The Republicans Heilbrunn doesn’t mention …
Peter Feaver and Dov Zakheim have both already highlighted many of the manifest flaws in Jacob Heilbrunn’s article on the purported extinction of establishment Republican internationalism. Normally I’d resist any further piling on, but Heilbrunn’s article is so unserious that it merits thorough refutation. Hence this question: What do Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Rich Armitage, ...
Peter Feaver and Dov Zakheim have both already highlighted many of the manifest flaws in Jacob Heilbrunn's article on the purported extinction of establishment Republican internationalism. Normally I'd resist any further piling on, but Heilbrunn's article is so unserious that it merits thorough refutation.
Peter Feaver and Dov Zakheim have both already highlighted many of the manifest flaws in Jacob Heilbrunn’s article on the purported extinction of establishment Republican internationalism. Normally I’d resist any further piling on, but Heilbrunn’s article is so unserious that it merits thorough refutation.
Hence this question: What do Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Rich Armitage, Bob Zoellick, Hank Paulson, Bob Kimmitt, John Negroponte, Gordon England, Andrew Natsios, and Henrietta Fore all have in common? At least three things: They all served in very senior foreign policy-related positions (at either the principal or deputy-level) in the George W. Bush administration. All fit comfortably in the internationalist camp of the Republican Party. And not one of them is mentioned even once in Heilbrunn’s article.
There are many more Bush administration foreign policy alumni from the under- or assistant-secretary level who would also fit the bill for the three factors above. Moreover, many of the above continue to be influential in policy circles and will be courted by GOP contenders for the White House in 2012, as campaign advisors and potentially as presidential appointees. How Heilbrunn could write an article ostensibly assessing the state of GOP foreign policy discourse while ignoring so many senior policy-makers from a Republican administration that left office just one and a half years ago is a head-scratcher, to say the least.
Will Inboden is the executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and an associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas at Austin, a distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and the author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.
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