WSJ Tears Into Ramaswamy’s ‘Reckless’ Foreign Policy: He Would ‘Cede Asia to China and Europe to Russia’
The Wall Street Journal pulled no punches this week in ripping apart the foreign policy positions of tech entrepreneur turned GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
After Wednesday night’s first 2024 GOP presidential debate, the WSJ editorial board published two editorials: one praising Nikki Haley and the other lambasting Ramaswamy.
“If Nikki Haley gets a bump in the polls from Wednesday’s presidential debate, one reason will be that she respected viewers by telling them the truth. Ms. Haley said, accurately, that passing a national abortion ban at 15 weeks is politically off the table, since it would require 60 votes in the Senate,” the board wrote of Haley, praising her sober assessment on a topic the WSJ has warned the GOP on in the past.
One of Haley’s highlights from the debate was her harsh shutdown of Ramaswamy on foreign policy. The WSJ noted that moment in its takedown of Ramaswamy.
“Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence exposed Mr. Ramaswamy’s faulty worldview in the debate, and they’re right. Mr. Ramaswamy is a reminder that a GOP politician who can’t see the stakes in Ukraine won’t stand up to a larger test from Beijing,” wrote the board.
The board went into detail excoriating Ramaswamy’s worldview:
Ukraine is “not a priority for the United States of America,” Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday evening, with the hoary line that America should focus on its own border, not Russia’s with Ukraine. Nothing about shipping Stingers abroad precludes the U.S. government from fixing immigration chaos, and Mr. Ramaswamy knows this. He’s repackaging a Bernie Sanders applause line, with the border replacing social welfare.
The board made the case that Ramaswamy’s often repeated line that he wants to break the Russia-China axis and reinstate a “modern Monroe doctrine” is akin to modern-day isolationism. The board summed up Ramaswamy’s positions as wishing “the U.S. could evict all threats in the Western hemisphere and live unperturbed at home.”
“This isn’t a new idea. It’s an updated version of the ‘spheres of influence’ doctrine that would cede Asia to China and Europe to Russia,” they argued.
Ramaswamy has been a lightning rod of criticism for some of the rhetoric he has espoused on the campaign trail, including suggesting Ukraine cede large swathes of territory to Russia and allowing China to one day take Taiwan once the U.S. can produce its own supply of superconductors.
“The naivete here is remarkable for a man who wants to be Commander in Chief. Taiwan is more than a floating semiconductor fab,” the board wrote, concluding it’s “a fantasy to believe that either China or Russia would then stay out of the Americas.”
While the board ignored Ramaswamy’s recent ventures into 9/11 trutherism, suggesting the U.S. government may have been behind the attack, they ended by declaring, “His venture into foreign policy may be bold but it’s also glib and reckless. It will not help him get to the White House.”
Read the full editorial here.
