By Robert J. Guttman
“One issue dominates our national debate: Iraq,” states the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph R. Biden Jr. The senior senator from Delaware, who is also trying to become the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, has identified the overriding issue in the race for the White House. Iraq is so prominent as an issue that Republican presidential candidate Arizona Senator John S. McCain has actually named his campaign visits “The No Surrender Tour,” promoting his view that “the new political-military strategy is beginning to show results.”
Illinois Senator Barack Obama says in many of his foreign policy speeches that “ending this war will be my first priority when I take office,” and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson remarks that “I have a one-point plan on the Iraq War: End it.”
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, taking a tough line, comments that “the purpose of this fight must be to defeat the terrorists and the insurgents in Iraq,” while former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney feels “we can’t walk away from Iraq.”
New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s Web site confirms that “if the Bush administration won’t end the war, as president and commander-in-chief, Hillary will.” And former North Carolina Senator John Edwards has become one of the more vocal anti-war Democratic presidential candidates, stating that “we must move beyond the wreckage created by one of the greatest strategic failures in U.S. history: the war in Iraq.”
With more than 160,000 American troops in Iraq, it is obvious why this issue is dominating the 2008 presidential campaign. The issue of what to do in Iraq has divided the country and sent the president’s approval rating to new lows.
American involvement in Iraq has been both costly and lengthy, and it seems almost certain that U.S. troops will still be in Iraq in large numbers when the new president takes office in January 2009. It then will cease to be Bush’s war and will become the war of the new president.
While the Iraq War will continue to dominate the 2008 presidential campaign, and candidates will be scrambling to come up with more and more plans for withdrawal or victory depending on their party and point of view, what are their larger overviews of foreign policy? What clues are there in Clinton’s and Obama’s backgrounds on how they would perform as the nation’s new commander-in-chief? Does Giuliani have a foreign policy perspective other than fighting terrorism, and would Romney have any new ideas for restoring America’s image in the world?
Foreign Policy Views
We know for certain that, no matter who becomes the nation’s 44th president, he or she will definitely have a different foreign policy from the current president—even if a Republican wins in 2008.
Going from the specifics of what to do in Iraq to the overall foreign policy philosophies of the candidates, the spectrum runs from the tough talk of Giuliani to the calm voice of Obama.
Giuliani, who would be the first person in our history to ever go from being mayor directly to the White House, has made his actions on 9/11 the cornerstone of his presidential campaign. As Matt Bai says in a September 9 New York Times article, “Giuliani’s campaign, like his resurrected political career, is built atop the rubble of the Twin Towers; his appeal is firmly rooted in the visual images of September 11, 2001, and the policy dilemmas that grew from it.”
Unlike all the other candidates, who discuss the “war on terrorism,” Giuliani’s phrase is the “terrorists’ war on us.” He says “the world is a dangerous place” and “the United States must not rest until the al Qaeda network is destroyed and its leaders, from Osama bin Laden on down, are killed or captured.”
Often quoting Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan in his speeches, the former New York City mayor is one of the toughest talkers on foreign policy in the race this time around, but he is rather short on specifics. While he seems vague and his background has been only at the city level, Giuliani has the “hero” stature of 9/11 that appears to be giving him the necessary foreign policy credentials with his core group of voters.
Another Republican frontrunner, Romney, appears not to have any major new goals for restoring America’s leadership in the world if elected president. Like most of the other candidates in both parties he says, “We need to increase our investment in national defense. This means adding at least 100,000 troops and making a long-overdue investment in equipment, armament, weapons systems and strategic defense.” And, like the other candidates, the wealthy businessman says, “The United States must become energy independent.”
McCain, a longtime member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, seems to be a leading GOP candidate who has studied and understands foreign policy and would not need a refresher course if he were elected. The Arizona senator is betting his campaign on supporting victory in Iraq and more than any of the other candidates is tying his political future to Bush’s policies in the war. Although he is critical of how the war has been waged in the past under former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he says the military surge is working and the military effort needs more time to succeed.
TV actor and former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson so far has not articulated any coherent overall foreign policy views other than making comments such as, “We must shape events, and not be left at their mercy” and “Realism? Yes. But also idealism, which is what makes us different from our enemies.” These views might sound better on a television show than in the White House.
The former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, hoping to follow in the footsteps of another former governor of his state who made it to the White House, feels “we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life.” Huckabee, however, talks mainly about domestic issues in his campaign appearances.
New Ideas
Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, who wants “to reengage with the world and reassert our moral leadership,” is a candidate with some new plans that he would implement as president. He wants to start a multilateral organization called the “Counterterrorism and Intelligence Treaty Organization” that “will create a historic new coalition with our allies” and show the world the power of cooperation in fighting terrorism.
He also says he will “create a ‘Global Nuclear Compact’ to strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would support peaceful nuclear programs.”
A centerpiece of Edwards’ foreign policy would be an organization named after former Secretary of State George Marshall. “During my first year in office, I will establish a ‘Marshall Corps’ patterned after the military reserves that will include at least 10,000 civilian experts. Its members will be deployed abroad to serve on reconstruction, stabilization and humanitarian missions.”
The 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate says the nation needs “a modern-day equivalent of Harry Truman’s famous Truman Committee,” which will review the military budget and military project cost overruns.
Biden may be the most qualified of all the candidates in both parties in the field of foreign policy, having held public office the longest. As Ron Goldstein, political journalist for Newsweek, comments, “The senator would make a formidable candidate for the Democrats and a great president for the nation.” No one doubts Biden has the foreign policy expertise to hit the ground running. The senator from Delaware also has come out with one of the more detailed plans for Iraq, which “sets out a road map to a political settlement—one that gives warring factions a way to share power peacefully and offers us a chance to leave with our interests intact.”
Richardson, speaking at the Center on Politics and Foreign Relations at SAIS this year, calls for a “New Realism” in American foreign policy. The former secretary of Energy and U.N. ambassador has a plan to halt nuclear weapons proliferation. As he says, “It took a Manhattan Project to create the bomb. We need a new Manhattan Project to stop the bomb: a comprehensive program to secure all nuclear weapons and all weapons-usable material, worldwide.” Richardson, an experienced foreign affairs negotiator in North Korea and elsewhere, has the international relations experience to negate any on-the-job training if he were to become the next president.
Obama has been a consistent critic of American involvement in Iraq. “In 2002, I stated my opposition to the war in Iraq, not only because it was an unnecessary diversion from the struggle against the terrorists who attacked us on September 11th, but also because it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the threats that 9/11 brought to light,” says the senator from Illinois. Obama, an avowed internationalist, feels “we must neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission—we must lead the world, by deed and example.”
Obama has been more outspoken than many of the other candidates about capturing Osama bin Laden and the need to rebuild Afghanistan: “As president, I would deploy at least two additional brigades to Afghanistan to reenforce our counter-terrorism operations and support NATO’s efforts against the Taliban.” Obama, who is not a pacifist, clearly states, “I will not hesitate to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to America.”
The senator from Illinois also calls for creating a program “to forge an international intelligence and law enforcement infrastructure to take down terrorist networks” and supports a “Global Education Fund” to counter terrorist ideology.
Like most of the other candidates, Obama speaks of the need to “secure, destroy and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction” and advocates “rebuilding our international alliances.”
Obama’s appeal may lie in his calm way of discussing foreign policy issues. As a May 7 article in The New Yorker states, “Obama’s voting record is one of the most liberal in the Senate, but he has always appealed to Republicans, perhaps because he speaks about liberal goals in conservative language.”
Hillary Clinton stresses that she has the experience to be for change. The former first lady declares in her speeches, “I think it’s fair to say we are now all internationalists and we are all realists” and that “American internationalism is essential in the service of American interests.”
Unlike Edwards, the senator from New York has not said her initial vote for going to war in Iraq was a mistake. She says she voted on the best intelligence she had at that time but feels the Bush administration was not candid about its reasons for going to war.
However, she has become vocally anti-war as the campaign progresses and can hold her own against Edwards and Obama if not against fringe candidates such as Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who want to leave Iraq more quickly than most military analysts think is possible.
Clinton, who speaks more often on domestic issues such as her health care plan, says hers is a voice of experience and reason in foreign affairs. She also presents herself as someone who can be tough on international affairs topics. On Iran, Clinton states, “U.S. policy must be unequivocal: Iran must not build or acquire nuclear weapons.”
Clinton, a strong supporter of Israel, has remarked, “We need to continue to insist that any Palestinian government recognize Israel’s right to exist and cease terrorism.”
Having viewed the 9/11 destruction firsthand, the senator from New York declares, “Here in New York, nobody needs to tell us that we are in a war against terrorists who seek to do us harm.”
“After 9/11, she became one of the Senate’s loudest voices on homeland security, pointing to lapses in port inspection and voicing early criticism of border protection,” according to an article on “The Presidential Ambitions of Hillary Clinton” in the August 28, 2006, issue of TIME. The article goes on to state that “she counts as her biggest accomplishment her role in securing $20 billion in aid for her state in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.”
Clinton promotes herself as believing in a “realistic brand of idealism” in foreign policy. As she states in a September 17, 2007, interview with Newsweek, “I have always believed that American force was there as the strongest tool in our toolbox for leading the world and pursuing American national interest. I supported the first Gulf War, not that anybody really cared about my opinion. I supported my husband going into Bosnia and Kosovo. But I think that the combination of the threat of military force backing up coercive diplomacy is a very strong position for the United States to be in, and it has been unfortunately undermined by the president’s actions in Iraq.”
Things May Change
While the presidential campaign is being waged through the prism of the war in Iraq, other international issues are being discussed. What to do about Iran’s building nuclear weapons is becoming a bigger issue in the 2008 presidential race. The deteriorating political situation in Pakistan and the failure to capture Osama bin Laden and the less than stellar performance of NATO in Afghanistan are topics at the debates. And the candidates are exchanging views on Russia, the always volatile Middle East, the situation in Darfur and China’s role in the world of tomorrow, along with trade, energy, economic and environmental issues ranging from global warming to climate change.
However, as much as we focus on the issues at hand and the candidates’ foreign policy positions they want the public to know they stand for, events in the world will largely determine the course of the presidential race in 2008.
A failed state providing a new haven for terrorists, another terrorist attack against the United States or one of our allies, war breaking out in the Middle East or a new government taking over in Pakistan could become a key issue in the presidential race.
Remember that in the 2000 presidential campaign former Texas Governor George W. Bush was the “compassionate conservative” who rarely discussed foreign policy issues. His main point in discussions about international relations was that he would never be involved in nation-building as that was not what American troops should be doing. Bush was not talking very much about terrorism.
The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates have established their foreign policy credentials, ranging from being anti-war as most of the Democrats are with regard to Iraq to being tough on terrorism as both Democrats and Republicans alike continue to be during the presidential race.
What will the candidates do in regard to Iraq, Afghanistan and the “war on terrorism” and also regarding China and Iran if they win the White House? Listen closely and you may find out—or you may not, as each candidate hedges his or her bets depending on global developments.
Even candidates for president of the United States are at the mercy of events around the world that they cannot control. Robert J. Guttman is director of the Center on Politics and Foreign Relations at SAIS and a Foreign Policy Institute Fellow. |
