There are many good things in this week’s edition of the magazine and among them, happily, is a piece by Dan Drezner. It’s not online yet so why don’t you subscribe? £1 an issue for the first 12. Bargain! Anyway, Dan casts a weary gaze (there being no other kind of gaze when it comes to this sort of survey) over the Republican presidential pretenders’ foreign policy views. Here’s how he begins:
A small thing perhaps but I think you could reasonably consider this a leading indicator.During the 2008 US presidential election cycle, the respected journal Foreign Affairs invited the leading prsidential candidates from both parties to outline their views of world politics. All of them responded with essays that, one presumes, they at least read if did not write. This year, ahead of next year’s elections, Foreign Affairs has proffered the same invitation to the leading Republican aspirants. To date, they have all refused or not responded.
Granted, foreign policy will not be much of an issue in the actual election itself. Granted too, entertainment is the only reason you’d want to read a Herman Cain essay in Foreign Affairs and you can understand why he might be reluctant to be the fall guy in this fashion. Granted as well, foreign policy offers more to Obama than much of his domestic record and granted, finally, it may be that, given the state of republican foreign policy thinking a discrete silence – that is, a number of blank pages in the next edition of Foreign Affairs – might be the most compassionate approach to adopt, there being no need to mock the afflicted too openly.
Anyway, Dan’s piece is excellent. So subscribe, damn it.
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