After a long hiatus, foreign policy is moving back to center stage in this year’s presidential campaigns. That has the potential to be good for a nation that faces complex challenges around the world – but only if the candidates and the parties respond with substance, not slogans.
As they begin appealing to Jewish voters in earnest, both parties’ likely candidates are revealing some fundamental differences in their foreign policy perspectives. Do we stick with a policy that insists on isolating, not negotiating with, adversaries, or should we more aggressively seek opportunities for dialogue? These are important questions with no easy answers, and they deserve a thorough airing, not bland clichés and name calling.
Do U.S. and Israeli interests depend on staying in Iraq until we win, or is the Iraq war undermining the national interests of both nations? The major candidates have starkly different views, and our troubled foreign policy can only benefit from genuine debate.
But the foreign policy debate must be about more than slogans. It’s not enough to thunder warnings about Iran; we all know a nuclear Iran would be a disaster. What we need to know is how the presidential candidates would deal with the reality that sanctions are imperfect, military action is fraught with danger, diplomacy with religious fanatics rarely produces results and doing nothing would only guarantee that the threat becomes a reality.
That reality doesn’t distill easily into campaign trail sound bites, but it underlies the choices we face. And for our community, it’s important to hear about the issues most candidates regard as too dangerous to talk about.
How, exactly, would Sens. McCain and Obama approach U.S. policy on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks? We know they both support Israel and dislike Hamas, but how, exactly, would they deal with a current reality that has Hamas controlling a vital slice of Palestinian territory and threatening the rest? What new ideas do the presidential candidates bring to the table?
We applaud the growing focus on diverse foreign policy issues in the campaign. And we urge the candidates to have it out on substance, and not treat foreign policy as so much fodder for attack ads and accusations. The stakes are simply too high – for America and for Israel – for partisan business as usual on vital matters of foreign policy.
