Foreign policy and the presidential race

The world in their hand

How the candidates would handle the rest of the world

“WHO among us understands what to do about Pakistan?” Joe Biden asks a good question. No plausible contender for the presidency has much foreign-policy experience. On the Democratic side, Mr Biden himself, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Bill Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, are both experts. But neither will win the nomination. Among Republicans, Senator John McCain has lots of experience but poor prospects. The front-runners are less solidly prepared. Yet as the news from Baghdad, Beirut, Karachi and Annapolis often reminds voters, the next president will have no time to learn on the job. And the voters care: the Iraq war and security issues generally top their list of concerns.

Of the first-tier candidates, Hillary Clinton probably knows the most about foreign affairs. Name a country or a crisis and she can shoot back with a carefully formulated position on it. But her experience of grappling with foreign powers is slighter than she often implies. Racking up airmiles as first lady is not quite the same as negotiating a treaty. She makes much of her speech to the UN women's conference in Beijing in 1995, but a president has to grapple with tougher problems than that.

Mrs Clinton's foreign policies are mostly dull but sensible. She says America “must be guided by a preference for multilateralism, with unilateralism as an option when absolutely necessary”. She thinks international institutions such as the UN are “tools rather than traps”. She favours carrots and sticks to cajole Iran and North Korea into abandoning their nuclear ambitions. She says she will not hesitate to use force when America's vital national interests are threatened. Her critics call this cautious and unimaginative. Many of her supporters think that is a good thing—America is tired of recklessness abroad.

Of the other leading Democrats, Barack Obama has probably thought the hardest about foreign policy. When replying to questions, he tries to answer them, rather than simply shooting out scripted sound-bites. He says he will talk directly to America's enemies, a promise Mrs Clinton calls naive. Noting that he grew up partly in Indonesia, he claims a better understanding of foreign cultures than his rivals have. Mrs Clinton scoffs at the idea that four years abroad as a child counts as foreign-policy experience. Mr Obama retorts (with some justification) that he showed better judgment than her in predicting the debacle in Iraq even as she was voting to authorise it.

Among the leading Republicans, Rudy Giuliani is the anti-Hillary. Like five other candidates, he wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs about his foreign policies. Whereas Mrs Clinton's is soporific, Mr Giuliani's makes the reader sit up and gasp. “We are all members of the 9/11 generation,” says the man who led New York when the twin towers fell. “Civilisation itself” is under attack. A president's first task is to defend it against “radical Islamic fascism”. America can win in Iraq, he reckons, as it would have won in Vietnam had the politicians not lost their nerve. If you feel that George Bush has been spineless overseas, Mr Giuliani is undoubtedly your man.

Mitt Romney, who leads the Republican race in Iowa and New Hampshire, sounds less confrontational. His habit of listening to both sides of every argument, say his supporters, bodes well. He wants to re-organise the agencies that conduct foreign policy just as he once re-organised private firms, to make them leaner and more focused on specific goals. He sees radical Islam as a grave threat. His response would be to boost the military budget, and to forge a partnership with moderate Muslim states to promote non-radical schools, microcredit, the rule of law, basic health care and human rights in the Muslim world. When campaigning, however, he sometimes resorts to less technocratic sound-bites. His promise during a debate to “double Guantánamo” alarmed civil libertarians.

Of all the candidates, Mr McCain has staked out the clearest principles and stuck to them most doggedly. He stoutly defends free trade to protectionist audiences. He loudly opposes torture while his Republican colleagues prevaricate. He called for extra American troops in Iraq before it was fashionable, and warns war-weary listeners of the terrible consequences of premature withdrawal. The senator's bluntness wins him many admirers, but other things, such as his age, are against him.

A world of trouble

On the big foreign challenges likely to face a new president, Democrats and Republicans offer contrasting approaches. All the Democrats want to end the war in Iraq, but know it will not be simple. Pressed, neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr Obama nor John Edwards will commit to removing all American troops by 2013. But clearly Democrats would try harder than Republicans to bring more troops home faster. Mr Obama says he would pull out all but those who protect American diplomats and civilians or fight terrorists, and he opposes any permanent American military bases in Iraq. Mrs Clinton also opposes permanent bases, but says a residual American force may have to linger, perhaps based in the Kurdish region.

The Republican candidates say America must win in Iraq before it withdraws. Mr Giuliani, Mr Romney and Mr McCain all cite the recent fall in violence there as evidence that the “surge” of American troops is working. But they disagree as to how to seize this opportunity to help Iraqis build a stable democracy. Mr Romney wants to press neighbouring Arab regimes to help. Mr McCain doubts that Iran or Syria can be persuaded. Mr Giuliani has less to say about nation-building.

Both Democrats and Republicans are alarmed at Iran's apparent plan to build nuclear weapons. But their emphasis is different. Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama and Mr Edwards all refuse to rule out the use of force against Iran. But all stress diplomacy and sanctions to dissuade it from bomb-building, and caution against a rush to war. After Mrs Clinton voted to label as terrorists Iran's Revolutionary Guards, her rivals accused her of smoothing Mr Bush's path to start another war. Republicans are more hawkish. Mr Giuliani will not rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Iranian nuclear sites. Mr Romney favours sanctions so tight that Iranian leaders would start to feel like those who upheld apartheid in South Africa. Concerning Pakistan, all the candidates deplore General Pervez Musharraf's declaration of martial law. But the Republicans tend to take a softer line on what to do about it, since Pakistan is an ally against al-Qaeda.

Overall, the two parties have much in common. Neither will put much pressure on Israel, nor move as fast to curb global warming as Europeans demand. Most candidates of both parties want to increase the size of the armed forces. But their differences do matter. The Democrats are more protectionist, though Mrs Clinton's promise of “a little time-out” on trade deals commits her to little. The Republicans are more comfortable with using force, and likely to stay longer in Iraq. And Mr Giuliani is far more bellicose than any other candidate. But as to competence, that depends on the individual candidate—and, since none of the leaders has much of a foreign-affairs record, voters will have to guess about that.