There is an inherent logic to Paul's foreign policy that should appeal to small-government conservatives. For one thing, conservatives' doubts about Washington's ability to accomplish particular ends, no matter how well-intentioned, should multiply when the government project involves violence in foreign lands. Americans who doubt the U.S. government's ability to reform health care should be doubly skeptical about its efforts to reform Afghanistan.
Those concerned about government power should also appreciate, as Paul does, that war has almost always led to the expansion of the state's size and power at home. And he is hardly alone. "War is a friend of the state," Nobel laureate Milton Friedman explained. "In time of war, government will take powers and do things that it would not ordinarily do." We have seen this in the creation of new government agencies and the erosion of civil liberties after the 9/11 attacks.
Paul's warnings against stationing large numbers of U.S. troops in foreign lands reveal an understanding about how the world works that transcends libertarianism. Conservatives who comprehend that people aren't inclined to pay for goods if Uncle Sam foots the bill should understand why wealthy allies in Europe and Asia will free-ride, taking U.S. protection as an opportunity to scrimp on defense and splurge on other things.
Ignoring this dynamic, Paul's Republican opponents are calling for spending even more money that the United States doesn't have. They think that the $5.7 trillion now planned for military budgets over the next decade isn't nearly enough. Mitt Romney promises to spend at least 4 percent of GDP on the Pentagon's base budget, plus whatever more is needed for any wars that he may want to fight. If Romney is serious about fulfilling his pledge (which, given his track record, is far from assured), he would spend an additional $2.5 trillion on the military over the next decade. His military budget in 2022 would top $1 trillion -- 61 percent more than current projections. And Romney has not explained which taxes he would increase or what other spending he would cut to cover that increase, which suggests that he would kick the problem to future generations in the form of more debt. No wonder young people like Paul.
Military spending is not the main cause of America's fiscal crisis, and cutting military spending won't solve it. But Republicans who argue that "the common defense" is one of the few legitimate functions of government and that therefore the Defense Department budget should be the last one cut after every other department must come to grips with the fact that most of what Americans spend on their military goes to defending foreigners.
This arrangement suits people in Washington, Republican and Democrat alike, but many people outside the Beltway hunger for a, yes, humbler foreign policy. Short of that, they would like to see a less militarized one. As AlterNet's Adele Stan recently explained, Paul's anti-war rhetoric "satisfies this deep spiritual yearning" among progressives to "hear someone say that we shouldn't be bombing other people around the world." On the other end of the ideological spectrum, even as she explicitly rejected Paul's foreign-policy views, Sarah Palin warned after the Iowa caucuses that "the GOP had better not marginalize Ron Paul and his supporters … because Ron Paul and his supporters understand that a lot of Americans are war-weary and we are broke."
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