The Wars Rand Paul Would Fight - the Atlantic
Paul should be credited for broadening the GOP foreign-policy debate. And there’s considerable merit in his preference for thinking carefully through the endgame of war, building congressional support before seizing the sword, and recognizing the potential for blowback from drone strikes.
But there are also problems with the Paul Doctrine—some of them potentially irreconcilable. The senator laid out his criteria for when to fight wars and then immediately violated those criteria by backing the campaign against ISIS, where there is no clear endgame. “Although I support the call for defeating and destroying ISIS, I doubt that a decisive victory is possible in the short term, even with the participation of the Kurds, the Iraqi government, and other moderate Arab states,” he said.