Candidates have abandoned foreign policy

As the field of presidential hopefuls narrows, the foreign policy debate has become a question of whether we should bomb or shoot our enemies.

For the current Republican candidates, there’s a growing consensus that we must use large-scale violence to address the growth of the Islamic State. At a Dec. 5, campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, casually voiced support for “carpet bombing [ISIS] into oblivion,” adding tactlessly that he wanted to see “if sand can glow in the dark.”

Hawkishness has often been a hallmark of Republican primaries. But in an election cycle where foreign policy questions reign, it’s less the quirk of one party’s more extreme candidates than an obsession afflicting both parties.

The failure of dovish candidates to make an impression has more to do with voters’ inability to care about foreign policy issues outside of terrorism than it does with the pitfalls of establishment politics.

The GOP candidates’ increasingly militaristic tone on diplomatic issues is undeniably stronger than it was even three months ago — a testament to the combined effect of terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, on the Republican electorate’s collective psyche.

As recently as July 2013, a mere 38 percent of Republican respondents said the government’s anti-terror efforts hadn’t gone far enough, according to a Pew survey. That share nearly doubled to 71 percent in a Pew poll asking the same question last December.

Although Republican voters increasingly support more aggressive foreign policy, the GOP candidates’ military-focused consensus is even more drastic.

Political analyst Harry Enten looked at Republican candidates’ public statements on foreign policy and gave each candidate a percentage hawkish score. By his rating, Rand Paul was the only candidate to score below a 50 percent — the only candidate, in other words, whose public statements supported diplomacy more often than militarism. At 55 percent, reality TV star and Republican contender Donald Trump was the next lowest scorer, despite the fact that he recently bought radio ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina vowing to “decisively bomb the hell out of ISIS.”

Nine candidates, including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, scored above a 90 percent. In fact, only Trump and Paul scored below 70 percent.

While foreign policy questions have traditionally been a stronghold for Republicans, the Democratic candidates hardly offer an alternative point of view.

Former New York Senator, Secretary of State and current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, has been notably more interventionist on  foreign policy issues than the Obama  administration.

At a Nov. 19, speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Clinton promised “to defeat and destroy ISIS” with “airstrikes … combined with ground forces.”

But Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont,  doesn’t offer much in the way of an alternative, either.

Sanders, who Senate colleagues said frequently hijacked foreign policy discussions to rail  against  big banks and Wall Street, has so far campaigned mostly on domestic issues. His knowledge of foreign policy seems to be mostly limited to Clinton’s 2002 vote in the Senate OK’ing the invasion of Iraq.

Beyond that, the democratic socialist’s vaguely dovish positions on issues such as Iran have been embarrassingly shallow. For example, at the Feb. 4, Democratic debate in New Hampshire, Sanders described North Korea as “an isolated country run by a handful of dictators, or maybe just one.”

It makes no sense that candidates in an election dominated by foreign policy dilemmas and terrorism are parroting the same answers. But it’s not the candidates who are to blame.

For the average American voter, most foreign policy matters simply aren’t interesting enough. A meager 22 percent of respondents considered “international issues” more important than domestic issues, according to a September 2014 poll reported by the Washington Post.

When Americans do weigh in on international affairs, they’re also more likely than not to contradict themselves.

A 2013 poll conducted by Pew showed a 52 percent majority of respondents affirming that the United States should “mind its own business internationally,” apparently pointing to a preference for isolationist policy. But another question in the same poll seemed to give just the opposite impression: A majority “blame the president for international bad news” and expect the country to play an “active role” on the global stage.

Attitudes toward foreign policy goals continue to shift in the wake of last year’s terror attacks and the continued growth of the so-called Islamic State. But until the American public can take an interest in questions of foreign policy outside of visceral anti-terrorism efforts, our apathy will continue to fuel an interventionist, neoconservative consensus on the presidential stage.

Our national dialogue on international affairs should go beyond picking which country to bomb next.

Henry primarily writes on government and domestic policy for The Pitt News.

Write Henry at hgg7@pitt.edu.