interventionism? The Koch Institute thinks so and according to a recent Washington Post report is spending several million dollars to promote "restraint" and "selective engagement." But isn't "Realism" just another form of interventionism? Who gets to pick and choose when to intervene and on whose behalf? Realism and its problems on today's Liberty Report...
Are the foreign policy "Realists" the answer to our rampant foreign interventionism? The Koch Institute thinks so and according to a recent Washington Post report is spending several million dollars to promote "restraint" and "selective engagement." But isn't "Realism" just another form of interventionism? Who gets to pick and choose when to intervene and on whose behalf? Realism and its problems on today's Liberty Report...
We're going to be talking today a little bit about foreign policy in general, to everybody's surprise.
But this is a good subject to talk about.
It's not an incident someplace in Ukraine or Yemen or Korea or something like this.
This has to do with the philosophy of foreign policy.
And it comes from a posting by a friend, Robert Wenzel.
He saw an article in the Washington Post talking about the Cokes.
The Cokes are putting a lot of money, millions of dollars, into the universities, which makes sense intellectually.
That's where the ideas come from.
And the reflection of ideas is what ends up in Washington.
So the principle of influence in universities is a sound principle.
But it is advertised as being the promotion of a realist foreign policy.
And that sounds pretty good.
Who shouldn't be realistic?
And it's an issue or a policy that's attractive because a lot of people don't want to be pacifists, non-interventionists, and not involved because we do have responsibilities in the world.
And we certainly don't want to take the position that we're authoritarian enough that we want to march our troops in every country.
We may have other methods of controlling other countries, but no troop involvement and minimize things.
And in a way, the realist, realism in foreign policy, it does seem to have a soft spot in it, and people are attractive to it.
And certainly, if we only had two choices in the world, whether you would want to lean toward the realists or the John McCain neocons, you know, I think it's pretty clear.
And the realists do declare, and this group declares that they are not sympathetic to neoconservatism, but they are sympathetic to interventionism.
And we want to try to talk about that and talk about the balance because that's so important.
Because if it would solve the problems on a realistic approach, you know, we certainly should think about it.
But even one step away from the neocon policies that have given us the wars of the last 16 years, especially, and an aggressive policy, whether it's in Ukraine or North Korea or any other place, this is not what we need.
So this is, I think, very worthwhile and worth talking about.
And it's not a couple thousand dollars here and there.
Looks like it's going to add up to a lot of million dollars that the Kochs are going to be investing.
Yeah, apparently, according to the Washington Post article, and again, we got this from Bob Wenzel's Target Liberty, which is a great website.
Apparently, the Kokes have already spent $10 million and they've sent it to Notre Dame, Tufts, Catholic University, and UC San Diego.
And this next little tranche will be $3.7 million.
That's no small change.
And that's going to Harvard and MIT to develop scholarships for graduate students and postdoctoral students.
I think the Harvard one is overseen by Ken Waltz, who's very well known.
Barry Posin at MIT will handle that.
So According to a vice president of the Charles Koch Foundation, the purpose of this, this is the beginning of a much larger project to ask questions about America's proper role in the world and how we move forward.
That sounds good.
It sounds very good, and we should pay attention to them because they have a lot of money.
But the question is, is this really the solution?
I so often think in philosophic terms comparing foreign policy with economic policy.
Different Realities on Intervention00:10:10
And intervention in economic policy is a major issue.
Intervention in foreign policy.
So there's no doubt this is intervention.
It's different.
It's less aggressive.
But the big question is, can it lead to more?
You know, I think that it's safe to categorize Eisenhower as a realist because he did make some strong statements and he did prevent troops from being sent to some hot spots.
You know, when he was president, he was not anxious to send troops in to defend the Suez Canal and a few things like this.
But he was for training.
He was for paying attention and getting involved behind the scenes and getting involved in Vietnam.
Train the troops, but stay out of it.
And we hear that all the time.
You know, nobody even knew they had troops in Nigeria.
You know, but there were, and finally an American got killed, and all of a sudden everybody knows about it.
And that's sort of, you know, maybe there's a widespread of intervention, wise intervention and unwise intervention.
And it's hard to define.
And I think that's one of the challenges that we would have is if you get in a little bit, what does it lead to?
Because in Vietnam, it led to a disaster, even though Eisenhower may well have never allowed that to happen.
But the fact that we're there and people don't like it and they start fighting and an American gets killed and you can't be weak and walk away from it.
So that's where the real problem is.
But I don't think it answers a whole lot other than the fact that it brings to our attention a real serious debate about foreign policy and it does take a position of challenging the neoconservatives.
They do emphasize military, they de-emphasize troops on the ground, but they really emphasize naval power and air power, which might not hurt the military-industrial complex if we have to be available.
But they're more likely to be interested in that approach rather than having larger military forces on the ground.
And if you look at foreign policy from a Marxian dialectical perspective, realism is the synthesis.
It's not this crazed non-interventionism, oh, we don't want to do anything.
And it's not the crazed neocon humanitarianism where you intervene everywhere.
So we can see the attraction and the appeal to people.
Hey, I'm reasonable.
I'm at the synthesis part.
But the reality is that the concept of realism makes no sense.
There is no such thing as realism because you've already accepted the principle, as you point out, of interventionism.
You just subjectively get to determine when it is applied and for what reason.
You know, and that is true.
And it's a tricky word because we are discussing the realists in foreign policy and they are, you know, a defined group.
But being realistic is a different subject.
Why can't you be a non-interventionist to claim I'm realistic about things?
I'm realistic because the approach to using the term realist is an invitation to probably get involved when we shouldn't even be involved.
But being non-interventionist might be the most realistic thing that we could do.
I would say maybe the foreign policy of Switzerland is very realistic, but they don't call themselves realists.
They don't go sending troops around the world and they don't get involved in the foreign policy of other nations.
So there's a little bit of difference between being realistic and tying yourself to a group of people who say we are the realists.
And we'll probably get criticism for not being a little more sympathetic, but in a way we are sympathetic because it is better.
It is better than these neocons.
And the neocons have done so much harm.
So maybe a step in the right direction would help.
But wouldn't it be nice if some of these very, very wealthy libertarians would support non-intervention?
And the Kokes at one time were strongly identified as libertarians.
But I would say if you were a dedicated libertarian, you'd be looking for supporting different types of scholarships in our university.
But that doesn't seem to be happening.
I can think of an institute or two that might benefit from that.
But you know, non-intervention is the real realism from multiple perspectives, from a theoretical and a practical perspective.
Theoretically, United States intervention overseas is immoral because it, first of all, it offends the U.S. taxpayer because he's forced to pay for an interventionist foreign policy, but it also results in collateral damage overseas, and its track record is horrible.
That's the practical side.
Show us where interventionism overseas has produced positive results for the people forced to pay for it on both ends, and then maybe we change our minds.
Until then, we are the true realists because we believe theoretically and in terms of practical application that you simply cannot know how to rearrange the rest of the world.
Now, the criticism that we would get from people who are very serious and very sensible and decent people who want to go in a different direction, they would throw it out, you guys almost sound like you're pacifists, which isn't true.
We believe in defending ourselves, but we don't believe in starting the fight, you know, that we should go and say that we should not take anything off the table, and we should initiate it if it's in our best interest.
So we're not pacifists, and it's not the pacifist answer to it.
But the other thing that they throw out to us, and to me in particular, when I was in office and running for an office, is, oh, you're a bunch of isolationists.
Who wants to be an isolationist?
That means you're just going to go lock yourself in the corner and not deal with the world.
Well, you know, the non-interventionist, it means the government shouldn't dictate the intervention, but the government should have a policy of facilitating, you know, trade and travel and exchange of ideas, which is quite a bit different than what a true isolationist is all about.
They literally do.
They depend on tariffs and protectionism and cruelty manipulation, and they don't preach the gospel of an honest commodity standard.
So if you were truly in non-interventionist economically and foreign policy, you'd probably have to take the position of getting rid of the Federal Reserve because the Federal Reserve has to finance all and every kind of intervention because the money's not there in the bank.
You have to have the Federal Reserve facilitating all these activities.
And as you say, we certainly are tactically very friendly toward many realists.
But the problem with realists is that they believe that the U.S. government should intervene overseas to protect our interests.
But who gets to determine those interests?
They talk about, oh, keep open the sea lanes and keep open trade.
Well, isn't that kind of a form of socialism, privatizing the profits and socializing the cost of doing business overseas?
That doesn't sound very realistic to me.
No, it is.
I think you make this strong point about who gets to define the intervention if you're going to be involved.
And unfortunately, it isn't our Constitution.
It isn't the principles that have at least been spoken and attempted to follow, and that is stay out of the internal affairs of other nations.
And, yes, there are a lot of problems over there.
And we have to get to the point where people don't falsely blame you for something because you won't get involved.
But that means you totally ignore if you're not getting involved.
Oh, you don't care.
He's going to, like Saddam Hussein, and Libya.
You know, they're killing their own people.
They're killing their own people.
So you're not a humanitarian.
And that is their argument.
So they want you to get involved with that.
But what about the same sense where they ought to be realistic?
And this group may be more realistic on this.
And that is getting involved in these Middle East wars.
I hope their position will be real.
The realists will say there is nothing to be gained by us supporting Saudi Arabia.
But then again, that is a big deal.
And there's been things written about dollar hegemony, which I've written about and given speeches on.
But that still is a big issue.
And one of the reasons Saudi Arabia is able to get our presidents to go along with them.
And here we support states.
You know, what's realistic about supporting the country they sent 15 people over here that committed 9-11 in their country that seems to not even understand what civil liberties meant.
And so I would say the realistic thing would be to just stay out of there, which a non-interventionist would do.
That's realism.
And, you know, the neocons are certainly more than capable of using realism to push interventions.
They argued for Iraq from a realistic perspective.
Look, this is the threat that's coming.
We've got to head it off.
You know, so the neocons are great at using realism and humanitarian interventionism, humanitarian principles to push it.
And that's the real danger of realism.
So my closing would be, you know, it's welcome to push looking at foreign policy a different way.
And we certainly do welcome that.
But let's not forget, this has to be based on principles, the principles of who we are and what our place is in the world.
Welcome to Realism00:01:07
Very good.
And I welcome this in spite of our bit of a critique about it because it'll be so strange if there's just another opinion in our universities.
Maybe there will be a few graduates that will end up in the media and have a different perspective and ask different questions.
Maybe some of them would, you know, if they change their tune from neoconservatism, maybe they would come in our direction and maybe one day we'll wake up and find out there's a bunch of new non-interventionists.
And that, of course, would be a real help to us in promoting this cause of peace and prosperity.
And that, of course, can't occur as long as we have an aggressive foreign policy which we support, which unfortunately the realists could get us involved, not on purpose, but with the idea that they think they can contain some intervention.
And before you know it, for some unexpected reason, it gets out of control.
And then we're involved much more so than we should be.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.