The Three Presidency Candidates are Fundamentally Alike

FUNDAMENTALLY ALIKE

As to the rest of the world – postures are there in position papers that are surely not written by the candidates and are not really intended to be read or taken seriously – the candidates' positions are also remarkably similar. They're deeply concerned about growing authoritarianism in Russia, but don't have much of an idea what, if anything the U.S. should do about it beyond tut-tutting. They're concerned about China's potential effect on U.S. jobs and its growing regional military/political influence, but don't want to do anything drastic about it, like cutting off or restricting trade. They have no objections to the unification of Europe if it happens, but don't care much if the Europeans go slower than some of their leaders propose.

This consensus is in some ways remarkable but perhaps not so much. All three likelies share many fundamental assumptions about the nature and use of American power in the world at large. They all see the U.S. as the de facto leader of the world – if not the sole superpower then its dominant force, and rightly so. The disagreement about Iraq is a disagreement about tactics and specifics – not whether U.S. power should be applied to influence outcomes in other countries as a general principle, but whether it should have been applied in this particular place at this particular time.

There is no candidate with a chance at the presidency who questions the fundamental underpinnings of the policy of maintaining dozens of forward military positions in the world at large. None is proposing to withdraw from Japan, South Korea or Germany – let alone Kazakhstan or other central Asian countries that might or might not turn out to have tappable energy resources – despite the general uselessness and ongoing irritant and expense such deployments represent. No candidate has a vision of U.S. foreign policy that moves beyond empire to a position closer to something like continental self-defense and war avoidance, let alone reducing the U.S. footprint in the world at large.