IN FEBUARY 2013, Senator Rand Paul delivered a speech at the Heritage Foundation. It was called “Restoring the Founders’ Vision of Foreign Policy.” In it Paul sought to outline a fresh foreign-policy path for the Republican Party, which was tepidly beginning to debate the limits of intervention abroad. At the outset Paul declared, “I see the world as it is. I am a realist, not aneoconservative, nor an isolationist.” He argued that radical Islam posed a threat to the United States but that the best way to defang it wasn’t to engage in permanent wars in the Middle East. Instead, he invoked the shade of George F. Kennan, asserting that a containment policy toward Iran and other countries would be the most effective way of deterring America’s foes:
I think all of us have the duty to ask where are the Kennans of our generation? When foreign policy has become so monolithic, so lacking in debate that Republicans and Democrats routinely pass foreign policy statements without debate and without votes, where are the calls for moderation, the calls for restraint?
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