Ross Douthat at the Atlantic has an interesting post up today about the GOP candidates and what to expect in terms of foreign policy. I highly recommend it.
Here are the most interesting bits, for me:
Rudy Giuliani, for instance, seems to have the most hawkish advisors of any candidate, and the particular hawks he's chosen suggest that a Giuliani administration would drop at least some of the Bush-era democracy-promotion business, and take a view of the War on Terror that's closer to Andy McCarthy, say, than to Reuel Marc Gerecht. John McCain, as befits a candidate who started out hoping to be the consensus GOP choice, is more ecumenical in his choice of advisers, with everyone from Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger to Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol bending his ear; his determination to stake his primary campaign on the surge notwithstanding, it seems reasonable to suggest that a McCain Administration would be meaningfully more cautious and multilateralist than its predecessor. Romney's campaign is a bit more of a black box; his chief foreign policy adviser, Steven Schrage, a former Zoellick appointee at the Trade Representative's office, isn't exactly a household name. But - and make of these Washington whispers what you will - I've had a number of people tell me that despite his Santorumesque posturing on the looming threat of an international caliphate, Romney is privately much more friendly to old-school realism, as befits his northeastern-Republican, business class background.
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So keeping in mind that all of this is guesswork to some extent, I think it's reasonable to suggest that if you're hoping for a Middle East strategy that involves widening the war's scope (to Iran, and perhaps elsewhere), then you should cast in your lot with Rudy Giuliani. If you're looking for an Administration that resembles the R... > Read more & share