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George Friedman on the Presidential Debates – Foreign Policy

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presidential debate graphic - part 4

Editor’s Note: This is part four of a four-part report by Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer George Friedman on the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, which was held Sept. 26. Stratfor is a private, nonpartisan intelligence service with no preference for one candidate over the other. We are interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election and, with this series, seek to answer two questions: What is the geopolitical landscape that will confront the next president, and what foreign policy proposals would a President McCain or a President Obama bring to bear? For media interviews, email PR@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.

By George Friedman

The presidential debate on foreign policy was held on Friday night, Sept. 26. It began with a discussion of the current financial crisis and then turned to foreign policy, and as with most debates, there was no clear winner. Partisans of either candidate will assert that their candidate clearly won, pointing to whatever they choose to point to as evidence. Then a debate will ensue about the debate, and a fine time will be had by all.

Much of the electorate has already made up its mind and will use the debates to reinforce its choices. Both the debates and the campaign are now about a relatively small group of people whose minds either are not made up or are open to persuasion. This group is now probably less than 10 percent of the electorate, and many of that 10 percent have a relatively low interest in politics and did not watch the debate. But there is a subgroup of voters that were the real target of the debate: those for whom there is a relatively high degree of interest, who did watch the debate and for whom foreign policy will be an important influence on how they vote. We would guess that this group, at this point, is no more than 2 percent to 3 percent of the electorate. [Read more…]

How Might a President McCain Face Foreign Policy Issues Early in his Administration?

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McCain’s Foreign Policy Stance (Open Access)

Stratfor Today » September 25, 2008 | 1022 GMT


part 3

Editor’s Note: This is part three of a four-part report by Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer George Friedman on the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, to be held Sept. 26. Stratfor is a private, nonpartisan intelligence service with no preference for one candidate over the other. We are interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election and, with this series, seek to answer two questions: What is the geopolitical landscape that will confront the next president, and what foreign policy proposals would a President McCain or a President Obama bring to bear? For media interviews, e-mail pr@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.

By George Friedman

John McCain is the Republican candidate for president. This means he is embedded in the Republican tradition. That tradition has two roots, which are somewhat at odds with each other: One root is found in Theodore Roosevelt’s variety of internationalism, and the other in Henry Cabot Lodge’s opposition to the League of Nations. Those roots still exist in the Republican Party. But accommodations to the reality the Democrats created after World War II — and that Eisenhower, Nixon and, to some extent, Reagan followed — have overlain them. In many ways, the Republican tradition of foreign policy is therefore more complex than the Democratic tradition. [Read more…]

How Might a President Obama Face Foreign Policy Issues Early in his Administration?

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Stance (Open Access)

September 24, 2008 | 1013 GMT

Part 2

Editor’s Note: This is part two of a four-part report by Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer George Friedman on the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, to be held Sept. 26. Stratfor is a private, nonpartisan intelligence service with no preference for one candidate over the other. We are interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election and, with this series, seek to answer two questions: What is the geopolitical landscape that will confront the next president, and what foreign policy proposals would a President McCain or a President Obama bring to bear? For media interviews, e-mail pr@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.

By George Friedman

Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president. His advisers in foreign policy are generally Democrats. Together they carry with them an institutional memory of the Democratic Party’s approach to foreign policy, and are an expression of the complexity and divisions of that approach. Like the their Republican counterparts, in many ways they are going to be severely constrained as to what they can do both by the nature of the global landscape and American resources. But to some extent, they will also be constrained and defined by the tradition they come from. Understanding that tradition and Obama’s place is useful in understanding what an Obama presidency would look like in foreign affairs.

U.S. Foreign Policy — The presidential Debate

The most striking thing about the Democratic tradition is that it presided over the beginnings of the three great conflicts that defined the 20th century: Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and World War II, and Harry S. Truman and the Cold War. (At this level of analysis, we will treat the episodes of the Cold War such as Korea, Vietnam or Grenada as simply subsets of one conflict.) This is most emphatically not to say that had Republicans won the presidency in 1916, 1940 or 1948, U.S. involvement in those wars could have been avoided. [Read more…]

Challenges for Our New President – Part 1

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The New President and the Global Landscape (Open Access)


U.S. Foreign Policy: Part 1 of 4

Editor’s Note: This is part one of a four-part report by Stratfor founder and Chief Intelligence Officer George Friedman on the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, to be held Sept. 26. Stratfor is a private, nonpartisan intelligence service with no preference for one candidate over the other. We are interested in analyzing and forecasting the geopolitical impact of the election and, with this series, seek to answer two questions: What is the geopolitical landscape that will confront the next president, and what foreign policy proposals would a President McCain or a President Obama bring to bear? For media interviews, e-mail pr@stratfor.com or call 512-744-4309.

By George Friedman

It has often been said that presidential elections are all about the economy. That just isn’t true. Harry Truman’s election was all about Korea. John Kennedy’s election focused on missiles, Cuba and Berlin. Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s elections were heavily about Vietnam. Ronald Reagan’s first election pivoted on Iran. George W. Bush’s second election was about Iraq. We won’t argue that presidential elections are all about foreign policy, but they are not all about the economy. The 2008 election will certainly contain a massive component of foreign policy.

Print Version

We have no wish to advise you how to vote. That’s your decision. What we want to do is try to describe what the world will look like to the new president and consider how each candidate is likely to respond to the world. In trying to consider whether to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama, it is obviously necessary to consider their stands on foreign policy issues. But we have to be cautious about campaign assertions. Kennedy claimed that the Soviets had achieved superiority in missiles over the United States, knowing full well that there was no missile gap. Johnson attacked Barry Goldwater for wanting to escalate the war in Vietnam at the same time he was planning an escalation. Nixon won the 1968 presidential election by claiming that he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. What a candidate says is not always an indicator of what the candidate is thinking.

It gets even trickier when you consider that many of the most important foreign policy issues are not even imagined during the election campaign. Truman did not expect that his second term would be dominated by a war in Korea. Kennedy did not expect to be remembered for the Cuban missile crisis. Jimmy Carter never imagined in 1976 that his presidency would be wrecked by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the hostage crisis. George H. W. Bush didn’t expect to be presiding over the collapse of communism or a war over Kuwait. George W. Bush (regardless of conspiracy theories) never expected his entire presidency to be defined by 9/11. If you read all of these presidents’ position papers in detail, you would never get a hint as to what the really important foreign policy issues would be in their presidencies. [Read more…]