The glib millennial would have the GOP abandon its commitment to international leadership, forsake Ukraine, and appease Putin.
Thirty-eight-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy has never been elected to any political office—federal, state or local—and his half-baked ideas about America foreign policy show why he should be kept far away from the Oval Office.
Ramaswamy’s big idea is to turn Russia against China by ending American support for Ukraine, pledging that Ukraine will never become a member of NATO, and renewing economic ties with Moscow. This, he argues, is “a reverse maneuver of what Nixon accomplished with [Chinese dictator] Mao [Zedong] in 1972.”
Of course, Ramaswamy’s idea is ludicrous and unworkable: because despite whatever paper promises Russian dictator Vladimir Putin might make in order to fulfill his dream of conquering Ukraine, Russia and China today have strategic interests that coincide.
China and Russia. Both countries are opposed to the American-led, rules-based, liberal international order. And nothing America can do other than surrender, internationally, will appease or placate Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China.
By contrast, back in 1972, Mao’s China and Soviet Russia were already strategic adversaries that viewed each other with suspicion and alarm. The Sino-Soviet split had occurred more than a decade earlier, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“…Frequent border skirmishes between the Soviets and the Chinese verged on all-out war,” notes history.com.
The situation today, obviously, is very different. Russia and China have put their historic differences in the rearview mirror to combat what they see as the greater and more immediate threat: the United States. Hence their 2022 “no limits” partnership or pact.
In short, Ramaswamy’s big idea is a pipe dream. It will never happen—or, if it does happen, it will prove as endurable and prophetic as Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 pledge, “peace for our time.”
The cost and collateral damage, meanwhile, will be deep-seated and profound. Ramaswamy’s attempt to appease Putin and forsake Ukraine will rupture NATO and probably result in the alliance’s demise as frontline states in Eastern Europe and the Nordic region rebel and vow to go their own way.
As for Asia, Ramaswamy promises to “deter China from annexing Taiwan by shifting from strategic ambiguity to strategic clarity.” But appeasing Putin will alarm and frighten American allies in Asia, who, consequently, will doubt the resolve, staying power, and commitment of the United States.
And with good reason. Ramaswamy says the United States should promise to defend Taiwan “until 2029 but not afterward.” By 2030, he argues,
we will have full semiconductor independence from Taiwan; significantly reduced economic independence on China; stronger relationships with India, Japan, and South Korea; and stronger U.S. homeland defense capabilities to protect against cyber, super-EMP, and nuclear attacks.
In other words, by 2030, America finally can withdraw, militarily and diplomatically, from Asia and Europe and revert back to fortress America, defense of the homeland, and protection of the Western Hemisphere.
Disaster. This would be a geo-strategic disaster for the United States. It would cede leadership of the world to China and Russia, who would now write the rules that other countries would be forced to follow and obey while America hid behind its phantom moat in the Western Hemisphere.
If we were living in 1723 or 1823, such an approach might be tenable. But it’s 2023. Americans are too engaged in the world, economically and commercially, to revert back to a foreign policy of fortress America.
Our economy, which depends heavily on international trade, will suffer in a world led and shaped by China and Russia, not the United States.
Demagoguery. Equally bad, Ramswamy engages in rank demagoguery to explain and defend his foreign policy of appeasement.
The Biden administration may be aiding Ukraine, he says, “to make good on a bribe from a nation whose state-affiliated company paid off the President’s son,” Hunter Biden.
Never mind the utter lack of evidence to support this nonsensical charge. And never mind that virtually all of Europe, too, has acted to aid Ukraine after it came under savage and unprovoked assault from Russia.
Ramaswamy also demagogically asserts that America must adopt his foreign policy of appeasement to avert “a potential nuclear war with Russia.” Never mind that, throughout the Cold War, the United States averted nuclear war precisely by checking and not appeasing Russian aggression.
The bottom line: Vivek is too naive, too inexperienced, and too gullible to trust with the reins of American power. He would surrender American international leadership to the likes of Xi and Putin. He would abandon and forsake our allies in Europe and Asia.
He would bring America home when Americans increasingly are going abroad. And he would revert back to a foreign policy of fortress America in a world in which isolated fortresses cannot long survive and prosper.
Simply put: Ramswamy’s dangerous and demagogic foreign policy views make him entirely unfit to be President of the United States.
Feature photo credit: YouTube screenshot courtesy of Fox News Sunday.