The Duck of Minerva

Open Foreign Policy Thread Tonight on GOP Debate

US Foreign Policy

by Josh Busby

6 August 2015, 1137 EDT

I will be live-tweeting the foreign policy dimensions of the GOP debate tonight here. Readers may want to chime in here on this open thread with the pre-, during, and post-debate reactions. It may be the silly season in the GOP primary, but with the Iran deal pending before Congress, these are consequential times. Yesterday, I live tweeted President Obama’s address on Iran and will be synthesizing my observations on the deal and the politics surrounding it in coming days.

Get your popcorn and laptop out tonight and stay tuned for the main attraction on your TV. BTW, as ever, I encourage civility on the thread so have at it but with respect to contrasting views. Thanks.

7:55pm CST. Almost go time. We’re ready. My wife who studies domestic politics is doing a two-fer and watched the earlier debate of second tier candidates. #gluttonforpunishment.


8:00 Awkward opener. Got going in a hurry. Look Twitter for constant updates…

Joshua Busby is a Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. From 2021-2023, he served as a Senior Advisor for Climate at the U.S. Department of Defense. His most recent book is States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge, 2023). He is also the author of Moral Movements and Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 2010) and the co-author, with Ethan Kapstein, of AIDS Drugs for All: Social Movements and Market Transformations (Cambridge, 2013). His main research interests include transnational advocacy and social movements, international security and climate change, global public health and HIV/ AIDS, energy and environmental policy, and U.S. foreign policy.

3 Comments

  1. Josh Busby
    Josh Busby on 6 August 2015 at 16.03 EDT

    I’m going to start the discussion on my own thread. Jim Lindsay had an interesting post on CFR’s blog suggesting that foreign policy might not feature strongly if not in this debate in the election as a whole. Where does come up, the focus is probably going to be more on terrorism he suggests. There might be a few clashes over Iran and immigration he argues. On Iran, he wonders whether Rand Paul will get in to it with any of his Republican colleagues, but Paul too has come out against the Iran deal. What do you think? What foreign policy fireworks if any will fly? Will they all pile on Obama or will any of them take issue with each other? https://www.cfr.org/elections/gop-debate-room-foreign-policy/p36874?cid=soc-twiter-in-gop_debate_room_for_foreign_policy-080615

  2. josh
    josh on 6 August 2015 at 23.59 EDT

    Debate reax anyone? Foreign policy apparently got the most questions but the substance of people’s remarks largely eludes me. There are impressions but not very serious.

  3. josh
    josh on 7 August 2015 at 02.14 EDT

    So, does the Christie vs. Paul exchange on civil liberty and phone tapping count as substance?