Pew recently reported that younger generations "favor multilateralism over unilateralism and the use of diplomacy – rather than relying on military strength — to ensure peace." Two-thirds of Millennials (66%) say that military force can create hatred that leads to more terrorism, while only 46% of Boomers agree. David Sirota thinks Ron Paul should get the credit:
Paul, of course, is one of the only presidential candidates in contemporary American history in either party to overtly question our nation’s invade-bomb-and-occupy first, ask-questions later doctrine and to admit what the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledges: namely, that our military actions can result in anti-Americanism fervor and terrorist blowback. … [W]hether Paul eventually wins the GOP nomination or not, the trends embedded in his current electoral coalition will affect our politics long after his candidacy is over — and even if you don’t support Paul’s overall candidacy, that’s a decidedly positive development for those who favor a new foreign policy.
Rumsfeld, to his credit, stumbled onto this truth a little too late. But isn't reality what really moved us? We saw the real consequences of trying to impose our concept of freedom onto a society by force – and it was horrifying. No polemic or argument or speech or book could have changed my mind about interventionism the way Iraq and Afghanistan did. And this first decade of the new millennium – from 9/11 to the euro crisis – has proven more emphatically than any decade in recent times that we in the West cannot act as if we are the only actors in the world any more. The delusions and instincts of the Cold War era, brought back to life as zombie foreign policy in the 2000s, have been brutally exposed in the new world.
America is relatively weaker than at any point since 1945 because our own hubris led to over-reach abroad and massive debt and economic recklessness at home. The next generation has drawn the obvious conclusion. We need to retrench and rebuild at home. We need national defense, not national offense. We need greater global cooperation, not greater global confrontation. We need to see that hard power is often best used in restraint, and that soft power can be thrown away by a few criminals in the White House deciding they know what's best about interrogation methods.
Ron Paul deserves credit for opening the debate on the right about this, making Huntsman possible. But history more so. The Millennials are just boomers who were mugged by reality.
The Dish 