In a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California, on Aug. 17, Vivek Ramaswamy name-checked George Washington, James Monroe, and Mr. Nixon, stressing realism and the national interest as guiding lights in his foreign policy vision.
He said he would revive the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that began under President James Monroe at a time when European powers threatened the Americas.
“If you’re a foreign nation, you do not mess with the United States of America on our own home soil. You do not test us on our waters or in the Western Hemisphere, and if you do, you will have hell to pay for it. No Chinese spy balloons flying over half the United States,” Mr. Ramaswamy pledged, drawing sustained applause from the crowd.
But the 2024 hopeful’s most explosive comments grew out of another historic American foreign policy doctrine—the brainchild of Yorba Linda’s most famous native son and a vision perhaps at odds with both the neoconservatism and the liberal internationalism Mr. Ramaswamy repudiated on stage.
“The Nixon Doctrine was that other nations have to be the first protectors of their own national security. I agree with that,” he said.
In practice, that would translate to the United States lessening its dependence on both China and Taiwan.
Mr. Ramaswamy pointed out that Taiwan is currently an indispensable supplier of semiconductors to the United States for everything from consumer electronics to advanced weaponry. Reducing America’s reliance on those semiconductors would, he said, alter America’s strategic posture.
The candidate pledged to end the United States’ longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan.
Taiwan, or the Republic of China, claims independence from the Beijing-based People’s Republic of China (PRC) even as the PRC claims it as its own. The United States has remained decidedly undecided on the matter for decades.
“I will be clear with China and with Taiwan that we will defend Taiwan if China invades Taiwan before we have semiconductor independence in this country,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, saying he anticipated the United States could very well reach that point “by the end of my first term.”
“After the U.S. achieves semiconductor independence, our commitments to send our sons and daughters, to put them in harm’s way, will change,” he continued, saying that his approach would “revive Nixonian realism in the modern day.”
“These are naked views that you’re not suppose to share in public,” Mr. Ramaswamy added.
He suggested that his “strategic clarity” would spur the island nation to do more to protect itself.
“If we say that, ‘No, no, no, we’re going to be very honest: our engagement outside the Western Hemisphere will be limited to the circumstances where it actually advances U.S. interests,’ then that puts Taiwan on notice,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.
‘Putin the New Mao’
Mr. Ramaswamy evoked Mr. Nixon throughout the speech, even through dramatic physical gestures.On more than one occasion, the entrepreneur held up his fingers in the famous Nixon “V for Victory” pose.
Mr. Nixon’s successful bid in 1972 to reopen relations with China seems to have inspired Mr. Ramaswamy, who said the president, whose second term was overshadowed by the Watergate scandal, “deserves to be remembered for what he actually did to our foreign policy.”
“What many people misunderstand about Nixon’s opening to China was that it was an act of strategic necessity in the Cold War—to split up the Russian-China axis—and very successful in that regard,” a Ramaswamy spokesperson told The Epoch Times before Mr. Ramaswamy’s speech.
By wooing Mao Zedong, Mr. Nixon helped weaken the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the later implosion of Western communism.
According to Mr. Ramaswamy, eerie parallels exist between the 1970s and today. The United States is again squaring off with a unifying Chinese and Russian bloc—but there’s one key difference.
“Putin is the new Mao,” he said.
“While we have a foreign policy establishment in both parties, including Biden, who tries to supplicate to China to get Xi Jinping to drop Vladimir Putin, what we really need to be doing is getting Vladimir Putin to drop Xi Jinping,” he continued.
He would grant Russia a chunk of Ukraine that it has claimed in the ongoing war. He would also bar the country’s admission to NATO in perpetuity.
“That’s a big win for Putin. I'll admit that,” he said, before saying that the United States would enjoy a “bigger win.”
“I will require that Russia exit its military alliance with China. I will require that Russia remove its nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, the strip of Russia that borders Poland. And I will require, pursuant to my modern Monroe Doctrine, that Russia remove its military presence in the Western hemisphere–not in Cuba, not in Venezuela, not in Nicaragua, you’re out,” he continued.
“In return, we will reopen economic relations with Russia just as Nixon did with China,” Mr. Ramaswamy added.
He argued that the loss of support from Russia would also deter China from invading Taiwan.
Mr. Ramaswamy discussed Russia, China, and Taiwan at some length, yet other countries often discussed in the context of U.S. foreign policy went unmentioned—namely, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran.
His Yorba Linda speech came days ahead of the Aug. 23 Republican debate in Milwaukee, where he will face off against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and other candidates who have satisfied multiple criteria laid out by the Republican National Committee.
Notably, debaters must swear in writing that they will back the party’s eventual nominee.
Former President Donald J. Trump is not expected to be at the debate.
