Pat's World.

• Author: Harries, Owen
• Position: Republican presidential aspirant Pat Buchanan's views on foreign policy

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.(1) 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.

He proceeds to spell out the kind of things he has in mind. While the United States had no option but to fight the Cold War ("You can refuse almost any invitation, but when a man wants to fight, you have to oblige him"), now that it is over we should not "defend wealthy nations that refuse to defend themselves." He advocates the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and the Asian mainland, and the uprooting of the global network of "trip-wires" that was established during the Cold War. In the post-Cold War world, "our role is diplomatic and moral, not military," and NATO should be left either to wither on the vine or to become a purely European organization.

Nor should the United States allow its purpose to be defined by the "guilt-and-pity crowd" that would exploit American altruism to make us responsible for mending the ills of the world. Foreign aid is an idea whose time has passed and the spigot should now be turned off. (Interestingly, Buchanan does not on this occasion attack the United Nations, the IMF, and other international institutions, though he does pause to characterize one proposal as likely to "set off onanistic...