Ramaswamy's Serious Realist Critics

He cribs some realist arguments in the service of a radically ambitious and dangerous foreign policy that no self-respecting realist could support.

Stephen Walt doesn’t think much of Ramaswamy’s “realism”:

Ramaswamy’s departure from true realism is perhaps most apparent in his discussion of Latin America. He wants the United States to “re-embrace the Monroe Doctrine” and announce to the world that “our hemisphere is not to be encroached” upon. As an offshore balancer, I don’t have a big problem with that general idea, but what exactly does Ramaswamy mean here? Will Washington bar Chinese investment in South America or tell Brazil not to trade with Beijing? Good luck with that. Is he going to use the 82nd Airborne to tackle drug gangs or punish left-wing regimes? Taken literally, Ramaswamy’s recommendations would entrap the United States in local quagmires for which we have no ready solution. He’s worried about Latin American “leftism,” “unstable states,” drug cartels, and migrants, but his only answers to these challenges are a chest-thumping warning that other states must keep their distance (or they “will be made to regret it”), to place greater reliance on the U.S. Navy (to do what?), and to propose a bunch of new trade deals. This is foreign policy by bumper sticker, not a serious analysis of the region’s challenges and the different ways the United States might respond.

Walt’s criticisms line up with my own, and we would both agree with Jacob Heilbrunn that “Ramaswamy is slapping the realist brand onto a hodgepodge of policy proposals that are divorced from reality.” Ramaswamy has embraced the realist label because it helps him to distinguish himself from both the Republican and foreign policy establishment, and that aids him in his campaign as an outsider candidate. He hopes to be able to dupe the same people that were gullible enough to buy that Trump is some sort of realist. The credulous embrace of his candidacy in some circles on the right is proof that those people haven’t learned anything from the Trump era.