Foreign policy a casualty of US election

Foreign policy is taking a back seat in the 2012 US presidential campaign despite massive military deployments overseas and the challenges posed by an Arab Spring redrawing the established order across the Middle East.

President Barack Obama works the crowd at the University of Colorado Denver Downtown Campus during a three-day tour to promote his American Jobs Act. The tour is being seen as an indicator of his priorities during the 2012 campaign.Show less

WASHINGTON // Nowhere is the old saying that all politics is local truer then during US presidential campaigns, where one of the first casualties in the battle for domestic votes is traditionally foreign policy.

With unemployment high, an economy refusing to turn the corner and Occupy Wall Street demonstrations sweeping the country, the 2012 campaign is not shaping up any differently despite massive military deployments overseas and the challenges posed by an Arab Spring redrawing the established order across the Middle East.

Barack Obama, the US president, sent the clearest possible signal about his priorities recently when he spent three days touring two critical swing states promoting the jobs plan he is trying to push through Congress.

Mr Obama is pulling troops out of Iraq - ending an increasingly unpopular foreign engagement; the country's No 1 enemy, 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, was captured and killed by US forces on his watch; an increased aerial drone campaign is taking out ever more militants; and the US played a key role in deposing Libya's Muammar Qaddafi.

But these foreign-policy successes have not translated into a sustained rise in his approval rating among registered voters, stuck in the low- to mid-40s for months.

The Rasmussen Reports, a closely watched daily barometer, suggest Mr Obama would lose to a generic Republican candidate, although he would still beat any of his declared opponents.

The latest Republican candidate debate was dominated by the economy and immigration - itself largely a jobs-and-economy issue - and touched on foreign policy only in relation to defence and foreign aid.

So far down the order of priorities is foreign policy, in fact, that at least one Republican front-runner flaunted his ignorance.

Asked about the strategically important Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan, which plays a vital role in transporting troops and supplies to US forces in Afghanistan, the former pizza chain magnate Herman Cain told an interviewer: "When they ask me who is the president of Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say 'you know, I don't know. Do you know?'

"And then I'm going to say how's that going to create one job?"

With the exception of long-shot John Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, the Republican candidates have little foreign policy expertise. Although Newt Gingrich was speaker of the US House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998 and could have yielded significant clout on foreign policy then, the focus of his leadership was on the domestic front.

But Mr Obama also had little foreign policy experience when he battled Hillary Clinton, now his secretary of state, for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 election.

More importantly, perhaps, none of the Republican candidates worry about their lack of foreign-policy credentials, said Philip Giraldi, the executive director of the Center for the National Interest Foundation.

"I don't think it [foreign policy] will be a big issue unless there is something catastrophic in Afghanistan or perhaps another war, possibly with Iran," he said. Mr Giraldi is a consultant to the Republican hopeful Ron Paul who he advised on foreign policy during Mr Paul's 2008 nomination bid.

"The economy will be the main driver and if the Republicans can come up with a candidate that is appealing enough, Obama is very vulnerable."

Republicans have largely kept from criticising Mr Obama on foreign policy - the two wars the US is embroiled in were launched under the previous Republican administration of George W Bush and Mr Obama's decision to bring the troops home has popular support.

Mr Giraldi said Mr Obama's foreign policy has not wandered far from Mr Bush's. And in recent months, Mr Obama has been careful to keep the powerful and well-organised pro-Israel domestic political lobby onside with his pledge to use Washington's Security Council veto to block a Palestinian bid for full United Nations membership and his decision not to pressure Israel over Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

"I don't see anyone stepping forward saying I've got a whole new way at looking at foreign policy," said Robert W Merry, the editor of The National Interest, a bimonthly foreign-policy journal. It was "almost shocking" but far from surprising that none of the Republican candidates are talking about the Arab Spring or put forward a "coherent way of looking at America's role in the world" in a rapidly changing environment, Mr Perry said.

"That's a fundamental reality of American politics."

Tony Karon, page a18