Gary Johnson’s Foreign Policy: Libertarian or “Strange”?

As Gary Johnson gears up to try to win the Libertarian Party’s
nod in their Las Vegas national convention in early May, various
writers are wondering how thoroughly non-interventionist his
foreign policy ideas are (especially in the wake of two Ron Paul
campaigns that have raised the bar high for a libertarian-leaning
approach to military intervention).

It started with a Daily Caller interview
defining Johnson’s foreign policy vision as “strange” in a
headline. Why strange? Largely because in a macro vision of severe
(in D.C. standards) cuts in military and defense spending (of 43
percent), Johnson leaves a lot of room for the sort of
interventions the Ron Paul brand of libertarian foreign policy
avoids. Johnson

told TheDC that he supports Americas efforts to aid African
troops in tracking down Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony
and that he wouldn’t rule out leaving behind American bases in
Afghanistan.

Johnson said that while he wants to end the war in Afghanistan,
that doesn’t mean he would necessarily stop drone attacks against
terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen, even though he believes they
create more enemies than they kill.

“I would want leave all options on the table,” Johnson
said….

“So now you have the U.S. bases that exist in those areas, do we
shut down those military bases? Perhaps not,” he suggested, taking
an odd position for a supposed anti-war candidate.

“I would completely withdraw our military presence,” he further
expounded. “Does withdrawing our military presence from Afghanistan
mean that we would still have a base open in Afghanistan if they
allowed us to keep a base open? Perhaps.”….

But despite Johnson saying he thinks that the Middle East is a
region of the world the United States should maintain a military
presence in, he contended that there are “no military threats” to
the U.S. anywhere in the world.

“As I’m sitting here right now, there are no military threats
against the United States,” he said, stipulating that America
should be “vigilant” against terrorist attacks on the homeland.

Last year, The Weekly Standard
reported that Johnson told the publication that he

You can read the rest of this article at: http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/11/gary-johnsons-foreign-policy-libertarian

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Posted by rbutler on Apr 12 2012. Filed under Libertarian News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry