I know most people who follow foreign affairs are probably glued to the news reports coming out of the MENA region this week, but if you are able to peel yourself away from the bizarre videotaped rantings of Col. Gadaffi (Qaddafi? Kaddafi? Ghadafi? Can we in the American media please all decide on one spelling and stick to it?) I recommend picking up the latest Foreign Affairs (March/April 2011) and checking out the piece by Walter Russell Meade -- The Tea Party and American Foreign Policy.
(Even better, read the article to the stylings of the Glee cast covering Bieber, Katy Perry and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's ... the two sensory experiences complement each other better than you might expect, certainly made my weeknight Foreign Affairs reading time much jazzier than normal ...)
I don't know that Meade necessarily provides a compelling answer to the burning question -- where does the the Tea Party stand on foreign policy? But he provides a useful trope, in the form of Jacksonian populism, to examine how the Tea Party might formulate a response to various hot button foreign policy issues (most of which they've been able to avoid thus far). And in harkening back to Jacksonianism, Meade gets in a little American history refresher, which I'm a total sucker for.
The reason, though, why the article is worth reading is that it concisely sums up, better than anything I've read recently, why this all matters -- how what the Tea Party thinks about foreign policy, even if the Tea Party itself doesn't know yet what it thinks, even though foreign policy is decidedly not tops on our list of national priorities -- is bound to shape our foreign engagement.
Just look at the uphill battles the foreign policy establishment/elites are now waging on the budget, and wringing funding from Congress for diplomatic and development programs top military and State department officials argue are necessary ...
(Even better, read the article to the stylings of the Glee cast covering Bieber, Katy Perry and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's ... the two sensory experiences complement each other better than you might expect, certainly made my weeknight Foreign Affairs reading time much jazzier than normal ...)
I don't know that Meade necessarily provides a compelling answer to the burning question -- where does the the Tea Party stand on foreign policy? But he provides a useful trope, in the form of Jacksonian populism, to examine how the Tea Party might formulate a response to various hot button foreign policy issues (most of which they've been able to avoid thus far). And in harkening back to Jacksonianism, Meade gets in a little American history refresher, which I'm a total sucker for.
The reason, though, why the article is worth reading is that it concisely sums up, better than anything I've read recently, why this all matters -- how what the Tea Party thinks about foreign policy, even if the Tea Party itself doesn't know yet what it thinks, even though foreign policy is decidedly not tops on our list of national priorities -- is bound to shape our foreign engagement.
Writes Meade: "In times like the present, when a surge of populist political energy coincides with a significant loss of popular confidence in establishment institutions ... Jacksonian sentiment diminishes the ability of elite institutions and their members to shape national debates and policy."
Just look at the uphill battles the foreign policy establishment/elites are now waging on the budget, and wringing funding from Congress for diplomatic and development programs top military and State department officials argue are necessary ...
Meade ends with a warning: "Foreign policy mandarins often wish the public would leave them alone so that they can get on with the serious business of statecraft. That is not going to happen in the United States."
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