Vivek Ramaswamy’s Certainty On Foreign Policy Is Dangerous

Patriots often ask, “What would Reagan do?” He knew an Evil Empire when he saw it and was not immobilized by moral confusion.

An unattractive trait on the part of a few who have made a lot of money is believing they know everything about everything. We can see such people, whether the guy who lucked out with block chain currencies, the hedge fund guru, or the very smart, risk-taking entrepreneur.

Vivek Ramaswamy is in this last category. He’s obviously blessed with a high IQ, is loquacious, confident, and gutsy. His book ‘Woke,’ was a much needed, most welcome tonic. He’s clear eyed, able to articulate the issues with precision and persuasiveness. One would be justified in labeling him as the intellectual’s Trump.

As we well know however, just because you made a billion dollars in Silicon Valley or Wall Street, it doesn’t automatically correlate to extensive knowledge in all things that matter or, more significantly, “wisdom.”

Vivek Ramaswamy’s “certainty” on foreign policy is in a word, dangerous. It’s dangerous because he projects a settled, thoughtful point of view which those of us who study history can readily see isn’t thoughtful enough. Not by a long shot.

Many on the Right have been critics of America’s so-called “forever war,” loosely defined as those foreign military interventions starting shortly after 9-11. But those on the Right or the Left who protested these wars were not arrested, jailed, or exiled to a Gulag.

In contrast, Russians protesting Putin’s war are either locked-up, in hiding or in exile. They must not be forgotten or ignored. They know the Putin regime is taking their country to ruin, sacrificing tens of thousands of young Russian soldiers along the way. It is useful to remember that millions of Russians do not approve of or support Putin’s war.

It’s understandable that after so many ill-advised military interventions by the USA over a period of decades the American people are susceptible to the argument, false thoughts it is, that the war in Ukraine too is just another “war of choice” initiated and manipulated by the military-surveillance-industrial complex and the deep state. But not everything in this world is controlled by the USA - least of all Putin’s Russia.

Those who have studied Russian history and the history of Central Europe understand this war as part of the long conflict along what has been termed ‘the Bloodlands’ along Russia’s borders with her neighboring countries to the west. Putin’s war, taken in context, is the latest chapter in a centuries long military quest by Russia to subdue all of its neighbors to the North and West. For the present Czar it means cowing, subduing, neutralizing, or conquering former provinces, not of the USSR, but of Imperial Russia: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldova and Ukraine. Is it any wonder then, why all these countries hastened to join NATO, in Finland’s case since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and in Ukraine’s case as an aspiration.

Would Putin have invaded Ukraine if, like the Baltic countries, Ukraine was already a NATO member?

What Americans are advised to remember as well is the interconnectedness and interdependency of Europe and North America. We should have learned this lesson after what happened in the 30s and 40s - not to mention the Cold War. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is nearly identical to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. The results on the ground are the same: death and destruction. Ignoring this level of tyranny and military aggression is inviting, not preventing, a wider European war in which US troops would inevitably be committed.

Former Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was a notable cheerleader for the “wars of choice” of the recent quarter century. She was nearly always wrong about the necessity of prolonged US interventions in the Middle East. But on this issue she’s correct. Russia’s war against Ukraine constitutes the single biggest threat to world peace since the Nazi invasion of Poland in ‘39.

This does not mean we need to send in our boys. Of course not. But we cannot look away. Republicans and Conservatives frustrated and enraged by Biden cannot permit their partisan criticism to obscure the reality of the threat posed by Putin’s war.

By now it’s more than obvious that Putin’s gang is as ruthless, destructive and dangerous as Hitler’s was in ‘39-‘40, minus the dimension of fanatical antisemitism. What history teaches over and over and over again, is that these murderous tyrants must be stopped sooner or later. If Putin is stopped sooner than later, without the blood of Europeans or Americans, it will be due to the heroism and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people.

Vivek Ramaswamy requires intensive tutoring. His foreign policy pronouncements make him look as silly and blinkered as the isolationists of the early 1940s. The louder he talks the more foolish he looks. He’s disqualifying himself and it’s sad to see - because he has a voice on domestic issues that should be heard.

‘Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it.’

Publius is an old friend and occasional contributor to CHQ whose present position does not permit him to write for us under his own name.

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