Gabbard Is a Dream Come True for Foreign Policy Realists

It has been absolutely fascinating to see whom CNN is trotting out to oppose the president-elect’s new appointments, especially the (now) former Rep. Matt Gaetz to the Department of Justice or the former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence. John Bolton, Adam Kinzinger, Andy McCabe, and Jeh Johnson are unhappy, and on CNN, talking about how each of these picks are “unqualified.”

Enough ink has been already spilled to oppose the stinking credentialism often mistaken for meritocracy and the “consensus politics” that goes on in the name of bipartisanship in the capital of this country; it is not the job of this magazine to defend those called upon to serve, as they will face their own inquisitions, and will have to come out of them bold and gracious. That said, there are some egregious accusations that deserve to be scrutinized for the sake of propriety. 

Two of them include Gabbard’s stances on Syria and Ukraine, the epitome of liberal hubris. The trotting out of Obama-era Democrats to denigrate Gabbard shows that they have not forgiven her for her cardinal sin, the heresy of opposing the prophet at the height of liberal internationalism. 

Gabbard opposed the toppling of Assad in Syria by force, going against Obama and the U.S. government’s stated policy of “Assad must go.”

Consider Gabbard’s own statement justifying her views. “Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” she told The View. The congresswoman and then presidential aspirant further tweeted, “We heard attacks from warmongers in politics/media before. Those opposed to Iraq/Libya/Syria regime change wars are called ‘dicatator-lovers’ [sic] or ‘cozy’ with evil regimes. Rather than defend their position, they resort to name-calling & smears. American people wont [sic] fall for this.” 

In 2016, she wrote an op-ed arguing against U.S. interventions in the Middle East, where she correctly assessed that “to maintain order after Assad’s fall would require at least 500,000 troops in a never-ending occupation.”

“Our actions to overthrow secular dictators in Iraq and Libya, and attempts now to do the same in Syria, have resulted in tremendous loss of life, failed nations, and even worse humanitarian crises while strengthening the very terrorist organizations that have declared war on America,” Gabbard wrote. “A recent New York Times article reported that these ‘rebel groups’ supported by the United States ‘have entered into battlefield alliances with the affiliate of Al Qaeda in Syria, formerly known as Al Nusra.’ How the United States can work hand-in-hand with the very terrorist organization that is responsible for the killing of 3,000 Americans on 9/11 boggles my mind and curdles my blood.”

The idea that a secular dictator might be better than ostensible democracy infused with hardline Islamists in a region that is culturally incompatible with Madisonian democracy might be an amoral position, but it is a realist one, and is supported by evidence and international relations literature. 

On the question of NATO, opposition to Gabbard bordered on the cusp of outright libel and calumny. 

She tweeted in 2022, “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” POLITICO called her “Russia-friendly” for that. 

The fact that Russia has a legitimate security interest in its near abroad, has defined redlines, and is reactive to perceived encroachment of the same, isn’t a controversial position. It is validated by research, including a book-length analysis by your humble columnist, as well as by the statements of the current CIA director, William Burns, and the former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The fact that anyone still denies that chain of causation is a sign of severe intellectual mediocrity and corrupting ideology. 

But, perhaps, the cause of liberal fear is something else. Gabbard’s appointment is also a sign that Trump is serious about reforming the intelligence apparatus of this country. Given that she’s opposed to the core theological impulse of this regime—promoting egalitarianism and sexual rights often by force across the globe as a revolutionary power—this causes paranoia among those who have sinecures in the regime’s bureaucratic apparatus. And for that, and for that alone, she deserves our support and praise.