Rand Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference’s straw poll for the second consecutive year, but did he avoid the contentious subject of foreign policy?

That seemed to be the consensus in media reports on his speech, with a few exceptions. While Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz made the case for a muscular American role in a turbulent world, Paul didn’t mention the globe’s hotspots as he crafted an alternative.

Instead the Kentucky senator told interviewers not read too much into his lack of chest-beating over things like the crisis in Ukraine. “I think almost all factions of the Republican Party from the most hawkish to the least hawkish have agreed really there isn’t much of a military option here but we should condemn absolutely and unequivocally the aggression of Russia by invading sovereign territory,” Paul said.