Saturday, September 25, 2004
Both candidates agree that terrorism is the biggest threat to the world.
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
WASHINGTON -- When President Bush and Sen. John Kerry agreed to make foreign policy the focus of their first debate, which will be Thursday in Miami, they underscored what is becoming increasingly apparent:
America's role in the world -- not domestic, economic or social issues -- will determine the November election.
But what precisely America's role should be and where the visions of the candidates most sharply diverge is far from clear in what they've said so far and in interviews with their senior foreign-policy advisers.
Last week's dueling speeches, Kerry's in New York and Philadelphia and Bush's before the United Nations, showed that each man intends to use Iraq to define his opponent, with Bush highlighting Kerry's wayward past statements and Kerry stressing the gap between Bush's rhetoric and what Kerry describes as rank incompetence.
When it comes to what should be next for Iraq, however, their prescriptions are remarkably similar.
Talking the talk
Both put the emphasis on attracting more international support, faster training of Iraqi security forces, faster reconstruction and, above all, insisting that the elections set for January take place on time. The principal difference is that Kerry says Bush hasn't backed his talk with deeds and that he, if elected, would.
"The president of the United States speaks words that sound right," Rand Beers, Kerry's principal foreign policy adviser, said in a meeting with reporters Friday. "But he's the president, so he also has to implement the words -- and he's not doing that. That's what Sen. Kerry is trying to draw attention to: The president has to do things, not just think about them."
Richard Falkenrath, a senior policy adviser in the Bush campaign, said the difference is in Kerry's focus on beginning to draw down the current total of 135,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, as soon as six months after his inauguration.
"He's emphasizing troop withdrawal at the same time as he's saying he can get other countries to commit more troops, and that doesn't make any sense," Falkenrath said in an interview Friday. "It would be nice to bring the troops home. But the president's policy in Iraq is based on success, on standing by the Iraqi government. When that job is done, the troops will come home."
If the differences on prospective policy on Iraq appear limited, that is even more the case on a wide range of front-line foreign policy issues that might surface at the Miami debate, from homeland security to trade with China.
Both candidates agree, most importantly, that terrorism is the greatest single threat facing the world.
"The war on terror is as monumental a struggle as the Cold War," Kerry said Friday at Temple University. "Its outcome will determine whether we and our children liven in freedom or in fear."
"All civilized nations are in this struggle together," Bush said in his speech at the United Nations. "And all must fight the murderers."
These are assessments with which most of the world differs, however, judging from the parade of leaders who spoke during the opening sessions last week of the U.N. General Assembly.
At the assembly, speaker after speaker stressed the mounting challenge of poverty and disease, the lack of education and jobs, the growing gaps between rich and poor -- and the failure of the richest nations, especially the United States, to meet pledges for a significant increase in development aid that were made two years ago.
Development aid
In his own address, Bush touted the U.S. commitment to development aid that works -- specifically noting the U.S.-approved Monterey Consensus that Bush called a "bold approach that links new aid from developed nations to real reform in developing ones."
Critics note that official U.S. development assistance two years later remains at 0.15 percent of gross domestic product -- about $15 billion, compared with $450 billion on defense -- despite the U.S. pledge at Monterey to move toward the target aid goal of 0.7 percent.