October 9, 2015 - Rand Paul Contradicts the Establishment on Russia

Today, we wanted to highlight a piece of good news that has emerged in the wake of Russia’s intervention in Syria. It’s only good news in the sense that the reality could be far worse, but frankly, we’ll take what we can get.

This week, the Washington Post ran a brief piece with following headline: Rand Paul: No-fly zone in Syria ‘could lead to World War III’

Now Rand Paul can and should be criticize for all sorts of things on foreign policy, most notably his opposition to the Iran Deal. But the fact remains that he is still the least bad on this issue among the Republican candidates and he’s probably about tied with Bernie on the democratic side.* This article is worth reading precisely because it is a Republican candidate making a coherent and sound argument in favor of diplomacy, at a time when most conservatives are calling for a policy of outright confrontation. As the headline implies, he also specifically denounces a no-fly zone, which he correctly sees as a backdoor to more hostility. Confronting Russia on the Syria issue is as dangerous as it is stupid, and today we can be grateful that someone in American politics is openly saying it.

*I’m omitting Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee from consideration here, since you probably haven’t heard anything about him. I think he has real promise on the foreign policy front frankly, but I don’t think we’ll see him in the news much until the first debate on the Democratic side.