Speaking to a crowd of 700 at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York on May 18, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (shown) called for a more aggressive, interventionist U.S. foreign policy.
Criticizing the Obama administration’s foreign policy, which he views as too weak, Christie charged: “America is no longer sending clear signals to the world. Consistent signals.” He continued: “Signals like the ones Ronald Reagan sent when he was president as to who our friends are, and we will stand with them without a doubt, and who are enemies are, who we will oppose regardless of the cost.”
Obviously believing that the United States has not acted aggressively enough through Obama’s foreign policy, Christie said: “The rest of the world watches in desperation and hope that America will realize and act upon once again its indispensable place in the world.”
Christie insisted that America’s leaders must send “clear and consistent signals” to those nations it supports and those it doesn’t while promoting America’s values.
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Given the venue, observers interpreted “those nations it supports” to include Israel, but he did not mention the Jewish state by name.
“We need to stand once again loudly for these values,” Christie said. “And sometimes that’s going to mean standing in some very messy, difficult places. Standing long and hard for those things that we believe in.”
Christie was particularly critical of what he considers the Obama administration’s lack of sufficient response to Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons.
He expressed dismay that “even the thought” exists of Iran building a nuclear weapon. He also criticized Obama for saying he’d draw a “red line” warning Assad not to use chemical weapons, but not intervening when alleged evidence of such attacks was presented.
“Once you draw that red line you enforce it, because if you don’t, America’s credibility will be at stake,” Christie asserted.
The issue of how the United States should respond to a possible Iranian nuclear weapons program — a theoretical argument, since no evidence of such a program had, or has since, been found — was a major issue in the 2012 Republican presidential candidates’ foreign policy debate held in South Carolina in November 2011. During that debate, candidate Herman Cain proposed using economic sanctions and aid to the Iranian opposition to pressure the government. “The only way we can stop them is through economic means,” he said. Cain added that he did not believe that the United States should take military action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear device and said he would “not at this time” consider military assistance to the Iranian opposition.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania proved to be even more hawkish than Cain by supporting an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment facilities. The eventual GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, while agreeing with Cain about economic sanctions against Tehran, went a step further and said that if nothing else worked, he would take military action. “If all else fails, if after all the work we’ve done there’s nothing else we can do besides take military action, then of course you take military action,” he said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed. If “the dictatorship persists,” he said, “you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon.”
The only candidate in the debate who took exception to intervening against Iran was Rep. Ron Paul, (R-Texas), who said that he was concerned that such intervention would repeat the use of exaggerated and false threats that led to the Iraq war. “I’m afraid what’s going on right now is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq,” he said.
As a strict constitutionalist, Paul was always opposed, as a congressman, to any action not specifically authorized by the Constitution. And though his anti-interventionism was often tarred with the “isolationist” label, his stand was actually more in sync with the foreign policy advocated by America’s early leaders than that of any of the other candidates. For example, James Madison, said on April 20, 1795,
Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…. No nation could reserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington spoke words that Governor Christie might want to consider and then reassess his view that American should “lead the world” even “in some very messy, difficult places.”
Washington began, “Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all….” He continued:
In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated….
Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.
Christie might also want to consider the words of Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, who in his historic address on U.S. foreign policy delivered on July 4, 1821, said, after reading the full text of the Declaration of Independence,
Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
In his talk, Christie, looking ahead to 2016, called on the people (presumably the Republicans):
Who’s out there that you will nominate to make sure that justice is done around the world, that lives are protected and that liberty and freedom is not only protected where it is but is pushed forward in places where people merely dream of it? In the last 240 years it has been America that has pushed for those values, fought for those values and led.
If Christie wants to review U.S. foreign policy for the past 240 years, he should read the quotes we supplied above, and others. After Christie has now displayed his interventionist colors, those who do not want to see the United States go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” will look elsewhere when searching for a presidential candidate whose priority is to make sure that “justice is done” not around the world, but here at home, as our Constitution demands and our nation’s Founders wished.
Photo of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: AP Images
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