Foreign Policy: A Deciding Factor

Published February 26, 2008

By Alex Pinto

Fast forward to January 2009: a new President is in office for the first time in eight years, and with him or her comes new foreign policy. Each candidate still viably in the race — as of now, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain — brings to the table his or her own background, ideology, and experience.
John McCain has preserved his stance on the War in Iraq throughout his campaign, the same one he has held almost throughout the war. He is a stalwart supporter of the war, emphasizing the need to stay and not let Iraq fall to anarchy — and if it takes more troops and more casualties, so be it.

And he doesn’t stop there — his website quotes him as saying that using active diplomacy, and backing up words with a strong local military presence, is necessary in dealing with Syria, Iran, and other Middle East foes. Interestingly, it was when public opinion of the war started spiraling downward that McCain seemed to up his ante, rushing to support the war.

Jonathan Chait recently wrote that this increase in support is mostly attributed to purposeful pandering to the GOP, who had been maligning McCain for siding with Democrats on numerous legislative issues for years.

McCain started to mend relations with his party starting as early as 2004, Chait says, and used foreign policy as his biggest weapon. Given this assertion about his motives, McCain’s stance is a little murkier than the media makes it out to be.

He has been hailed as the least vacillating candidate in nearly every way, and especially on foreign policy. But will he continue the neo-conservative agenda of cleaning up the Middle East (as he says he will) when he is in the Oval Office? It wouldn’t be off-base to say yes, that he will keep playing his role as a core Republican, but given his apparent motives for agreeing with Republicans, and that he still opposes many conservative measures, McCain’s rhetoric must be taken with a grain of salt.

He has a seemingly little-known history of flip-flopping on issues, and once he has the election won he might make a few changes. Chait mentioned the inclusion of Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft in McCain’s team of advisors — two realist thinkers among the expected neo-cons — this could speak to McCain’s new direction.

Both conservative moralists and non-interventionist democrats would be unhappy with a turn to realism.

Some of the more virulent criticisms against Barack Obama are those of his almost naïve hopefulness in foreign policy, i.e. that he can thinks he can sit down with enemy leaders and diplomatically resolve conflicts rather than jump into war. This challenges many Americans, especially those who lived through the Cold War or were closely affected by 9/11, to shift their idea of needing a strong military policy to feel safe. Senator Obama’s critics say that his speeches are full of fluff, without any real ideas about how to deal with foreign issues. However, they must be reminded that this is indeed the campaign trail, and since his campaign centers on hope and change, he must profess those ideals profusely.

One must look to before this campaign to find bits that allude to Obama’s more realistic thoughts. In 2006 he was quoted as saying that he would take unilateral action against terrorist enclaves in western Pakistan if the Pakistani government did not agree to act strongly. Ideas like this could be heard with dismay by dovelike Obama supporters, or with reassurance by center-leaning democrats who hope that he will be stronger and more like Hillary on foreign policy. That could be key if he wins the nomination, because there are doubtlessly democrats concerned with national safety who will be willing to vote for McCain if Clinton is out of the race, especially considering McCain’s tendency to reach across the aisle.

The question with Obama boils down to whether the voter wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. He has no real foreign policy experience-if he turns out to be a mediocre diplomat, many would say the U.S. could become more of a target than it already is. However, the potential for success is great: moving U.S. policy toward interacting with international society will bolster the U.N., and that is something that must be unquestionably done in the coming years. The U.S. simply does not have the resources to be a world police force, but the threat of terrorists will continue to mount.

Hillary Clinton has perhaps the most interesting history of foreign policy of the candidates. She took an active role in almost all of her husband’s foreign policy decisions. She has eight years of experience dealing first hand with decisions. However, during her campaign, she has left her ideas pretty veiled. I personally knew little about what she thought on foreign policy until I dug a little. In a 2006 article Michael Crowley detailed the development of Hillary’s foreign policy, and his research yielded some surprising results-particularly what a hawk she seems to be.

Crowley noted that she has not backed down after her “infamous” vote to begin the War with Iraq, and she has continued to say that executive power is important, especially in regard to making the decision to go to war. Crowley also observed that she was instrumental in Bill Clinton’s decision to use bombs in Bosnia, and that after the almost total success of that mission she was quoted as saying “I am very pleased that this President and administration have made democracy one of the centerpieces of our foreign policy.”
Later she added, “There is a refrain … that we should intervene with force only when we face splendid little wars that we surely can win… I think we have to say that America has never and should not ever shy away from the hard task if it is the right one.” Does this rhetoric not sound neoconservative? Despite watching the Iraq War blow up in Bush’s face, the multiple military successes of the Clinton administration certainly are seated in her mind.

Maybe she thinks that had she been in Bush’s shoes, it would have gone better. This confidence in using force seems to me a dangerous asset for the leader of the free world, perhaps even more dangerous than thinking that sitting down with enemies will solve problems.

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