(HOST) We may well know in three months who the Presidential candidates for each party will most likely be. This morning, commentator Barrie Dunsmore explores what that may mean for American foreign policy.
(DUNSMORE) As the major Republican candidates are tripping over each other to ingratiate themselves with their party’s conservative base, for now at least, no dramatic changes in foreign policy are evident – regardless of who gets the nomination.
As for the Democrats – the present polls and the huge amounts of campaign money raised – put Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama into a top tier of their own. So my focus today is on them.
As the front runner, Senator Clinton is the major target of all of her opponents. I don’t buy the idea that she is being picked on because she is a woman. But I do believe that her gender is a substantial factor in her campaign strategy. Her own polling shows that the greatest problem any female candidate faces in the general election is to persuade a majority of the voters – particularly younger, working and middle class males – that she is tough enough to stand up to the challenges this country now faces in an ever more hostile world.
That reality is behind her apparent equivocations – for example, promising she would end American involvement in the war in Iraq – but also saying that a significant number of troops may need to remain even after she is elected. And it’s what motivated her vote to support a non-binding Senate resolution designating a portion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as terrorist. Her critics say that that could lay the groundwork for the Bush administration to attack Iran – just as the Iraq resolution that she voted for in 2002 was the green light for Bush to go to war with Iraq.
Her equivocations notwithstanding, I would expect Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy to be genuinely bi-partisan – look for a prominent Republican in a top national security job. And it will be more traditional – in showing greater respect for international institutions and for the opinions of America’s friends and allies.
For his part, Senator Obama is continually trying to fend off Clinton’s charges that he is inexperienced. This issue first arose when he said he would be willing to meet with leaders from Iran and North Korea, among others. Mrs. Clinton called that naïve. Actually, the differences between them on this issue aren’t as great as each would have us believe.
Obama has now explained how he would be willing to negotiate with the Iranians without pre-conditions – meaning, unlike the Bush administration, he would nnot insist that Iran freeze its nuclear program – before negotiations to freeze that program. He would also make clear to Iran that his goal was not regime change in Tehran. Similar signals have helped to ease real nuclear threats in North Korea and potential ones in Libya.
On these and other issues Obama is no radical. Actually he looks more like a classic realist – along the lines of Bush the father’s national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, with whom Obama has consulted.
So with either of these Democrats? Changes, yes – but neither will be feckless or reckless.
Barrie Dunsmore is a veteran diplomatic and foreign correspondent for ABC News, now living in Charlotte.
Photo credit: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur/The Times Arugus