Ted Cruz Warns Against Military Adventurism

The Texas senator is seeking an implicit contrast with the more hawkish Marco Rubio.

Even as he emphasized the need to defeat the Islamic State group in a speech coming just a week after the San Bernardino, California, shooting rampage that's since been linked to radicalization, Cruz, a 2016 presidential candidate, chastised those rushing to place American troops on the ground to fight the enemy.

"Some in the course of a political campaign have focused on the question of boots on the ground - American boots on the ground - as a talismanic demonstration of strength. That is getting the deployment of military force precisely backwards," the Texas senator said at The Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has emerged as a chief rival to Cruz's ascension in the GOP primary, believes placing significant U.S. troops on the ground is the only way to defeat the Islamic State group, though he has stopped short of pinpointing an exact number of forces that should be deployed. Front-runner Donald Trump has also backed placing 10,000 U.S. troops in the region.

Cruz said the U.S. should instead utilize its overwhelming air advantage, arm Kurdish fighters and employ the power of the Jordanian and Egyptian militaries to battle the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The freshman senator went on to contest the argument, laid out by some Republicans, that the failure to create stability in Libya in 2011 was the sole result of poor execution by President Barack Obama's administration. Cruz said it should have been apparent that Obama was not capable of a policy that would protect U.S. national security interests based on his previous moves.

Rubio was a vocal supporter of military action and regime change in Libya that year, but Cruz on Thursday called intervention in the country "a disaster."

"The argument that Republicans had to, in principle, support what might've been a democratic uprising against [Moammar] Gadhafi but that the Obama administration somehow botched the job is revisionist history and poor revisionist history at that," Cruz said. "This took place in 2011 after the president's Cairo speech, the Russian reset and the canceling of the missile defense batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic. It should've been clear to any rational observer that the Obama administration was not capable of a policy that would actually defend and robustly defend the national security interests of the U.S."

Similarly, Cruz said intervention in the Syrian civil war is not in America's best interests. While Rubio has said the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad is crucial to containing the spread of violent and radical groups, Cruz argued there's no good option on either side of the fight.

"Quite simply, we do not have a side in the Syrian civil war," he said, citing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as someone who holds his view.

Cruz also held up former President Ronald Reagan as a leader who kept his eye on the largest challenge of his time: defeating communist ideology while not forcing democracy on nations unwilling to accept it.

With this foreign policy doctrine, Cruz has his eye on the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, which may be looking for a new vessel given that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has faded as a top-flight contender for the GOP nomination. That sliver of the party could remain a crucial voting bloc as the field of candidates winnows.

Cruz is calculating that he'll be fighting Rubio for those votes down the road and his nuanced stance on American power abroad reflects that, given the pointed contrast between them.

"We will not win by replacing dictators, as unpleasant as they may be, with terrorists who want to kill us and destroy America," Cruz said.

A time zone away, campaigning in Iowa, it's unclear if Rubio was aware of Cruz's critique, but he certainly had his rival on the brain.

Sen. Ted Cruz on Thursday warned against the deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East in hopes of creating democracy, nodding to a portion of the Republican Party exhausted with military escapades abroad.

America is not going to waltz into a country set up a democracy and leave and there be no problems. I do not know where people get this idea from. The next problem is that the democracy that does get setup is not necessarily going to be beholden to America. Iraq is a Shiite Muslim country and is going to be plagued by problems associated with being a Shiite Muslim country which includes being friends with Iran and being suspicious of Sunni Islam.

That said, I do not want America getting involved in yet another war without a clear definition of victory or a will to win it.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has emerged as a chief rival to Cruz's ascension in the GOP primary, believes placing significant U.S. troops on the ground is the only way to defeat the Islamic State group, though he has stopped short of pinpointing an exact number of forces that should be deployed.

The "exact" number of troops is a decision that should be made by military leadership and the constraint of what we can afford. Neither of these are things I would expect Rubio to be any good at.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has emerged as a chief rival to Cruz's ascension in the GOP primary, believes placing significant U.S. troops on the ground is the only way to defeat the Islamic State group, though he has stopped short of pinpointing an exact number of forces that should be deployed.

This is the approach I am in favor of, letting the nearby countries do the main work and we help as needed.

Rubio was a vocal supporter of military action and regime change in Libya that year, but Cruz on Thursday called intervention in the country "a disaster."

My problem with our involvement in Libya is that we had no debate on actually going into Libya, we just somehow ended up dropping bombs on the country. I disagree that our involvement was a disaster. Once the revolution started I do not believe it would have turned out a winner and Libya would be stuck with another multi-year civil war like Syria.

While Rubio has said the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad is crucial to containing the spread of violent and radical groups,

How would removing Assad contain the spread of violent groups? Removing Assad would put them in power in Syria and give them a large country to use/rape/kill.

"Quite simply, we do not have a side in the Syrian civil war," he said, citing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as someone who holds his view.

This is the second most intelligent comment I have heard anyone make about Syria. The most intelligent comment I have heard is: "We will not win by replacing dictators, as unpleasant as they may be, with terrorists who want to kill us and destroy America," Cruz said.

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