Democratic voters view foreign policy very differently from Republican ones. Iraq is a prime example.
Only 27% of Democrats support keeping troops in Iraq, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre, compared with 81% of Republicans. A mere 36% of Democrats think that America is making progress in Iraq with defeating the insurgency, compared with 80% of Republicans. Only 39% of Democrats reckon that America has not gone far enough in protecting itself from terrorist threats, against 56% of Republicans. Only about half as many Democrats as Republicans (39% against 74%) believe that it is right to conduct surveillance of suspected terrorists without a court order. And a similar proportion (39% against 73%) believe that the government's treatment of the inmates at Guantánamo Bay is fair.
Hostility to the Iraq war, and wider worries about the excesses of the “war on terror”, are particularly strong among the Democratic base: the people who vote in primaries and do much of the legwork in the general election. The Bush years have seen the rise of a Democratic counter-establishment set up largely in opposition to Mr Bush's assertive foreign policy. Groups such as MoveOn.org (which opposed the invasion of Afghanistan as well as Iraq) and internet sites such as DailyKos and the Huffington Post are becoming an increasingly important source of funding and opinion and can make life difficult for
Democratic politicians who are seen to “betray” the party.
Both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton have been careful to preserve as much wiggle room as possible,
particularly on what “withdrawal” of American troops from Iraq actually means. But the resurgence of the Democrats will nevertheless have a profound influence on the direction of American foreign policy, given the party's strong disagreements with the Bush doctrine. Congressional Democrats have been working hard to bring American troops home from Iraq: in a debate on Mr Bush's surge last year, 229 Democrats but only 17 Republicans voted to condemn it.
So an incoming Republican president would be constrained by powerful Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill, and an incoming Democratic president would be under strong pressure from his or her core
supporters to put much more emphasis on negotiation than on force. Presidents enjoy a great deal of freedom in policymaking, but they ignore the views of their most reliable supporters at their peril.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Terror not China
Mar 27th 2008
From The Economist print edition
The next president will still focus on the same problems as Mr Bush. But some of the answers may change
IT IS hard to think of a more miserable way of spending your life than running for American president.
Dialling for dollars. Hanging out in diners in Iowa and New Hampshire. Glad-handing people you will never meet again. Living on aeroplanes and in hotels. Getting by on four hours' sleep a night. Delivering the same stump speech ad nauseam.
And what do you get for all that misery? A heap of trouble. America is bogged down in Iraq, the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and Iran is flexing its muscles, Russian nationalism is on the rise once again and China is getting increasingly bolshy. America's problems seem to be multiplying at the same time as its ability to deliver results is waning.
Russia is becoming increasingly anti-American as well as increasingly autocratic. It is convinced that America is trying to surround it with military bases, worried that NATO is advancing to its borders and determined to become great again. It has resumed the cold-war practice of flying military missions over the North Pole. It has engaged in a cyberwar with Estonia and used its oil and gas supplies to bully its neighbours. It has also shown an increased willingness to thumb its nose at America (for example, by selling military equipment to Syria and Venezuela) and to form anti-American alliances, particularly with China and some oil-rich Central Asian states.
At the same time America is getting more anxious about China's growing economic might. Anti-Chinese sentiment in America is already strong. Democrats in Congress are preparing to hammer China over counterfeit goods, product safety and exchange-rate policy. The media have been a-twitter with stories about poisoned pet food, tainted toothpaste and lead-painted toys. America's trade deficit with China has been rising relentlessly (see chart 4). Many critics argue that China is trying to cheat its way to economic success, keeping its currency artificially low to give Chinese products an unfair advantage, creating barriers to keep out American goods and allowing producers to operate largely outside the law.
America's Sinophobia could be magnified by the Beijing Olympics in August. There will be lots of reports on China's breathtaking economic growth, Beijing's stunning new buildings, the $400m national stadium and the efficiency of Beijing's airport. And the Chinese will win lots of gold medals.
America, in short, will come face to face with a country that might become its greatest rival in the 21st century. Although some of the forecasts are over the top, China's economic growth is
Getty Images
The place to look for al-Qaeda
certainly remarkable; and economic growth is inevitably accompanied by growing political clout. China has replaced America as the largest source of imports for Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Human-rights activists point to China's abuses at home, its repression of Tibet and its habit of cosying up to nasty regimes in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Burma and Venezuela.
Environmentalists say that, by some measures, China is already the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases.
Neoconservative hawks reckon that China has been supersizing its defence spending over the past decade (and China itself admitted to a budget increase of 18% this year). But the country is so important that the next American president will have no choice but to do business with it.
America's relations with Russia are likely to get even cooler than they are now. The days when people speculated that the twin departures from office of Vladimir Putin and George Bush might help to improve relations have long gone. Mr Putin is determined to hold on to power from whatever post he occupies.
Russia is furious about America's ambitions to extend its missile shield. America is furious about the way that Russia uses the superpower's problems in the Middle East to extend its own influence and forge anti- American alliances. Russia's increasing assertiveness is underwritten by the inflated price of oil and a growing nationalism.
Many foreign-policy analysts argue that the next American president should pay much more attention to Russia and China, as well as to the shift in economic power from the developed to the developing world.
But in practice American politics will continue to be dominated by the greater Middle East. This is because American attention is inevitably concentrated on the regions where its troops are fighting, and sometimes dying; because the consequences of a botched policy in that area are so serious; and because the
American public is deeply divided about what to do about Iraq and beyond.
Mr Obama or Mrs Clinton will be under huge pressure to wash his or her hands of Iraq. The anti-war left has set clear and ambitious goals for bringing its forces home. It wants to redeploy all 160,000 troops in Iraq within 18 months of the next president taking office, though a few might remain in the region to deal with al-Qaeda. But this is a high-risk strategy. American withdrawal might produce a cascade of problems. The precarious Iraqi state might collapse. The civil war could intensify as various sectarian groups smell victory. Iran could step up its involvement and produce a counter-push from Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states. The redeployed American forces might be too small to deal with terrorism or prevent a regional conflagration. The outflow of refugees might overwhelm fragile states in the region.