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  Foreign Policy on the Campaign Trail: The Guest Who Didn't Come to Dinner

Foreign Policy on the Campaign Trail The Guest Who Didn't Come to Dinner

By Peter Ross Range

Part 2: Dems Won't Be an Easy Ride, Either

And yet all the candidates have made improving the situation in Afghanistan a pillar of their foreign policy. This will require more attention, not less; more troops, not less; more help from the European allies, not less. As the controversy over Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' letter to German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, and other allies, made clear, the sentiment in the US, even among Democrats, is to get Europeans to carry more of the burden of the Afghanistan war. Germans, who are feeling (and rebuffing) the pressure from Washington more than most, should not expect to get an easier ride from a Democratic president. In fact, if the call comes from someone in the White House they actually like, it may become far more difficult to say no than it was to Bush, forcing a crisis in the coalition government of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats.

As for Europe, the three leading candidates have hardly talked about it. They have all said that they strongly favor rebuilding America’s reputation and respect in the world. To do this, they recognize that diplomacy and consultation must replace unilateralism and undiluted military approaches to international problems. That means, first and foremost, trying to repair relations with the Europeans. “The next president’s most urgent task will be to restore America’s standing in the world,” says Clinton. She recently wrote: “On most global issues, we have no more trusted allies than those in Europe.” McCain and Obama have voiced similar sentiments.

One thing Europeans will like about all the candidates is that they are committed environmentalists. This doesn’t mean they would sign a new Kyoto Protocol in its original form. But it does mean they talk often and forcefully about the need to confront the reality of climate change and to work with the rest of the world (including China!) to do something about it. Even McCain, though conservative on military and social issues, is outspoken about the dangers of global warming.

Similarly, the Democrats -- Clinton and Obama -- might surprise some Europeans with their strong commitment to a larger, more modern American military, and the unflinching claim that they are prepared to use it when necessary. While Obama is a tad more dovish than Clinton, they both sprinkle their feel-good speeches about international cooperation with the sound of sabers rattling in the background.

"A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace," Obama recently wrote. Last summer, he even held out the prospect of unilateral military action in Pakistan’s wild Northwest, where Osama bin Laden and a resurgent al-Qaida are thought to be hiding, "if President Musharraf won't act." Widely criticized for threatening to invade a sovereign ally, Obama now only says he would “insist” that Pakistan crack down on bin Laden and the Taliban.

Until now, actually, foreign policy has been the guest that did not come to dinner. The US primaries have been almost completely about domestic policy. That will change in the general election. For one thing, their positions on Iraq are what will distinguish the presidential candidates more than anything else. Second, since John McCain is notoriously weak on economic arguments, he will instinctively force the debate to his strong suit, national security. If the Iraq surge is still succeeding, he will be able to call himself the candidate of victory in the war -- and tar his opponent with a big “defeatist” brush. American voters might find themselves torn between their deep-rooted concerns over national security (McCain, the former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, wins that issue easily) and their everyday worries about the pocketbook in a looming recession.

Whatever choice US voters ultimately make, however, Europeans will wake up on that cold January morning to find a government whose foreign policy choices, while clothed in a different raiment, will look more like the ones they’ve gotten used to, rather than ones that make a clear break with the past.

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