OBAMA-ROMNEY: THE THIRD DEBATE

As a foreign policy expert, I am supposed to mount my hobby energetically, and run it a long distance with this third Presidential Debate “on foreign policy,” which has just ended. Yet, frankly, I have very little to say about it, and this is hardly a paradox, since this was a vacuous debate, and a complete lack of substance was unfortunately to be expected.

Apparently, the two contenders did not feel comfortable with the subject of foreign policy as such, and were most eager to skedaddle from it at the slightest opportunity into the friendlier waters of the domestic agenda, such as the economy, education, etc. Not that the economy is something to cheer about, but at least there is something to talk about there, whereas foreign policy is quite another matter.

American foreign policy in the twenty-first century is reduced in public perception (probably justifiably) to the terribly unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the no less unpopular potential wars in Syria, and especially the one against Iran. Ergo, the public equates foreign policy to war, and naturally does not want… a foreign policy! Hence, President Obama tries to minimize foreign policy and maximize domestic policy, while Mr. Romney has by now understood it too, and switched gears down on his external bellicosity quite a bit. As a result, both of them were visibly trying to run away from “foreign policy,” shielding themselves from the questions by a few standard declarative clichés.

There was little to run from, though, as the respectable newsman Bob Schieffer was unequivocally committed to playing by the rules, that is, to following the narrow parameters of politically correct questioning and giving all unpleasant deviations from the moderator’s manual (specifying what is debatable, with everything else anathemized) an extra-wide berth. Incidentally, a much livelier, and infinitely more substantial, foreign policy debate might have been possible, hypothetically speaking, if none of the moderator’s ‘questions’ had been asked in the first place, in favor of a few uncensored ones… But wouldn’t that be way too much to be desired of America’s present-day rigidly controlled political process?!

Whatever there was of foreign policy, spinned around the Middle East, with such issues as support for Israel and inadmissibility of a nuclear Iran dominating the pseudo-discussion. There was hardly any disagreement between the candidates, except for some pathetically feeble declarations to the contrary, which may have satisfied the partisan cheerleaders, but could never fool a nonpartisan outsider.

So, they did talk most of the time about Israel and about the chaos in the Middle East, but not a single word about the key source of the regional instability: the Palestinian issue. So much for the subject of their attention going down the drain with a vengeance... By the way, I do not think that Israel can be too pleased with the recent practice of undermining and overthrowing stable secular regimes in her back yard, releasing the jihadist genie out of the previously tightly corked bottle. Yet discussing this unsettling subject along these lines is definitely yet another taboo du jour…

Mr. Romney took several shots at a “nuclear” Iran being the biggest threat to American national security. It is easier of course to frighten little children with a threat that does not exist as such, as opposed to the grim reality of a nuclear-armed Pakistan balancing on the verge of a meltdown, yet although Pakistan was briefly mentioned, it was the nuclear-armless Iran that dominated the nuclear threat discussion. Apparently, once you have the bomb, you fall into a qualitatively different, “untouchable” category, with due respect and all!

Talking about nuclear weapons, the issue of nuclear arms control and of other weapons of mass destruction was conspicuously left off the table, even sharper underscoring the sheer absurdity of the discussion of the non-existent Iranian nukes. Although both Russia and China did pop up in the debate, they were obscenely low-priority, seemingly accidental topics. It would have been much better for the three men on that stage to pretend to forget about them at all, than to treat them in such a careless, dismissive manner.

It goes without saying that all other geographical areas of strategic importance to the United States, Latin America prominent among them, received scandalously little or no attention whatsoever, turning the debate into yet another political joke.

My general impression of the third Presidential Debate reinforces my pre-existent opinion that the United States is still so much intoxicated with that Cold War “victory” that it simply does not have a foreign policy anymore, and I am afraid that the recklessly spurned ghost is sure to come back to haunt Washington, if not as early as this coming Halloween, then certainly in the not too distant future.