Which candidate would be best on foreign policy and why.

[°Leprechaun]

I like Chafee because he talks about peace. I think that foreign policy is much more important than social issues and who gets to appoint Supreme Court members.
War is good for nothing. We don't need candidates who support going to war for foolish reasons or who are opposed to reasonable defense cuts especially wasteful defense spending.
If we are going to cut out waste, why not start with the defense budget.
Why should the US be the policemen of the world?

[°Leprechaun]

Foreign policy can be, erm, pretty profitable. Not entirely moral of course, but playing the world's policeman can be quite lucrative if you play your cards right. Of course, America is suffering intensely because a lot of cards (mostly under the reign of Bush) have been played entirely wrong since the propaganda win that was the end of the Cold War.

Anyway, nobody would be very good on foreign policy. Obama has been relatively decent - perhaps as decent as a POtUS can be on the issue - but I trust no candidate of either party to make a remotely coherent message on the issue. No wonder the Democrats are heading to familiar terrain like domestic issues.

Unfortunately you are right in all of this. Peace is not a popular position at this point in world history.

[°Leprechaun]

I'm not opposed to intervention by any standards. Indeed there are many occasions where the world has simply ignored tragedy - Rwanda being the most obvious, and one of the darker stains on the Clinton administration. I don't accept that very Trot opinion that contemporary world politics is merely the bogeyman imperialist America and her pawns (NATO, the GCC, Japan, S. Korea, Australia) undermining the practically inert victims of Russia, China and Iran. I think America is, or at least has the potential to be, a force for good. It fought the greatest evil the twentieth century has known after all, and even though the Cold War took America down some dark paths in Latin America, SE Asia, South Africa and the Middle East, it was undoubtedly the moral of the two opposing sides. But post-Cold War America's overall "mission" has been largely disjointed. Syria and Iraq are basically two all-encompassing sources of eggs on Western faces. America is led around by its nationalistic and self-interested allies across the globe (it makes me laugh at the idea of the U.S. being some master puppet master - it's more like a dogwalker with far too many dogs)


I'll admit a lot of the Pentagon budget can be shredded off the bat. The nuclear arms program could easily be downsized for one (why the U.S. continues to have ICMB's I'll never know).

While I don't know if there are ever times when I could support war at all, I do appreciate the fact that some positions, like yours, are closer to mine than the insanity of some people who lean toward a more aggressive and even perhaps nationalistic type of foreign policy. Call me an idealist, but more co-operation with other nations and less rigid ideology should be the basis for foreign policy. World government isn't coming any time soon and it probably wouldn't work anyway at this point in our history given the diametrically opposing philosophies of so many nations, but it seems to me that making an argument based on erring on the side of peace is more tenable than one erring on the side of war.

[°Leprechaun]

I support cooperation, but at what point does "cooperation" become "coddling"? True, America does look the other way at its allies' indiscretions as realpolitik demands, but at some level you have to have a moral dimension to foreign policy, otherwise you end up with Henry Kissinger.

I think it is a question of attitude and how far you are willing to go for peace.
I think the point is that narrow self interest or rigid ideology needs to be avoided. The cost of war is high, both in lives and in money. The money could be better spent on other things. The amount of money spent by the US seems ridiculous and I am sure there is a lot of waste, as well.