Until now, and the question of trade apart, foreign policy has not figured much in the Republican presidential primaries. But with Pat Buchanan setting the pace and tone, it is certain that it will do so before long. For he has strong and contentious views on the subject.
As it happens, the most extended and coherent statement of those views appeared in The National Interest. A few years ago, Mr. Buchanan, along with fifteen others, contributed essays to our symposium on what America's purpose should be in a post-Cold War world. His was a characteristically pungent and robust piece, showing an impressive familiarity with both American history and international politics, and it drew on a wide range of opinions--John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, Byron and Macaulay, Acheson and Lippmann and Tuchman--to support its arguments. All in all, it is doubtful whether any practicing politician of national stature other than Senator Moynihan could produce as assured an essay with his own pen. (Senator Lugar's much touted mastery of the subject seems to consist mainly of a close acquaintanceship with the conventional wisdom, and he doesn't write particularly well.)
Given his temperament, it is not surprising that Buchanan approaches the question of national purpose largely by tearing into those he believes to be in error on the subject. The concept of national purpose, he says, "has become a vessel, emptied of its original content, into which ideologues of all shades and hues are invited to pour their own causes, their own visions." Extra-national ideals have been substituted for the national interest, and the Republic has been treated as a means to some supposedly larger end, rather than an end in itself.
