One of the curious aspects of the GOP campaign is that John Kasich has not done better, especially in the northeastern or mid-Atlantic states where “moderate Republicanism” still has a political resonance. David Drucker contemplated the surprising Kasich weakness and cited one strategist who concluded “Kasich has proven there is no market for a defiant left of center Republican.”
Perhaps it was Kasich’s relatively soft edge on social issues (though he was always and consistently pro-life), his readiness to accommodate Obamacare, and a general style which touted “I can work across the aisle to get things done and am not like these other bomb-throwers” which did him in. But I’m not so sure. There is an argument to be made that Kasich’s “moderation” was inconsistent, that he vacillated too readily towards hardline positions that didn’t stand up to scrutiny, especially on foreign policy. One of the surprising things about the primary election cycle is that neither Trump nor Sanders were punished at all by voters for challenging the bipartisan hawkish consensus which now governs Washington. In Kasich’s bid to be the reasonable guy in the room, he ignored foreign policy, or actually showed himself to be just as ready to strike belligerent poses as Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham. Given the chance to be “defiant left of center,” he passed.
Months ago, it looked as if it might be different. In a January town hall in northwest New Hampshire, Kasich was asked who seemed like an exemplary secretary of state who might guide his thinking. He mentioned Jim Baker. I thought this might have been simply the reflex of a tired candidate coming out with the name of the secretary of state he actually knew; and that Kasich was somehow unaware that Baker was a kind of demon figure for the neoconservative for trying to push Israel towards peace with the Palestinians. But no, it seemed the remark was fairly intentional. I hoped that the remark might arise later in the campaign—perhaps become a vehicle for a Kasich defense of George H.W. Bush’s “realist” foreign policy, and showing Kasich in healthy contrast to Graham, Cruz, and Rubio who spout only neocon approved positions.
But Kasich didn’t see it that way. Instead, on the debate stage, surprising belligerence came from Kasich: “punch Putin in the nose” and “arm the Ukrainians” were his most notable utterances. In other words, risk war with Russia over the Ukraine. One wonders what Baker would have thought of this this.
Perhaps the crowning achievement of George H.W. Bush was to oversee the end of the Cold War and the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. And one of the factors which made it possible was that Washington was not overly triumphant about it: the end of communism was good for Russia, and so was letting Eastern Europe go. But there were implicit understandings that the US wouldn’t try push its advantage, by, for instance expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders. Perhaps these should have been codified, but they weren’t.
In what John Mearsheimer rightly describes as a “boneheaded play,” Washington and the EU have been trying to peel the Ukraine away from Russia’s orbit through NATO and EU expansion and democracy promotion, and have effectively installed through rebellion/coup d’état a “pro-Western” government in Ukraine. The result has been a bloody civil war, with great possibilities of escalation. It is probably not too much to say that these policies were the exact opposite of what George H.W. Bush and James Baker conceived in the early 1990s, when they envisioned Russia emerging as a non-hostile partner in the international system. And yet here is John Kasich, apparently believing there aren’t enough hot spots in the world, suggesting—as basically his signature foreign-policy contribution—that we should add more fuel to the fire by “arming the Ukrainians” in order to punch Putin in the nose.
In last night’s “Acela primary” moderate Republicans voted for Trump over Kasich. Trump campaign style is certainly not moderate, but those looking for a realist foreign-policy sensibility may have felt they had nowhere else to go. For this, Kasich has only himself to blame.
Scott McConnell is a founding editor of The American Conservative.