For GOP, a ‘golden opportunity’ to reclaim security as its issue
In political theory, it’s known as “issue ownership”: to be known to voters as the party that cares most about something, and is best at it.
National security has been the Republicans’ issue for most of the past six decades. They lost their hold because of the Iraq War debacle, but now — after the Paris attacks and growing concern about the Islamic State — will press their traditional advantage in the 2016 presidential campaign.
“It ought to be a golden opportunity for the Republicans to play to their strength,” says Roy Licklider, a Rutgers University expert on politics and terrorism.
To do so, however, the GOP and its eventual nominee must come to terms with one of the most fraught tactics — and words — in foreign policy: containment.
President Obama has been criticized for using the term to describe his achievements in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, though in a news conference last week he used stronger language, saying the group “must be destroyed.”
Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, among others, reject the term containment.
Clinton: “Our goal is not to deter or contain ISIS, but to defeat and destroy ISIS.” Bush: “The mission is to destroy ISIS — not to contain it.”
“Containment” has been U.S. policy against major foes since the middle of the Korean War, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s attempt to run the North Korean army out of North Korea provoked a devastating counterattack by the Chinese.
It’s also been responsible for many foreign policy successes, including one of the greatest of the 20th century — the collapse, without a bullet being fired, of the Soviet Union. Containment is intimately connected to the Republican franchise in national security, one which Western New England University historian John Baick calls “a foundation of our political culture.” It dates to the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II general who beat Hitler.
Some Republican presidents have advanced national security by practicing containment while calling it something else.
In the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower and his future secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, criticized President Truman’s strategy of containing the Soviet Union.
But when the Hungarians revolted against their Soviet-dominated regime in 1956, Ike refused to intervene, and the rebellion was crushed. In eight years now recalled for their relative tranquility, he didn’t roll back the Iron Curtain one inch.
Ronald Reagan was known for his hatred of what he called the Soviet “Evil Empire,” voiced in his famous demand in Berlin in 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Conservatives still praise his refusal to accept the geopolitical status quo. But Reagan didn’t forcibly roll back the Soviets — he helped spend them into submission with an arms buildup.
Conversely, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was pure rollback. And after the war turned sour a few years later, the Republicans’ reputation as security experts was undercut by public disenchantment and by the party’s own division. John McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, paid the price.
While no presidential candidate seems willing to endorse containment of ISIL, few are calling for full-blown, unilateral rollback, either.
For most GOP candidates, the primary focus has not even been ISIL, but on slowing or stopping Obama’s plan to admit Syrian refugees. It’s a reflection of the very different political dynamics that exist when challenging a sitting president on national security.