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America and the Middle East

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For the last 25 years, the U.S. has based its foreign policy on a sense of primacy and idealism rather than restraint and realism, says William Ruger, Vice President for Research and Policy, Charles Koch Foundation. Ruger asserts that the U.S. failed to recognize the human and economic cost of international military and political intervention. "We've really opened up all kinds of challenges in this attempt to open up an exemplar for the Middle East. We actually have created an exemplar," he says, "an exemplar of what can go wrong if you engage in the world without first thinking carefully about what is necessary for American safety, and what the unintended consequences of our behavior could be..." The Charles Koch Foundation aims to further understanding of how US foreign policy affects American people and societal well-being. Through grants, events, and collaborative partnerships, the Foundation is working to stretch the boundaries of foreign policy research and debate by discussing ideas in strategy, trade, and diplomacy that often go unheeded in the US capital. For more information, visit charleskochfoundation.org.

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WILLIAM RUGER:

Dr. William Ruger serves as the Vice President for Research and Policy at the Charles Koch Institute and the Vice President for Research at the Charles Koch Foundation. Before coming to CKI and CKF, he was most recently an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas State University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin.

He earned his Ph.D. in Politics from Brandeis University and an A.B. from the College of William and Mary. Ruger is the author of a biography titled Milton Friedman and co-author of two books on state politics: The State of Texas: Government, Politics, and Policy and Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom. His recent scholarly articles appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Civil Wars, Review of Political Economy, and State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

Ruger has been interviewed frequently for television and radio, including appearances on MSNBC, Fox News, and Fox Business; his op-eds have been published across the country by, among others, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, and the New York Daily News. His research has been highlighted or cited by over a hundred news outlets, including ABC News, CNN, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and the New York Post. He is also currently a Research Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Ruger is a veteran of the Afghanistan War and an officer in the U.S. Navy (Reserve Component).

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TRANSCRIPT:

William Ruger: U.S. foreign policy over the last 15 to 25 years hasn’t really been working on delivering the goods, on making sure that America is safe and secure, and at the same time being cognizant of the economic and human costs of our engagements.

If the United States had followed a more realist or restrained approach to the world then it’s not as if Libya or Iraq would be thriving liberal democracies. A foreign policy of restraint isn’t going to create heaven on Earth—but neither is a policy of primacy.

In fact, primacy has often led the United States to create situations where there’s greater instability, more problems, lots of unintended consequences that have spilled over to other places. And Iraq is a perfect example of that. ISIS would not exist in Iraq had it not been for the United States opening Pandora’s box by our regime-change efforts. And that obviously spilled over to places like Syria. You’d also have some of these problems with our allies like Turkey related to some of the issues dealing with the Kurds.

The problem is that these war games expanded well beyond what was possible, and again the U.S. really thought through what the ideal would be without thinking about the constraints that meant reality would look a lot different than that ideal. It would be great if Afghanistan were a liberal democracy, thriving economically, and not a place where folks like Al-Qaeda could operate out of. The problem is that that wasn’t really in the cards.

And so you had situations, for example, like in Helmand, where General McChrystal sent “government in a box.” And what ended up happening, as General McChrystal later said, is that you got a bleeding ulcer ...

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