Ron Paul, who had been the 1988 presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, spent much time in his 2008 and 2012 Republican primary presidential runs criticizing US intervention overseas and promoting following a noninterventionist foreign policy. Some people might expect Bill Weld would do the same thing in his current Republican primary challenge to President Donald Trump. Weld was, after all, the 2016 Libertarian nominee for vice president. However, as Weld made crystal-clear in his October 8 editorial at Foreign Affairs, Weld aspires to oversee as president a foreign policy that is solidly interventionist.
Weld, in his editorial titled “Reclaiming Republican Foreign Policy,” presents a view far removed from the argument for nonintervention expected from a libertarian. Indeed, the editorial provides a rundown of Weld’s support for the US government intervening militarily and otherwise across the world.
Weld, in his editorial, does not call for terminating the intense intervention overseas, including war, sanctions, and covert “regime change” operations, that has been the United States government’s pursuit for decades. Instead, Weld promises to make sure that intervention continues. Weld writes, “I am running against Trump for the Republican nomination for president in part to return the United States to the stable, bipartisan foreign policy that brought the United States through the Cold War.” The US must challenge nations including Russia and China, while “restoring deep connections with our European and Asian allies and with Israel,” continues Weld.
The problem, according to Weld, is too little intervention. Condemning nonintervention under the name “isolationism,” Weld writes, “the United States cannot afford to retreat into isolationism, as the Trump administration has done.” Oh boy. Weld is so boisterous in his support for intervention overseas that he sees Trump as a noninterventionist.
Weld is focused, he writes, on maintaining “the U.S.-led international order” and the US role as “the guarantor of a world order.”
There you have it, Weld is an adherent to the American exceptionalism, US imposed world order, and policeman of the world perspectives that have been at the heart of US government interventions over the decades.
People seeking a 2020 presidential candidate promoting a noninterventionist foreign policy will need to look elsewhere.
Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.
Bill Weld is simply a neocon loyalist, nothing more. He ran in the Libertarian Party only to take votes from Trump so Hillary would win. As a former Republican politician he would have “name recognition”.
It was absurd. Gary Johnson had barely heard of Murray Rothbard, the LP’s ideological godfather, and had of course never read anything of him. Bill Weld, the VP nominee, had never even heard of Rothbard. That’s like being a Protestant minister and never having heard of Martin Luther.
When they had done their best sabotaging Trump in a make-believe run, which the media covered more extensively than they ever covered an LP run in order to attack Trump, Bill Weld dropped all pretense and endorsed Hillary.
During this he had said he would never re-join the evil GOP that had nominated the Hillary-opposing, anti-neocon Trump. But now he did so anyway in the hope of damaging Trump a bit more, to give the victory to the Democrats again. All so the neocon wars can continue.
Actually, Weld’s approach was clearly aimed at taking votes away from Hillary.
Wrong. Weld was a non issue anyway but his intent was pulling voters away from Trump.
It must hurt for anti war people to see their beloved liberals turn into war mongers as the Democratic party has.
Attacking Trump and praising Clinton didn’t attract people who were inclined to support Trump.
Attacking Trump and praising Clinton attracted people who weren’t inclined to support Trump, leaned slightly pro-Clinton, but couldn’t really stomach her so looked for someone not entirely unlike her.
To the extent that Johnson/Weld’s votes came out of any other candidate’s hide, that candidate was Clinton. And there’s a pretty good chance that Trump wouldn’t have been elected without them.