thehappiestnerd asked: I just read an article from Foreign Policy about Herman Cain's foreign policy. Can you tell me about the other presidential candidates foreign policies?
Actually, this is quite a bit harder than it sounds. Foreign policy has played almost no role in the Republican debates so far—other than as an opportunity to say that whatever President Obama is doing is wrong. This indifference to foreign policy seems to indicate Americans are intensely focused internally, given our many problems, and also that “out there” doesn’t really seem all that worrisome these days. There’s no perceived “bad guy” who can really hurt the US in a fundamental way, and so people feel free to worry about domestic matters above all else.
In general, the Republicans seem united on certain points. Please note this is my summary of the Republican positions, not my summary of mine:
1. Israel is perfect, great and wonderful. Anything anyone anywhere does to criticize Israel is hateful. The United States must stand with Israel no matter what it does. (Notably, this is NOT the opinion of Israel in Israel itself, but this is American politics, not reality.)
2. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan will make the world less safe for Americans. If President Obama does it, the ghost of Osama bin Laden will reconstitute al Qaeda in Iraq (where he did not create it), and use Iraqi WMDs (I know, I know—there weren’t any) to aid terrorists in attacking the US.
3. All cuts to defense spending, for any reason whatsoever, will endanger America—at least if they are cuts to weapons programs like carrier battle groups and supersonic fighter bombers.
4. Free trade is good, but the United States has to get tough with China and may have to sanction China for cheating. Plus, see point 3.
5. Did I mention China is a problem? We have no idea about what to do about it. But it’s a problem.
6. The so-called “Arab Spring” is likely to blow up in our faces, leading to fundamentalist governments emerging that are hostile to the US and to Israel. (See point 1.) So freedom isn’t necessarily a good idea there. Despite the Bush Doctrine’s central tenet that freedom was the way to peace in the Middle East.
This list is of course partly a parody. But only partly. The question is: which is parody, and which is true?
