A good deal can and will be said about Monday night's foreign policy debate, but the bottom line may be that it was not so much about foreign policy and not so much a debate.
Both candidates had a lot to say about "domestic" concerns: education, deficits, infrastructure, energy, and economic competitiveness. To many watching the debate, it might have seemed to have gone off course. But the emphasis on these stateside concerns served to underscore an important point: the United States can only be as strong abroad as it is at home. American influence in the world depends on the ability to act with real capacity and set an example that others will want to follow. This all takes resources.
There was also a surprising degree of agreement between the two candidates: the wisdom of pushing Hosni Mubarak out of the president's office as the protesters gathered in Tahrir Square; the need to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons; concern for Pakistan's future stability; the utility of drone strikes as a tool of counter-terrorism; the desirability of challenging China on areas of disagreement in a way that did not rule out selective cooperation; and the importance of helping the Syrian opposition by doing all that was possible to see that any weapons supplied did not end up in the "wrong," i.e. radical, hands.
There were as well some obvious omissions: the lack of debate over Libya and the neglect of Mexico, the eurozone, Africa, the Israeli-Palestinian impasse, and climate change. The only thing sure is that whoever wins the election in two weeks will not have the luxury of avoiding these issues or the hard choices associated with the others, domestic and foreign alike.
Richard Haass is president of the CFR. His next book, "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for America Putting its House in Order," will be published next spring by Basic books.
This post originally appeared at CFR.org.
Kristen Breitweiser: Droning On -- But Where's the Dialogue?
Protecting ourselves-our democracy and independence- and:
Protecting, promoting, and spreading democracy around the world.
Everything else, all the details, come under these two headings.
Keep them in mind and decisions are easier to make.
I have been blessed with some critical faculties, being polite, is not one among them.
Romesh Ratnesar, writing for the Bloomberg invoked you about this debate. Promptly, I gave him my best.
Earlier, much earlier, I severely criticized your, Oops, CFR stamp of approval given to the conservative candidate, Mitt Romney. No way Mitt could be a good president, even after CFR certification along with positive tilt in polls.
The guy is not fit to be elected as a dog catcher, for heavens sake.
...and I am Sid Harth@gosumercogito.blogspot.com
Yeah, except the reason the degree of agreement on these issues was surprising is that Bishop Romney held the opposite or just about the opposite views on all of them prior to the debate.
OTOH, with Bishop Romney that's really not so much a surprise....
1. A good businessman plans in advance for contingencies that he realizes are possible even if he doesn't expect them to occur. I wish someone had asked Gov. Romney what his contingency plan is if he is elected and then finds out that his critics were right: that the numbers in his economic plan don't add up. In particular, suppose he found out after his first year in office, that his policies had succeeded in increasing growth in U.S. jobs and GDP, but not enough to make up for the lower tax rates he pushed through. How would prioritize:
a. national debt reduction,
b. no increase in taxes pledge
c. cutting government support to such people as veterans, pensioners, chronically ill, disabled, single parent families, or technologically unemployed people
d. federal funds for support to state governments
e. defense acquisition spending?
2. President Obama didn't respond to or offer an explanation for the Governor's oft repeated criticism that the President promised lower percent unemployment than we now have, and that this recession's recovery is slower than past ones. Why not? Does his silence indicate the charges are correct?
3. In a foreign policy debate, why wasn't there any discussion of how the U.S. economy has been affected by the European recession?
4.Why wasn't there any mention of the impact on the world's sanctions on Iran on the recent jump in gas prices in the U.S.?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIg_ZDHeoJg
Part of "Global Trends: Implications for National Policy and the Maritime Forces."
"Money trumps Peace". It slid off his tongue you could just tell it is the BUSH FAMILY MOTTO.
MONEY TRUMPS PEACE
No thanks gop. Endless war is notbour future.
President Obama's approach to foreign policy contains many elements of just peace theory--truth-telling about America's transgressions, working through international organizations, encouraging human rights and democracy, putting diplomacy first and refraining from bellicose rhetorical excess. However, the president continues to leave very little room to his right. To disagree with President Obama, Romney would have had to advocate for war or confront him from the left--challenging the legality of drone strikes and targeted assassinations, advocating an immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and pressing for a more even handed approach to negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Romney could not do either, so we got the "me too" debate on foreign policy.
The president won the debate because he successfully showed Romney to be without any identifiable principles and showed him to be stuck in the last century on a host of issues not the least of which is foreign policy.
"we use to have more horses and bayonets too"
I mean, this is what's required to break through the RW stupor.