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| Rand Paul (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons) |
By Robert Farley
Kentucky’s Rand Paul might not be all that important for U.S. Asia policy–then again, he’s running for president.
What about Rand Paul? Elected in the Republican midterm wave of 2010, the libertarian Paul seemed to sit uneasily with the Kentucky electorate, which historically had remained happy with a succession of conservative Democrats and statist Republicans. Known now mostly for his critiques of the national surveillance state, Paul has become perhaps the most prominent, and eloquent, representative within the GOP for the strategic position known as “offshore balancing.” The position, worked out in traditional “realist” academic circles during the 1990s and 2000s, argues that the United States should abandon its post-war focus on formal alliances, step back from entanglement in Eurasian politics, and adopt a less interventionist pose worldwide.
Paul’s association with offshore balancing stems, in large part, from his father’s embrace of the concept. Ron Paul ran for President in 2008 on a non-interventionist platform, distinguishing himself from the rest of the GOP field. The elder Paul has made a career of arguing the quasi-isolationist (to borrow the term of his critics) position on foreign affairs.
But what does offshore balancing mean for the Asia-Pacific? We can imagine that a Paul presidency would resist the temptation and risk of commitment to Japan or any of the South China Sea claimants with respect to potential conflict with China. If offshore balancing can’t avoid war over a few rocks in the East China Sea, or a few piles of sand in the South China Sea, then it’s not worth very much as a strategic perspective.
Read the full story at The Diplomat