Video: Rand Paul on Diplomacy

When I was about ten years old, I used to play chess with an old Ukrainian named Pete Karpenko. Captain Pete, as we called him, told us stories of fighting the Bolsheviks when he was fourteen years old. He and his family were little more than peasants but they resisted the idea of collective farming. He fought with the White Army against the Bolsheviks, and fled when the communists won. Fifty-five years later, he was still afraid to return to the Soviet Union. So, it’s easy to understand that around my house, we had little use for communists or their sympathizers.

Like many conservative middle-class families, our inclination was to resist anything to do with Red China. In that black and white world, you were either for us or against us. Trade with China was thought to be trade with the enemy. A funny thing happened, though, along the way. Many conservatives came to understand a larger truth. As trade began to blossom with China, many conservatives, myself included, came to admit that trade improves our economic well-being AND makes us less likely to fight. The success of trade with China made many conservatives rethink their view of the world.

People sometimes ask me what my worldview is. My response is that even if you’ve crisscrossed the globe, I’m not sure that the world doesn’t change by the time you return to the same spot twice. I really am a believer that foreign policy must be viewed by events as they present themselves, not as we wish them to be.

A few years ago, I read a review of John Gaddis’ biography of George Kennan. I laughed when I read that Dr. Gaddis promised Kennan not to publish it until after his death. And that twenty years later Gaddis’ students were jokingly wondering who might die first. I loved the book. To me, containment is not a dead letter. I look at the worldwide menace of radical jihad and I think we need a long-term vigilance like containment.

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