While all of the three principal GOP candidates believe in talking trash and increasing the defense budget, there are significant differences among them that can be plotted on a graph with one axis running from active to passive, and the other from interests to values. How would that look?
Marco Rubio has shown himself to be a neoconservative sympathizer throughout the campaign. If elected, he will use American power, or at least the threat of it, aggressively to promote American values throughout the world; there would be a renewed emphasis on human rights in places like China and Cuba. He would be in the active/values quadrant of the graph, next to George W. Bush.
Donald Trump appears to believe that we have no permanent friends in the world, only permanent interests. His idea of foreign policy is purely transactional, and is based solely on interests; he thinks even our so-called “allies” screw us over on a regular basis. He would be placed in the active/interests quadrant. The only analogy that I can think of is Richard Nixon.
Ted Cruz, for all of his bluster about destroying ISIS, is a small government conservative at heart. He would increase the defense budget in order to protect the heartland and withdraw from the rest of the world to the maximum extent possible; there would be no nation-building under his administration. He therefore belongs in the passive/interests quadrant, along with (he would hate this) Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.
I’m hoping that, after the GOP field has been winnowed out, the three remaining candidates can have a genuine debate on the merits of their respective approaches. It would be enlightening.