Posted on 01/30/2007 7:02:05 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AFP) - From the Middle East in flames to China's satellite-killer technology, future foreign policy crises are brewing by the day as Hillary Clinton and top rivals take aim for the White House.
Barring an unexpected outbreak of global peace before 2008, whoever succeeds President George W. Bush could conceivably face Iraq in ruins, Iran going nuclear and a bristling North Korea.
Events abroad rarely decide US elections, but proliferating security questions, above all on Iraq, mean no aspiring candidate can risk entering the fray without a diplomatic strategy.
"Foreign policy is not the major issue in elections, but increasingly we are seeing that return," said Sean Kay, professor of international relations at Ohio Wesleyan University.
But fierce debate over whether to pour more troops into Iraq, or bring them home, may stifle debate on other foreign issues.
"The overall attention that Iraq is soaking up is diverting America away from these broader global challenges," Kay said.
The first global crisis that will land on the next president's desk is still a mystery two years from his, or her, inauguration.
But debate looks likely to crystallize on whether the United States should prolong the neo-conservative, preemptive-strike policies adopted by Bush after the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.
Or will US diplomacy revert to realism and dispense with the idealistic vision of democracy on the march and prioritize alliances and global institutions?
Campaign trail rhetoric often offers few clues.
In 1992, Bill Clinton savaged then-president George H.W. Bush, Bush's father, for coddling China, yet later clinched a landmark trade deal with the communist giant.
In 2000, George W. Bush promised a humble foreign policy and rejected US nation building. He went on to order US wars and rebuilding efforts in two Muslim nations, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Senator Clinton, on a first campaign swing though crucial Iowa this weekend, argues Bush squandered global sympathy for America after September 11 by the way he waged the war on terror.
The United States should mediate disputes in the Middle East, she said in October, and deal with North Korea over its nuclear program -- policies tested in her husband's White House.
"Direct negotiations are not a sign of weakness, they're a sign of leadership," Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations in a swipe at Bush's reluctance to engage US foes.
Clinton's Senate vote for the Iraq war may cost her among activists who choose the party's candidate, though she has swapped hawkishness with criticism of Bush's management of Iraq.
Republican Senator John McCain (news, bio, voting record) has hitched his 2008 destiny to Iraq, after backing Bush's plan to surge troops into the country, and has leaned toward the neo-conservative vision, vilifying "moral monsters" of Islamic extremism.
"Institutions that sustained us throughout the Cold War and the doctrine of deterrence we relied on are no longer adequate," the former Vietnam War prisoner, also an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin's Russia, said in November.
Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who is mulling a run, also favored the Iraq troop surge.
Senator Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), the Democrat hoping to become the first black president, has enlisted Tony Lake, national security advisor during Clinton's first term, a campaign source said.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, last week traveled to Israel and demanded Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be indicted under the Geneva Convention for incitement to genocide.
McCain and Democrat John Edwards reportedly addressed the same conference as Romney, by video link, giving them a chance to make a foreign policy stand while courting Jewish voters back home.
Romney has also raised Asia's economic emergence.
People in the region, especially Chinese, "are a family-oriented, educated, hard-working, and mercantile people. We must be ready and able to compete," he said on his campaign website.
Edwards, the defeated Democratic vice presidential candidate in 2004, burnished his credentials by co-chairing a Council on Foreign Relations initiative on Russia.
Among marginal candidates, foreign policy expertise runs deep. Democrat Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record) chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Fellow Democrat and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is former US ambassador to the United Nations and troubleshooter in Iraq and North Korea.
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