Candidates paint two incomplete views on foreign policy
WASHINGTON -- Few topics paint a starker difference between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry than US foreign policy.
Bush, a man who rarely traveled outside the country before he became president, has not been reluctant to use US power around the world to strike first -- and if necessary, alone -- in the name of protecting America's interests.
"Trying to be popular in the global sense, if it's not in our best interest, makes no sense," said Bush, who has routinely butted heads with US allies during his tenure over a host of international treaties as well as the US-led war in Iraq.
Kerry, who spent years in Europe during his childhood, said he will rely more on traditional partnerships with US allies and will strengthen, not dismantle, international institutions.
"American leadership means we must listen to the cultures and histories of other countries and work harder to build coalitions and partnerships," Kerry wrote in an article in Foreign Policy magazine in March 2003.
But these dueling worldviews do not give voters a complete picture of how American foreign policy will look under a Kerry administration or a second Bush term, specialists said.
Beyond Iraq and nuclear proliferation, the candidates have left a host of looming foreign policy issues out of their campaigns.
For instance, neither has addressed how to respond to the extreme pressure being put on the United States at the World Trade Organization to remove agricultural subsidies so that the world's poorest nations have a better opportunity to sell their products and compete.
"The types of issues that have really been put aside since 9/11 ultimately will begin percolating again," said Melvyn P. Leffler , a history professor at the University of Virginia who said the next American administration will have to respond to the WTO effort to reduce world poverty in the next six months.
"Either candidate will face those problems, and they will be very significant problems," Leffler said. "They will be more significant for Kerry as he tries to reconcile his commitment to act in a more multilateral way with the actual pressures" of labor organizations and other pressure groups inside the United States."
Bush has said the expansion of free trade is a cornerstone of his foreign policy. He has pushed for trade agreements with Australia, the Middle East, and Central America, but has selectively protected some US products, such as agricultural products and steel.
Earlier this month, the Bush administration filed a complaint with the WTO alleging unfair European assistance to Airbus, which recently surpassed
The claim escalates one of the largest trade disputes in recent memory and abruptly ends a 12-year pact with Europe not to file such complaints.
"It seemed to me to be a rather clear move on the part of the Bush administration to say, 'We're protecting American workers,' " said David Bosco, an editor at Foreign Policy.
Kerry, who has accused Bush of losing American jobs, proposes a 120-day review of all existing trade agreements and increased assistance for manufacturers and workers hurt by imports.
Still, specialists say Kerry has given insight on how he would balance US labor concerns with the desire of other countries, particularly impoverished nations, to compete in the American market.
Another key issue that received little air time during the debates is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a delicate and emotional issue for Jewish and Arab voters.
Both candidates support a plan by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel to withdraw from Gaza and they reject Yasser Arafat as a credible leader for the Palestinians, but neither has outlined a detailed vision for how to get the stalled peace process back on track.
"The Palestinian-Israeli issue runs very high in the Muslim world," said Abdeslam Maghraoui, a former resident scholar at Princeton University who is now at the US Institute of Peace. "Without resolving the Palestinian issue, there is going to be no peace. Either Bush or Kerry will have to confront it."
Bush has been both the first American president to publicly state his vision for a separate Palestinian state and the one who has gone the furthest in publicly accepting that Israeli settlements built in the occupied territories will be used to determine Israel's final border, according to Geoffrey Aronson, director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a nonprofit organization that monitors settlement activity in the occupied territories.
But little has come of Bush's much-touted "road map" to Mideast peace, which called for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.
Kerry also endorses a separate state for the Palestinians and suggested appointing former president Jimmy Carter or former secretary of state James A. Baker, two men who sought to rein in Israel's settlements, as special envoy to the region.
"It suggests that he is prepared to rethink in some fashion the blank check that the Sharon government has wrested from the Bush administration over these last two years," Aronson said. "That does not mean that he is going to invite Yasser Arafat to the White House. There's not going to be an absolute about-face here."
But Jewish voters have expressed alarm over Kerry's possible choice of envoys, and he has since focused on issuing statements that reaffirm his commitment to Israel's right to protect itself from terrorists.
"The Kerry campaign has a choice, and that is: Can you be more pro-Israel than the Bush administration, or not? And the answer was, 'No, we can't, so the best we can do is neutralize the issue," said Jon Alterman, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington, D.C. "Having said that, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would have a much harder time with Kerry."
China, which many see as a nascent superpower, is another foreign policy issue that received far less attention in this year's campaign than in previous years.
Bush has strongly warned Taiwan, a democratic island claimed by China, against moves that would amount to a formal declaration of independence.
Kerry, on the other hand, has taken an extremely tough stance toward the sleeping economic giant, pledging to address what he calls China's "predatory currency manipulation" and "other unfair trade practices that violate its international obligations."
But this does not guarantee that Kerry will keep that stance if he reaches the White House, several specialists said.
"The kind of rhetoric that you get in a campaign doesn't always make good policy," said Joseph Nye, professor of international relations at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "Clinton talked about colluding with the 'butchers of Beijing' and wound up treating China as a strategic partner. [George H. W.] Bush talked about China no longer as a strategic partner, but a strategic competitor. . . . In both cases, the rhetoric of the campaign was not a good indicator of the policy that would follow."
Earlier installments of this series can be found at www.boston.com/politics.
