US President George W Bush has one more year in the White House. But already many Europeans are predicting that the next American president will conduct a kinder, gentler US foreign policy that appeals to their post-modern pacifist instincts. They are sure to be disappointed.

 

With wars ongoing in Afghanistan and Iraq, national security will be a key issue in the race to succeed Bush in the November 2008 election. And as might be expected, Republicans are already attacking Democrats as being weak on national security and the fight against terrorism. Many Americans seem to agree with them. According to a recent opinion poll published by Third Way, a Washington-based policy research organization, 58 percent of Americans think Democrats are “not tough enough to do what is needed to protect America.”

 

Democrats understand that the Republicans may have a winning formula. After all, Republicans defeated Democrats at the congressional and presidential level in 2002 and 2004 by accusing them of being weak on national security. Unless Democrats offer a firm strategy against terrorism and a realistic plan for bringing about a political solution in Iraq, Republican attacks over national security issues will probably resonate in 2008.

 

The Democrats, therefore, are responding by staking out foreign policy positions that in some cases are even more hawkish than those of their Republican counterparts. In any case, all of the leading Democratic and Republican candidates have spelled out foreign policy platforms that are remarkably tough on national security issues. All of the main contenders are proposing major increases in military spending and all of them say they believe the United States should shape the world in its own image.

 

What is noteworthy is just how much the neo-conservative movement has influenced both Democrats and Republicans. Although realism has been the foreign policy default setting for both Democrats and Republicans for most of the 20th century, in the post 9/11 era, all of the main candidates from both parties are adopting as their own key elements of idealistic neo-conservatism, especially in terms of democracy promotion.

 

All this implies that Europeans are sorely mistaken if they think the next American president will adopt a more European relativist perception of reality. On the contrary, all of the leading candidates are calling on Europeans to stop their reflexive anti-Americanism and grow up. If Europeans want a greater say in the way the world is run, they will need to abandon their pacifist fantasies and acknowledge that these are dangerous times demanding serious defense budgets and real sacrifice.

 

What follows is a brief summary of the foreign policy platforms of the six main candidates, three Republicans and three Democrats.

 

 

Rudy Giuliani has outlined the most hawkish foreign policy platform of any presidential candidate. Many of his ideas are outlined in an essay published by Foreign Affairs, a policy journal. He has positioned himself as a tough leader vis-à-vis Islamist extremism and threats from Iran, a staunch supporter of Israel and a skeptic of the United Nations. All of these positions are credited with making him the undisputed leader in the Republican field.

 

Giuliani has taken the hardest line among the presidential candidates on Iran. He has repeatedly said that he would be willing to use military force to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And he has described Iran’s leadership as an irrational force with whom negotiations are probably hopeless. “You have to stand up to dictators, to tyrants and to terrorists” because “weakness invites attack,” he has said.

 

Borrowing an idea from former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Giuliani says that he would like to see a broad expansion of the NATO alliance, including an invitation to Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and Israel.

 

As far as Israel is concerned, Giuliani told the Republican Jewish Coalition that as president he would be deeply suspicious of land-for-peace talks with the Palestinians. He said neither Americans nor Israelis should negotiate with militant Islamic leaders and organizations that he believes are committed to destroying Western society. No surprise then that Giuliani is the “best” candidate in the 2008 race for Israel, according to a panel of eight Israeli experts assembled by the Haaretz newspaper.

 

Giuliani has distanced himself from what was once a central neoconservative tenet, the belief that the United States could spread democracy through the Middle East. Giuliani says US support for a Palestinian state is premature, and overly idealistic, noting that the policy led to the sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. “Elections are necessary but not sufficient to establish genuine democracy,” Giuliani says. “Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors.”

 

Giuliani has been astute in his choices for his foreign team. He has identified himself very closely with the personalities and policies promoted by the Bush Administration.

 

A hawkish group of advisers and neoconservative thinkers, they enhance his anti-terrorism and foreign-policy credentials.

 

 

John McCain, who once led the field but is now trailing Giuliani in public opinion polls, started his campaign by hoping to be the Republican consensus candidate. This is reflected by his choice of foreign policy advisors, who include traditional realists like former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger, as well as neo-conservative idealists like Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol. Many of his ideas are outlined in an essay published in the November/December 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs.

 

McCain has staked his primary campaign on supporting the troop surge in Iraq; indeed, he is US Senate’s biggest supporter of Bush’s escalation there. He also says he expects more cooperation from Europeans. “As we’ve been a good friend to other countries in moments of shared perils, so we have good reason to expect their solidarity with us in this struggle,” McCain has said.

 

McCain takes a solidly neo-conservative position on rogue states like Iran, Syria and North Korea—countries that try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments,” McCain says.

 

McCain has signaled that he would take a much harder line vis-à-vis Russia. Bush said after his initial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2001 that he had looked into his eyes “and I was able to get a sense of his soul.” But McCain recently said that when he himself looked into Putin’s eyes, he “saw three things: a K and a G and a B.” Putin had been a KGB agent in the Soviet years.

 

On the issue of missile defense, McCain has said that the objections of Putin are not an obstacle to deploying a system, but rather a justification of it. “This is a dangerous person, and he has to understand that there’s a cost to some of his actions,” McCain has said. “And the first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place” in Poland and the Czech Republic.

 

 

Romney says he is not a member of any foreign policy school (realist or neo-conservative). Indeed, some of his positions are neo-conservative while others are old-school realist, in the mold of former US President George H W Bush, a fellow northeastern-Republican. Romney has outlined four main foreign policy priorities in an article published in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs.

 

Taking the neo-conservative position, Romney says that combating Islamic jihadists will be the top priority for the next president and will require a major, long-term effort to support the institutions of modernity in the world of Islam. Taking the realist position, on the other hand, Romney says America must succeed in Afghanistan and Iraq. At a minimum, he defines success as not leaving behind a safe haven in Iraq and Afghanistan for Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, from which they can finance, train and launch attacks on America, Israel and the world.

 

Second, Romney says the United States must act now to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He does not rule out using a military option to achieve this objective.

 

Romney also says he is committed to the integrity of Israel as a Jewish nation. He says makes this guarantee because Israel is a key strategic ally in the global war against radical Islamism, because of US respect for the Israeli people and because the world has a moral obligation to this nation.

 

Finally, Romney says the US must work to prevent nuclear material from ending up in the hands of terrorists.

 

Romney says he will add at least 100,000 more troops to the American military and commit at least 4 percent of US gross domestic product to defense.

 

Like Giuliani, Romney says NATO should be expanded into a global alliance. “We may need more than an expanded NATO. We should build regional alliances linked to a global NATO in areas like the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa,” Romney says.

 

As far as the United Nations is concerned, Romney takes a dim but realistic view. “The United Nations has failed to contain aggression, failed to stop proliferation, and failed to prevent genocide. Its failures stem from the lack of a community of interest and values by its members. What we need are new international structures in which only free nations are invited to work together for basic shared goals,” Romney says.

 

 

Hillary Clinton has staked out nuanced positions on a number of national security issues, which are outlined in the November/December 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs. She must appease the anti-war leftwing activists in the Democratic Party in order to secure her party’s nomination. But doing so opens her up to attacks from the Republican candidates that she is weak on national security.

 

Clinton, therefore, is employing the same political strategy that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, used with such success. By “triangulating” or splitting the differences on opposing views, Clinton has been trying to have it both ways: She has been reaching out to both her leftwing Democratic base and to the military at the same time. Thus on national security, Clinton has been alternating between criticizing the war in Iraq on the one hand, and by staking hard-line positions on Iran on the other.

 

Clinton has refused to say whether she would pull all US troops out of Iraq by 2013, what would be the end of her first presidential term. “It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting,” she said. Clinton also refused to answer a question about whether Israel had the right to bomb Iran if Tehran posed a nuclear threat. She called the question a “hypothetical,” and said, “That’s better not addressed at this time.”

 

Such equivocation could cost her credibility, as Republicans already are trying to portray Clinton as a flip-flopper as they did John Kerry in the 2004 campaign. Giuliani has criticized Clinton for not stating clear goals for dealing with the Iraq war and Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We’re dealing with a level of ambiguity that I don’t believe is a good sign in a would-be commander in chief in a time of war,” said Giuliani. And McCain has accused Clinton of indecisiveness and wanting “to have it both ways” on foreign policy, having voted for the Iraq war and now opposing it.

 

In any case, Clinton knows that she cannot win the general election without being tough on national security. Clinton’s position on Iraq is not very different from that of Bush.

 

And she has also laid out some hard-line foreign policy positions that fall squarely into the school of realism.

 

For example, she has said that: “Throughout our history when we’ve faced challenges to our position in the world or threats to our security, we have confronted them head-on without fear, without delay, without hesitation. And that is exactly what I intend to do as president.”

 

She also says she wants to increase the size of the US military. “We’ve got to be prepared to maintain the best fighting force in the world. I propose increasing the size of our Army by 80,000 soldiers, balancing the legacy systems with newer programs to help us keep our technological edge, re-evaluating the training and education programs that service members need in the 21st century.”

 

And in case Europeans are hoping that Clinton will allow them to continue free-riding on American security, she has said: “And let’s be sure that the American military does not fight terrorism alone. It is time that we demanded that our alliances, including NATO, are united with us in this fight, and that their intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security systems are working together with ours.”

 

 

Barack Obama has outlined his foreign policy vision in an essay published by Foreign Affairs. Europeans probably would welcome many of the more vacuous foreign policy positions staked out by Obama, which may explain why support for him among Americans seems to be plummeting.

 

Obama has called for decreasing America’s dependence on foreign oil and for fighting global warming. He has called for investing $150 billion over 10 years to develop new energy sources and reducing dependence on foreign oil by 35 percent by 2030. These positions are not very different from those of Bush.

 

Obama is also vocal about promoting American military leadership. And how would he do that? “To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace,” Obama says. He says he would immediately add 65,000 more soldiers and 27,000 more Marines

 

And what does Obama have to say about unilateralism, the issue that most provokes euro-paranoia? “I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened,” says Obama.

 

The United Nations, says Obama, requires far-reaching reform. The UN Secretariat’s management practices remain weak. Peacekeeping operations are overextended. The new UN Human Rights Council has passed eight resolutions condemning Israel -- but not a single resolution condemning the genocide in Darfur or human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Yet none of these problems will be solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission.

 

Finally, Obama’s understanding of geopolitics does not look good for Europe. He says “the center of gravity in this world is shifting to Asia.”

 

 

John Edwards, who has been called a Bill Clinton clone due to his biographical and stylistic similarities with the former president, has outlined his foreign policy vision in the September/October 2007 edition of Foreign Affairs.

 

Like Clinton, Edwards is an interventionist. On key national security issues, Edwards has staked out a centrist and sometimes hawkish policy, making terrorism his top focus. Like Obama, however, Edwards does not have any significant foreign policy credentials. This may be one reason why his poll numbers are dropping. In the post-9/11 environment, Americans, it seems are not ready to trust a Democrat who lacks experience in international affairs.

 

Edwards says that the US armed forces have three important missions: “deterring or responding to those who wish to do us harm, ensuring that the problems of weak and failing states do not create dangers for the United States, and maintaining our strategic advantage over major competitor states, in part so that they choose to cooperate with us, rather than challenge our interests militarily.” As president, Edwards says he would double the budget for military recruiting.

 

Like the neo-conservatives, Edwards was calling for a global push on democracy before Bush made it a cornerstone of his Middle East policy. Edwards proposes linking US aid to progress on human rights and democracy, a practice that, if implemented, would disqualify many key US allies, such as Egypt and Pakistan. He also advocates tough action to keep Russia on the road to democracy.

 

Regarding Iran, Edwards has accused the Bush Administration of outsourcing US foreign policy to the Europeans. “The reality is that Iran has moved forward with their nuclear weapons program on their [Bush] watch. They ceded responsibility to dealing with it to the Europeans. We need to strengthen the sanctions on Iran, including closing the loophole that allows companies to do business with Iran.”

 

Regarding Israel, Edwards says “the Israeli people not only have the right to defend themselves, they should defend themselves. They have an obligation to defend themselves.”