Reagan 'pulled no punches in telling Mr. Gorbachev to 'tear down that wall,' Paul says. | AP Photos Rand Paul likens policies to Reagan's

Rand Paul called Wednesday for “a saner, more balanced approach to foreign policy” in a speech to the Heritage Foundation aimed at destigmatizing his views on the subject.

The libertarian senator from Kentucky, a probable 2016 Republican presidential candidate, presented himself as solidly within the mainstream. He called himself “a realist – not a neoconservative, nor an isolationist.”


On what would have been Ronald Reagan’s 102nd birthday, he explained that the 40th president’s foreign policy is “much closer to what I am advocating than what we have today.”

“Reagan’s foreign policy was robust but also restrained,” said Paul. “He pulled no punches in telling Mr. Gorbachev to ‘tear down that wall.’ He did not shy away from labeling the Soviet Union as an evil empire. But he also sat down with Gorbachev and negotiated meaningful reductions in nuclear weapons.”

( PHOTOS: Happy Birthday, Ronald Reagan)

“Many of today’s neoconservatives want to wrap themselves up in Reagan’s mantle,” he added, “but the truth is that Reagan used clear messages of communism’s evil and clear exposition of America’s strength to contain and ultimately to transcend the Soviet Union.”

The senator has demonstrated since his 2010 campaign that he can talk about foreign policy in more mainstream terms than his father, explaining his positions to non-true believers in a less rigid and more pragmatic way.

Paul acknowledged the concept of blowback, the idea that U.S. policies overseas can be somewhat to blame for sowing the seeds of hatred and payback, but he did not lean on it as a crutch.

“Some libertarians argue that western occupation fans the flames of radical Islam,” he told Heritage. “I agree, but I don’t agree that absent western occupation that radical Islam ‘goes quietly into that good night.’”

He warned that “the West is in for a long, irregular confrontation not with terrorism, which is simply a tactic, but with Radical Islam.”

“Americans need to understand that Islam has a long and perseverant memory,” he said. “For Americans to grasp the mindset of radical Islam we need to understand that they are still hopping mad about the massacre at Karbala several hundred years ago. Meanwhile, many Americans seem to be more concerned with who is winning ‘Dancing with the Stars.’”

Foreign policy proved to be Ron Paul’s Achilles Heel in the 2012 primaries. Close advisers to the family have pointed to a Jan. 16 debate as a turning point for the Texan’s presidential bid. After finishing a strong second in New Hampshire’s primary, he compared Osama bin Laden’s capture in Pakistan to a Chinese dissident hiding in the U.S. and said the U.S. government wouldn’t want China to “bomb us and do whatever.”

Paul was booed, and his internal South Carolina tracking polls showed his support collapsed.

On Fox News Tuesday night, the younger Paul told Bill O’Reilly that he’s “thinking about” running in 2016 but has not decided. He continues to take all the steps that a serious candidate would to cover his bases on foreign policy, including a recent trip to Israel – on which he was accompanied by South Carolina GOP Chairman Chad Connelly. And he told Hillary Clinton at a hearing last month that he would have fired her over her response to the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.

“I’d argue that a more restrained foreign policy is the true conservative foreign policy, as it includes two basic tenets of true conservatism: respect for the Constitution and fiscal discipline,” he said during his 20-minute speech Wednesday, after which he took no audience questions. “Today in Congress there’s no such nuance, no such moderation of dollars or of executive power.”

Paul expressed leeriness about arming those who may eventually become our enemies, as the U.S. did in Afghanistan during the 1980s. He highlighted his efforts to stop sending M1 tanks and F-16 fighters to Egypt. He warned that arming Syrian rebels could be short-sighted.

Paul said he was inspired to give what his office promoted as a “major foreign policy speech” after reading John Lewis Gaddis’ biography of George Kennan, the diplomat remembered as the father of the containment doctrine. The 800-page book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012.

“What the United States needs now is a policy that finds a middle path,” he said. “A policy that is not rash or reckless, a foreign policy that is reluctant, restrained by constitutional checks and balances but does not appease. A foreign policy that recognizes the danger of radical Islam but also the inherent weaknesses of radical Islam. A foreign policy that recognizes the danger of bombing countries on what they might someday do.”

“Like communism, radical Islam is an ideology with worldwide reach,” he added, drawing more lessons from the Cold War. “Containing radical Islam requires a worldwide strategy like containment. It requires counterforce at a series of constantly shifting worldwide points. But counterforce does not necessarily mean large-scale wars with hundreds of thousands of troops nor does it always mean a military action at all.”

Paul complained that there is less debate about how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program in the U.S. than in Israel.

“Anyone who questions the bipartisan consensus is immediately castigated, rebuked and their patriotism challenged,” he said.

Paul said he has voted for sanctions against Iran, but they have not worked yet. He said that he’ll make sure any further sanctions pass only if there’s an amendment that says the bill cannot be interpreted as authorizing the president to use military force.

“No one, myself included, wants to see a nuclear Iran,” he said. “Iran does need to know that all options are on the table. But we should not pre-emptively announce that diplomacy or containment will never be an option.”

Paul has long been a proponent of forcing Congress to authorize military action overseas, whether in Iran, Libya or elsewhere.

He said he would station fewer soldiers overseas and reduce the number of bases.

“Instead of large, limitless land wars in multiple theaters, we would target our enemy; strike with lethal force,” he said. “We would not presume that we build nations nor would we presume that we have the resources to build nations.”