Vivek is the Andrew Yang for the right. He’s less soporific and more verbose. His sartorial choices are sometimes questionable, such as bright red ties or glossy brown shoes. It doesn’t mean that he’s always right. I often disagree with him. He was right on one particular angle. Ramaswamy’s views on Ukraine are so out-of-date that they feel alien and lost to the generations who were raised as hyperdemocratic mediocrities.
Vivek does not have the chance to win the presidential election. If he succeeds, he may be able do two things. He could, for example, help to shift the Overton Window to the benefit of future generations by pushing the debate on foreign policy in a more realistic direction. If he plays his card correctly, he might also get a job in a future Republican administration similar to Gina Raimondo in the State Department or in commerce.
Ramaswamy made a mistake in the eyes of our mediocre, if not apathetic elite when he refused to allow further European entanglement. Ramaswamy is talking about amoral realpolitik, of the executive branch pursuing ruthless politics, and argot alien to the human-rights-addicted curricula churning out our surplus Nat-Sec elites and media talking heads. Is he now going to ask private militias in Mexico to avenge the deaths of fentanyl users? The Congress should issue letters announcing retaliation against cartels. Call for private security companies and armies to restore order in Latin America.
Shocking. Technically, all of this is possible for the executive branch but in sophisticated circles it’s often unthinkable. No one knows exactly why.
Vivek replied to Martha Raddatz, who was unable to believe that a man would say in his campaign that Ukraine should not receive any more money if he were elected president. You don’t believe that the possibility of Russia taking control of Ukraine is in our interests? ( Raddatz appeared to be having a stroke.
“I don’t think this is a top priority for foreign policy, and I don’t think it’s preferable for Russia be able invade a neighboring sovereign country. I think that the China-Russian Alliance is our number one military threat right now. By fighting more in Russia and arming Ukraine further, I believe we are pushing Russia into China’s hand,” Ramaswamy said, demonstrating his understanding of canonical realism.
Ramaswamy , in another segment, doubled down when confronted with the expected midwittery that he was compared to Neville Chamberlain. “It is a reverse of what Richard Nixon did to Mao [Zedong]. Mao wasn’t some…paragon for democracy. I don’t believe Putin anymore than Nixon did, but this time Putin is the New Mao. Disrupt that Alliance.” He repeated the principle with Kaitlan Collins at CNN yesterday.
Of course, the usual suspects were apoplectic.
They miss a social aspect. Ramaswamy calls himself non White nationalist. Some mid-tier professor from Sweden calls him ” Anti-diversity , anti-environment , and anti gender equality “. His parents were, respectively, an engineer-cum-attorney and a psychiatrist. He received his B.A. He earned his B.A. Harvard and Yale respectively. He made a lot of money with asset management. He was valedictorian and received the Bowdoin Prize as well as post-graduate scholarships. He tweets about Washington Farewell Address and being free from a war in Europe. He also talks about having goodwill with all regimes, regardless of the internal politics. He is a Hindu Brahmin. You can tell by listening to “Viv” at the radio. He’s a patrician, WASP politician, but without the Protestantism and the sardonic reserve. He is the classic example of Teddy Rooseveltian integration in a republic. Macho Man believes that he represents the maxim “the cream always rises to top.”
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Realist worldviews are amoral in the end, and based on patrician deals abroad and elite nationalism. It needs an elite that is unapologetically American first, rather than identifying themselves with abstract global causes or, if they are foreign-born people, their country of birth.
Vivek is right, of course, about Ukraine, a minimal great-power detente, non-interventionism overseas, European burden sharing, and prioritizing China to be a hegemonic threat. The United States is no longer the WASPy, middle-power of Calvin Coolidge with a nationalist, elite that decides on a very narrow set, of strategic interests, priority, and theaters, and prioritizes evangelical human rights promotion.
He will face a lot of resistance from a new America, with Nat Sec bureaucracies and a media that is more concerned about LGBT rights in Kiev rather than fentanyl abuse in Kansas. I am not his advisor on foreign policy, but I would suggest that he try to implement his ideology from within a Republican administration and look for a position more suitable to his skills: the State Department.
