Realism, Restraint, and Freedom Conservatism

I am a veteran of three conflicts—Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. I spent two weeks after September 11, 2001, at Ground Zero with the National Guard. I’ve seen bloodshed, death, and destruction firsthand. 

In 2003, while studying international relations at CUNY, I mobilized to Iraq. The September 11 attacks convinced me that our interventions there and in Afghanistan were “realist” policies needed to keep America safe. American soldiers want to believe our cause is just.

Since high school, my beliefs in liberty, limited and defined roles for national government, and aggressive foreign policy, especially towards countries like the USSR, defined my conservatism.

War, however, changes you, mentally, physically, and even intellectually.

Revisiting realism in 2018, I realized foreign interventions, meant to ensure American security by “spreading democracy” or “securing stability,” were flawed. The point hit home for me that year when my niece graduated high school, suddenly eligible to fight in a war that started when she was an infant. 

My idea of realism had turned into a restrained realism, one that I believe still fits my own conservatism.

Restraint’s critics, interventionists and neoconservatives derogate “restraint” as “isolationism.” That is just not true.

Pundits and the foreign policy establishment recently commemorated NATO’s 75th anniversary and are still considering what the future may hold for the alliance. It’s as good a time as ever to share what a foreign policy of realism and restraint would look like in practice.

To restrainers, military intervention should be a last resort, not a handy tool. Restrainers pursue trade and diplomacy, and we believe in taining a powerful U.S. military capable of defeating rivals and securing the global commons. These are beliefs most often espoused by libertarians and national conservatives.

With these beliefs in mind, I signed the 2023 Freedom Conservative letter. Its “strong central government, dedicated to securing liberty,” truly describes my conservatism, the sweet space between libertarianism and hard conservatism I sought.

As I scrutinized the paragraph on foreign policy, I realized that it could fit into the restraint paradigm. “The shining city on a hill. American foreign policy must be judged by one criterion above all: its service to the just interests of the United States. Americans are safest and freest in a peaceful world, led by the United States, in which other nations uphold individual liberty and the sovereignty of their neighbors.”

Core principles of restraint include acting as an example, prioritizing US interests, peace, liberty, and respect for sovereignty. Restrainers ly question “how” America should lead, preferring leadership that sets an example in domestic and foreign conduct.

President Ronald Reagan described his vision of America as a shining city on a hill: “She’s still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness towards home.” This vision is magnified, not diminished, when America practices restraint. 

Per Machiavelli, it is impossible for nation states to follow simple moral idealism while interacting with other states. Thus, America must sometimes exercise raw power. Restraint reminds us that when we do, our example as a shining leader can dim, at least a little. Therefore, we should be scrupulously cautious in choosing to exercise such power. 

Convincing other nations that we are the shining city is easier if we live our values.

I’ve witnessed the damage of military intervention. I’ve been fired upon, and fired back, even while delivering humanitarian relief. I’ve seen the toll on American soldiers, treated the wounded, and carried the dead. I’ve lost comrades to the suicide epidemic raging among global war on terror veterans. While more than 7000 Americans have died in combat and supporting operations since 2001, over 30,000 post-9/11 veterans have killed themselves.

The damage doesn’t end there. James Madison noted: “Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the patent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.”

Today, conservatives recognize debt, taxes, and governmental overreach as evils. War not so much.

Permanent war persisted from 2001 through 2021. Residual engagements, leftover from our global war on terror, leave young American service members at risk. The debt created by our overseas interventions is enormous. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq cost an estimated $8 trillion, nearly a quarter of our national debt. We are still spending both blood and treasure in distant lands with no impact on real American security interests. 

This year in Jordan, three American soldiers were killed in one of dozens of weekly drone, rocket, and mortar attacks on our over-deployed, over-dispersed troops in the Middle East. These were US Army reservists called to active duty to support a mission no one has explained to the US public.

Here lies a central problem with interventionism: more than two decades of war have stripped the military’s ability to sustain its global footprint without depending on its reserves. 

The Pentagon depends on young part-time soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen to support our interventions. Why? Because they can’t convince Americans to expand the military and thus spending, and they cannot convince enough young Americans to serve; our recruiting crisis is real. Yet the foreign policy establishment insists every deployment prevents an existential threat. So, they call on police, firefighters, students, and Americans who signed up to defend our country as the force of last resort, disrupting and risking their lives.

This is not the path to liberty.

As a restrainer and Freedom Conservative, I see alignment and common values. Most right leaning restrainers are libertarians or national conservatives. Freedom Conservatives are emerging as restrainers as well. Not all Freedom Conservatives will accept restraint, nor will all restrainers choose Freedom Conservatism. But there is natural overlap.