Piling On Rudy

My sustained attacks on Giuliani's foreign policy, particularly his plan to draft a global hodgepodge of Important Countries into NATO, have now been publicly echoed or endorsed by, count 'em, Ross Douthat, Matt Frost, Nick Gvosdev, Daniel Larison, and Matt Yglesias, to name a handful -- yet further evidence of that broad, bipartisan consensus everyone keeps pining for. News flash: it's not the reflexively interventionist and expansionist consensus that the Second Coming of Truman Committee so desperately desires. It's practical and prudent, and it has given Rudy Giuliani the booby prize by acclamation.

What's particularly stunning is that the Giuliani plan is neither the inevitable result of having neoconservative advisors nor the inevitable result of wanting a new treaty organization aimed at countering new threats that NATO could never have envisioned. It is simply clumsy, shortsighted, half-baked policy prescription. And it is beyond me how someone with a case to make that he's a strict constructionist domestically longs so forcefully to transform our most durable international alliance into a living constitution with guns.

But since blogs and the people who write them have such a decisive impact on elite politics in America, I know we've got nothing to worry about.

Comments

[Nikolas Gvosdev]

And let me add Central European conservatives I spoke with this past week--and here we aren't talking about reflexively anti-American, anti-defense political figures--are aghast. They question whether such proposals from Giuliani reflect fundamental ignorance about NATO or that he and his advisors really don't put much value on what the alliance is currently doing.

[Ed Nashton]

Bravo. The use of NATO as some good/democratic governance kewpie doll really does call into question how seriously candidates like Guiliani take the foundation of Article V to NATO. Can you imagine how the alliance would react if Syria decided to strike back at Israel (a new NATO member under the Guiliani plan) for their attack earlier this month? I, like other members of NATO, choose not to test that rather risky scenario.

As I've often asked friends of mine that advocate this type of strategy, where would we be in Afghanistan today had NATO imploded over Article V disagreements.

A League of Nations redux, no thanks.