Sectarian tensions are once again rising perilously in Iraq after a court in Baghdad sentenced Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi to death in absentia -- on the same day that insurgents launched a wave of attacks across the country that killed nearly 100 people. But, judging from this year's campaign rhetoric, you probably won't hear Mitt Romney criticizing Barack Obama for the precarious situation in Iraq following the U.S. troop withdrawal.

According to a University of California, Santa Barbara archive of formal campaign speeches by both candidates, Romney has used the word "Iraq" seven times on the trail (usually in the context of military service) while Obama has referenced the country 76 times (often as part of a stump-speech line about keeping his promise to end the war). The same pattern held true at the conventions: Republicans mentioned Iraq seven times, while the Democrats did so 34 times. Romney didn't talk about Iraq in his convention speech and made only a passing reference to it in his biggest foreign-policy address of the campaign in South Carolina.  

Romney might argue, as he has in defending his failure to mention the Afghan war in Tampa, that it's his policies that matter, not how many times he mentions particular words in speeches. But he's been equally evasive when outlining how he would have managed the Iraq war. When Obama announced in October 2011 that all U.S. troops would leave Iraq by the end of the year, Romney lashed out at the president for not securing an "orderly transition in Iraq" and publicizing the recommendations of military commanders (the 2012 GOP platform doesn't mention these criticisms).

In a Fox News interview two months later, Romney's position on Iraq grew murkier. He noted that U.S. troops were "fortunately" withdrawing from Iraq before adding that he would have left a residual force in the country. He followed those comments up by refusing to answer whether he would send U.S. troops back to Iraq as president:

Why is Romney so hesitant to talk about Iraq? The bottom line is that the unpopular war, which is fading fast from voters' minds, is a political loser for the GOP candidate. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in November 2011 revealed that nearly eight in ten Americans approved of Obama's decision to withdraw combat troops from Iraq (including 58 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of independent voters).  A CNN/ORC International poll a month later found that more than half of Americans felt sending troops to Iraq in the first place was a mistake and that 57 percent believed the Bush administration misled the American public about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction. Fifty-four percent of respondents in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo survey this summer claimed that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had contributed most to the federal budget deficit -- a flashpoint in the campaign.  

Every time Romney mentions Iraq, moreover, he exposes himself to charges that he is aligned with George W. Bush and the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party -- an association that might just stick given the debate over whether, when it comes to foreign policy, Romney is a neoconservative, realist, or another breed altogether. This is precisely the attack that the Obama campaign leveled in June by linking Romney to Bush's former U.N. ambassador John Bolton and his "reckless neoconservative thinking." And it's what Obama himself implied in his convention speech by arguing that Romney and running mate Paul Ryan "want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly."

Obama has already taken Romney's words on Iraq out of context to support this back-to-Bush argument, asserting that the Republican candidate said ending the war in Iraq would be "tragic" (Romney argued that the pace of the withdrawal was tragic). The Romney campaign isn't about to give the president any more ammunition.

Democrats flex foreign-policy muscle

At their convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, this week, the Democrats weren't shy about touting their rare advantage on national security in this year's election. Speakers mentioned Osama bin Laden 21 times during the three-day event, and Barack Obama ridiculed Republican challenger Mitt Romney's foreign policy in his acceptance speech on Thursday evening.

"My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy," the president asserted. "After all, you don't call Russia our number one enemy -- not al Qaeda, Russia -- unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp. You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally."

At a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, Romney defended the critical comments he made while visiting London during this summer's Olympic Games, calling it the kind of "straight talk" Obama avoids. "I think it would be appropriate if the president would talk to China in a straight talk manner," he said. "They have manipulated their currency for well over a decade, taken American jobs, and I think it's totally appropriate to show backbone and strength as we deal with other nations around the world, there is nothing wrong with telling people the truth."

Jobs report

On Friday morning, shortly after the Democratic convention wrapped up, a much-anticipated jobs report revealed that that while the unemployment rate had fallen from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent, the economy had added only 96,000 jobs in August, far below the 125,000 that economists had forecasted and the revised figure of 141,000 that the economy had added in July. The Romney campaign pounced. "If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover," Romney noted, adding that the president had "yet to keep his number one promise to fix the economy."

Saluting the troops

Democrats seized on the controversy surrounding Romney's failure to mention the war in Afghanistan during his acceptance speech last week -- an effort that was no doubt aided by the optics of Obama addressing the troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, the very next day. "No nominee for president should ever fail in the midst of a war to pay tribute to our troops overseas in his acceptance speech," Senator John Kerry (D-MA) declared on Thursday evening in the most substantive foreign policy speech of the convention. (Romney, for his part, points out that he mentioned Afghanistan during a visit to the American Legion a day after the convention.) A Gallup poll in August showed Romney leading Obama 55 percent to 38 percent among veterans.

Platform politics: Jerusalem

Of all the controversies surrounding this year's Democratic platform, none was more consequential than the debate surrounding the decision to not include language affirming that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel in the document's section on Israel. The wording had appeared in the party's 2008 platform, but drafters reportedly removed it to indicate that Jerusalem will remain a so-called final-status issue in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Party leaders ultimately reinstated the language during a chaotic and contentious voice vote after facing heavy criticism from the Romney campaign and others.

Immigration reform

Talk of immigration reform figured prominently in the Democratic convention. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the first Latino to deliver the keynote address at a convention, praised Obama's executive order this summer to halt the deportation of young illegal immigrants. "The president took action to lift the shadow of deportation from a generation of young, law-abiding immigrants called ‘Dreamers,'" Castro noted. Benita Veliz, an undocumented immigrant and a leader of the Dreamers movement, also addressed the convention. The GOP convention also featured several Latino speakers, including Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and New Mexican Governor Susana Martinez.

Climate change

Global warming wasn't a major topic of conversation at the Republican and Democratic conventions -- beyond a debate about whether caring about the rise of the oceans is a good thing -- but Romney did make headlines this week by adjusting his stance on climate change, albeit in a rather confusing fashion. "I am not a scientist myself, but my best assessment of the data is that the world is getting warmer, that human activity contributes to that warming, and that policymakers should therefore consider the risk of negative consequences," he argued. "However, there remains a lack of scientific consensus on the issue."

The latest from FP:

Over the last couple weeks, there's been an extended debate on ForeignPolicy.com between Peter Feaver, Charles Kupchan, and Bruce Jentleson over the merits of Barack Obama's and Mitt Romney's foreign policies. Check it out here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Alex Massie explains why he's sick and tired of U.S. political conventions.

Uri Friedman explores the surprising Republican reset with Pakistan.

Aaron David Miller makes the case for why Barack Obama will win reelection.

John Kerry outlines why the Republicans can't be trusted with national security.

Joshua Keating tells us what a Polkian presidency might look like.

Foreign Policy releases its list of the 50 most powerful Democrats on foreign policy.

Throughout this year's presidential election, as talk of a possible Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities has grown louder, there has been rampant speculation about whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favors Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, and how that preference could influence the timing of a strike. Reports of a longstanding friendship between Netanyahu and Romney only fueled the debate, especially since Netanyahu and Obama reportedly have a chilly personal relationship.

In a national security address on Thursday evening -- a day after Democratic leaders added language on Jerusalem to their platform in the face of intense criticism -- Senator John Kerry (D-MA) suggested that, in fact, Netanyahu is on Obama's side:

Barack Obama promised always to stand with Israel to tighten sanctions on Iran -- and take nothing off the table.

Again and again, the other side has lied about where this president stands and what this president has done. But Prime Minister Netanyahu set the record straight -- he said, our two countries have "exactly the same policy," "our security cooperation is unprecedented." When it comes to Israel, I'll take the word of Israel's prime minister over Mitt Romney any day.

Kerry, who was referring to comments Netanyahu made in speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2011 and 2012, wasn't the only speaker at the Democratic convention to quote Netanyahu as an unwitting surrogate. Here's what former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler had to say on Tuesday evening:

Last week, Mitt Romney claimed that the president has thrown Israel "under the bus."

Perhaps Mr. Romney should listen to those who know best -- Israel's leaders.

Listen to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has thanked president Obama for "unprecedented" security cooperation and for wearing his support for the Jewish state as a "badge of honor."

Republicans have used Netanyahu's words to their advantage too. When Romney visited Israel as part of a foreign tour over the summer, the Israeli prime minister told the candidate that he agreed with his assessment of the Iranian threat. The "sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota," Netanyahu observed. The Romney campaign quickly emailed out news coverage of the meeting. 

Netanyahu, for his part, has avoided jumping into the fray -- at least explicitly. In July, ahead of Romney's trip to Israel, he told CBS's Bob Schieffer that he would treat the Republican candidate like he treated candidate Obama when he visited Israel in 2008. When Schieffer asked whether he would be as comfortable with a President Romney as he was with a President Obama, Netanyahu teased him for asking the question. "You're far too experienced a reporter," he said. In another interview with Fox News, he chided Chris Wallace for asking the same question, saying "you're far too wise a journalist to think that I'm going to get into your field of American politics."

I would call the prime minister's office and ask if Kerry's speech tonight has, at long last, inspired Netanyahu to issue an endorsement. But I'm far too wise a journalist. 

Thomas Friedman has an interesting column in today's New York Times that raises the question of whether Mitt Romney is actually as hawkish on foreign policy as he makes himself out to be. Friedman writes:

I know Romney doesn't believe a word he's saying on foreign policy and that it's all aimed at ginning up votes: there's some China-bashing to help in the Midwest, some Arab-bashing to win over the Jews, some Russia-bashing (our "No. 1 geopolitical foe") to bring in the Polish vote, plus a dash of testosterone to keep the neocons off his back.

Some neocons are, indeed, worried that Mitt is only pretending to be a hawk to keep the party onside. Jennifer Rubin, the court scribe of the Romney campaign, channels some of that anxiety in a recent blog post. "[A]mong Republicans," she writes, riffing off of some of the candidate's recent speeches, "it is a segment of foreign policy hawks who are most aggrieved and feel overlooked by the campaign."

Rubin elaborates:

From the perspective of some hawks, Mitt Romney needs to state controversial, bold foreign policy positions as sort of a test of his seriousness. If he doesn't say now he'll finish the job in Afghanistan and he'll, if need be, set up a no-fly zone in Syria, he'll shrink from tough positions when in office. They don't think it is enough to have surrogates like former senator Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, and senior adviser Richard Williamson give assurances, speak about Romney's devotion to American exceptionalism and remind conservatives of Romney's early support for the Syrian rebels.

I've heard similar whispers to this effect, and Bill Kristol likely spoke for many on the right when he dinged Romney for failing to even mention the war in Afghanistan during his convention speech, a bizarre unforced error when a perfunctory shoutout to the troops would have been fine.

Doubtless, the various foreign-policy wings of the GOP would battle it out for influence in a Romney administration, and the candidate has done a reasonably good job of staying vague enough that he won't limit his options once in office. But, like Jacob Heilbrunn, I think the realists would win most battles, and here's why.

Josh Barro, a Bloomberg writer and former Manhattan Institute fellow, has been promoting his theory that Romney has a "Secret Economic Plan." In a nutshell, the idea is that Romney can't possibly believe his own rhetoric about immediately imposing severe budget cuts. "To increase his chances of getting elected, he will have to implement policies that are likely to grow the economy," says Barro, and that in part means running up Keynesian deficits. Romney has already indicated that he wants to grow the defense budget, and has railed against defense cuts that he says would kill jobs (Keynesian!). He's also favorably cited a recent Congressional Budget Office report warning that the so-called fiscal cliff would provoke a sharp recession (Keynesian!). It seems pretty clear he doesn't believe in European-style austerity, even though he talks a lot about Obama's deficits and so forth. And the likely Republican-controlled Congress, newly de-radicalized by Obama's departure, would probably go along with heavy deficit spending, just as it did under George W. Bush.

What about foreign policy? Here's where the overseas component of the Secret Economic Plan comes in. Romney isn't going to be interested in getting involved in any foreign entanglements that threaten the Plan. His China comments are nonsense that he obviously has no intention of implementing. He's already said he's fine with Obama's timeline for winding down the war in Afghanistan -- and that means cooperating with No. 1 Geopolitical Foe Russia on the logistically complicated exit. He walked back an aide's comments suggesting he'd green-light an Israeli attack on Iran. He hasn't said much if anything about Pakistan, or about ramping up what remains of the war on terror generally. Even his hawkish advisor John Bolton, in a recent Washington Times op-ed, openly worried that Romney might not pull the trigger himself and bomb, bomb, bomb Iran. His foreign-policy team has bent over backwards to stress that the former governor is not planning to intervene directly in Syria. And his appointment of Robert Zoellick as the head of his national security transition team suggests at a minimum that top realists will play a prominent role in his administration.

It's not a slam-dunk case, I admit. As the New York Times' Peter Baker noted in a smart take on Romney's foreign policy last week, "The challenge is figuring out when the speeches are just words intended to highlight or even invent differences for political purposes and when they genuinely signal a change in America's relationship with the world." But if Romney is serious about earning himself a second term, logic suggests he'll tone it down if and when he gets behind the Resolute Desk.

Correction: Josh Barro informs me he's a *former* Manhattan Institute fellow. Apologies for the mistake.

Last week, I noted how the Russian press was positively livid over Mitt Romney's aggressive posture toward Russia.

Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin jumped into fray -- with a surprisingly measured response to a candidate who has asked whether Putin will  "bludgeon the countries of the former Soviet Union into submission, and intimidate Europe with the levers of its energy resources."

Asked by Russia's RT television whether he would be able to work with a President Romney, Putin smiled. "We'll work with whoever gets elected as president by the American people," he said. But he also tossed the ball in America's court, adding, "our effort will only be as efficient as our partners allow it to be." Here's the clip (RT will air the full interview on Thursday):

Putin's restraint is a bit surprising given that just last week, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, criticized Romney more pointedly for his assertion at the Republican convention that, if elected, he would show Putin "a little less flexibility and more backbone." U.S. and Russian officials have repeatedly "expressed their understanding that it is inadmissable for the bilateral ties to fall victim to pre-election debates," Peskov said.

Putin, it seems, is taking the high ground on this one. 

Last week, the GOP made the first ever reference to "American exceptionalism" in a party platform, using the buzzy term as the title for the document's foreign-policy section and defining the concept as the "conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history." Speakers at the Republican convention hammered home the theme to contrast their vision of American greatness with President Obama's alleged declinism. 

The Democratic platform released on Monday evening appears to fire back, but without using "American exceptionalism" or some variation of the phrase once. Instead, the platform declares:

We also understand the indispensable role that the United States must continue to play in promoting international peace and prosperity.

"Indispensable" isn't just a throwaway adjective here. In 2008, the Democratic platform used the word to describe Social Security, Europe, and the United Nations, but not America. This year, the phrasing invokes the Clinton administration's description of the United States as an "indispensable nation" well before American exceptionalism became a staple of political discourse. Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal and historian James Chace coined the term in 1996 to encapsulate the idea of "liberal internationalism" in the post-Cold War world. Here's how Blumenthal described the moment of inspiration:

We were able to describe the concept of the United States as the guarantor of stability as the sole superpower within the framework of multinational institutions, but I was intent on boiling it down to a phrase. Finally, together, we hit on it: "indispensable nation." Eureka! I passed it on first to Madeleine Albright, at the time the United Nations ambassador, and then to the president.

And here's how Bill Clinton used the phrase in 1996, in a speech explaining the rationale behind NATO's intervention in Bosnia:

The fact is America remains the indispensable nation. There are times when America, and only America, can make a difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression, between hope and fear. Of course, we can't take on all the world's burden. We cannot become its policemen. But where our interests and values demand it and where we can make a difference, America must act and lead.

Obama has made sure to emphasize his support for American exceptionalism ever since he landed in hot water for saying he believed "in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." But in major speeches -- such as his State of the Union address in January and his graduation address at the U.S. Air Force Academy in May -- he's used the "indispensable nation" formulation instead.

As this week's convention progresses, it's worth keeping an eye on how the Democrats describe America's role in the world in light of GOP attacks. Will they employ different language than the Republicans? And, if so, will they make the case that the words amount to anything more than another way to say that America is a very special place?

Republicans may be rallying around Mitt Romney at the GOP convention in Tampa, but over in Russia the GOP presidential candidate is getting a far chillier reception.

Romney has been tough on Moscow during the campaign, calling the New START nuclear arms reduction deal Obama's "worst foreign-policy mistake," labeling Russia America's "number one geopolitical foe," and characterizing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a man bent on rebuilding the "Soviet empire." His advisors have echoed these sentiments, as has the Republican platform, which cites "Russian activism" as one of the "gravest threats to our national security" and alludes to a "hot mic" moment between Obama and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as evidence that the president wants to "appease Russia" on missile defense. It's remarkably aggressive rhetoric -- albeit from a party whose most revered figure famously referred to Russia as an "evil empire."

The Russian press was already up in arms about Romney's trip to Poland earlier this month (money quote from the state-funded RT: "the Mormon from Michigan has been time-warped back to the Soviet era, behind an Iron Curtain and inside of a 1950s black-and-white television set"). But the outrage has resurfaced in recent days, as the GOP released its platform and opened its convention. 

In an article entitled "Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan promise Russia Republican hell," for example, Pravda, which has been known to engage in colorful outbursts against Romney, declares that the GOP ticket supports the "radicalization of the country's foreign policies" -- particularly those concerning Russia. "According to the Republican Party," the newspaper scoffs, the "Russian administration is authoritarian and does not respect human rights.... They refer to Russia as a traditional rival of the United States along with North Korea, Iran and China.... To crown it all, Mitt Romney expressed his willingness to be the godfather of the Russian opposition and organize the training for opposition activists at American educational centers."

Pravda isn't alone. At the state-owned news agency RIA-Novosti, journalist Fyodor Lukyanov observes that "no matter how much you may dislike Russia and its authorities, the time when it was America's enemy number one is long past." In a blistering column for the state-run radio station Voice of Russia, presenter John Robles warns that Romney and his "cold war thinking" will signal the death knell of Obama's "reset" with Russia, and he doesn't stop there:

To say that Romney and his Republican brethren are a danger to world peace would be an understatement. Their "ultra-conservative" views and stances on a number of issues will bring about another era of neo-conservative subjugation for the American people and the world and their backward thinking and confrontational posturing will destroy much of the delicate compromise that has kept the world stable for the last four years....

To listen to Romney and his Republican like and read how they plan to "curb Moscow", "confront Russia", surround Russia with missiles and the like is to get the impression that he is talking about some small third world nation they can just obliterate at any moment and not the largest country on the planet and a formidable nuclear power.

Another Voice of Russia article -- entitled "Republicans choose presidential candidate and external enemies" -- includes an interview with an expert identified as Valey Korovin, the director of the Center for Political Expertise. "It is a fact that Russia and the US are geopolitical opponents," Korovin is quoted as saying. "This logic is based on the confrontation of two kinds of civilizations, and the Republicans openly speak about it. The Democrats think the same but use more roundabout expressions and adhere to the use of soft, smart force. As for Romney, he is only a presidential candidate, so he does not care about beating around the bush and bluntly calls a spade a spade."

The intense focus on Romney's posture toward Russia isn't limited to government-controlled news outlets, either. In a report today on the GOP convention, for instance, the privately owned daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta leads with, "Russia is once again among America's enemies." The business daily Vedomosti highlights a recent Citi report suggesting that a Romney victory in November could batter the Russian stock market and explores what a GOP win would signify more generally for the "reset" and U.S.-Russian relations.

Of course, we don't know whether a President Romney would actually follow through on his Russia rhetoric. As Peter Baker points out in the New York Times today, "the pragmatic dealmaker in Mr. Romney may find that even if he does not want to sign a nuclear arms treaty with Moscow as Mr. Obama did, it is useful to be able to move supplies through Russian territory to Afghanistan."

For now, at least, Romney may want to soak up the moment in Tampa -- and avoid picking up any Russian newspapers.

Mitt Romney has already gotten in a spot of trouble in London for suggesting that Britain may not be quite ready to host the Olympic Games. Romney has walked back his comments, but it's not the first time the candidate has said some not-so-flattering things about the Sceptered Isle. In his book, No Apology, he writes:

England [sic] is just a small island. Its roads and houses are small. With few exceptions, it doesn't make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy. And if it hadn't been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler's ambitions. Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth's land and a quarter of the earth's population.

Its roads and houses are small? The trees probably aren't the right height either.

Talking Points Memo is asking if this is Romney's " first big foreign stumble" and the Obama campaign is sending it out to journalists, but it's not exactly clear who exactly made a gaffe or about what. 

Here are some comments made by Romney at a San Francisco fundraiser yesterday, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald:

"I met today with the Foreign Minister of Australia. He said something, and I said 'Can I quote you?' and he said yes. He said, 'America is just one budget deal away from ending all talk of America being in decline,''' Governor Romney told attendees at a fundraiser today.

''And this idea of America in decline, it was interesting [Carr] said that, he led the talk of America being in decline. See that's not talk we hear about here as much as they're hearing  there. And if they're thinking about investing in America, entrepreneurs putting their future in America, if they think America's in decline they're not gonna do it."

In the AP's telling of the story, the speech claimed that Carr "privately warned Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney that foreign leaders see "America in decline." Carr's office has come out to deny that there was any "warning" implied:

But despite headlines today such as ''Mitt Romney Gets Grim Warning From Australian Leader'', a spokesman for Senator Carr says Australia's Foreign Minister was talking up the US economy, not talking it down. That is, any fears that Australia's foreign minister has been overseas criticising a key alliance parnter, would be misplaced.

''That interpretation is not correct,'' the spokesman told The National Times.

Indeed, Senator Carr has used a similar phrase about the US budget before - on people such as former World Bank chief Robert Zoellick - to indicate his belief in the US economy's strengths and potential.

TPM's Josh Marshall interprets this as Carr coming "forward to shoot down Romney’s characterization of the discussion." But it seems like he may be mischaracterizing the statement, which was aimed at the media for mischaracterizing his statement. Or something like that. It's all a bit confusing and a sign of how out-of-hand the campaign gaffe-spotting is getting. 

In the end, it seems like a pretty inoccuous statement from both Carr and Romney: Foreign investors would be a lot more enthusiastic about the United States if phrases like "fiscal cliff" weren't such a regular part of its political discourse. Which party is more to blame for this state of affairs is another question.

If anything, the weirder aspect of Romney's statement was the notion that Americans don't think or talk about American decline. The polls say otherwise, not to mention certain foreign policy blogs. 

After a few weeks of relative silence on Foreign Policy from the campaign trail, there was a brief and largely unexpected skirmish between the Obama and Romney camps today over just how dangerous Hugo Chavez is. The president started things with remarks to a Miami TV Station about ties between Venezuela and Iran:

“We’re always concerned about Iran engaging in destabilizing activity around the globe,” Obama told the station, WJAN America TeVe Miami. “But overall my sense is that what Mr. Chavez has done over the past several years has not had a serious national security impact on us.”

Romney immediately saw an opening:

“The idea that this nation, this president, doesn’t pose a national security threat is simply naive and an extraordinary admission on the part of this president to be completely out of touch with what is happening in Latin America,” Romney said of Chavez in an interview Wednesday with Fox News.

The Obama campaign then fired back with a press release: 

“Because of President Obama’s leadership, our position in the Americas is much stronger today than before he took office. At the same time, Hugo Chavez has become increasingly marginalized and his influence has waned. It’s baffling that Mitt Romney is so scared of a leader like Chavez whose power is fading, while Romney continues to remain silent about how to confront al-Qaeda or how to bring our troops home from Afghanistan. People like Hugo Chavez want attention – and that’s exactly what Mitt Romney and his supporters gave him today. Governor Romney is only playing into the hands of Chavez by acting like he’s ten feet tall. President Obama has refused to be distracted by the outdated rhetoric of people like Hugo Chavez and instead has focused on restoring our nation’s standing in Latin America, strengthening our partnerships in the region, and standing up for democratic values in Venezuela. It’s disturbing that Mitt Romney is trying to score cheap political points by blustering and misrepresenting the President’s record while failing to outline any coherent foreign policy strategy.”

The Associated Press suggests that this could be a major issue for Florida voters, but I have a feeling that most voters with strong feelings on Latin America policy have probably already made up their minds about who they're voting for. 

It's starting to seem like this dynamic is going to play out until November on national security questions. Obama will say something that sounds insufficiently hawkish, Romney will charge him with being weak and naive, the Obama campaign will counter by invoking its counterterrorism record. Insert Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Mexican cartels, or Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. 

This time, at least, we get the anticipation of Chavez's own response. It will be interesting how the Yanqui hostility/indifference plays out in his own reelection effort. Nothing on Twitter yet. 

Everyone seems to be having some fun at the expense of Romney campaign advisor Pierre Prosper, who referred to "Czechoslovakia" when discussing missile defense in a conference call with reporters. Lord knows we've done our share of foreign-policy gaffe-spotting around here and it's fair to expect candidates and their surrogates to understand the global issues they discuss, but this is kind of a cheap shot. I think it's important to emphasize the difference between slips of the tongue and actual displays of ignorance about the world.

Is it really likely that Prosper, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor, State Department staffer, and ambassador-at-large doesn't know Czechoslovakia broke up in 1992? Or is it more reasonable to assume that he simply slipped and said the name that had been in use for the first 40 years of his life? (John McCain also got in trouble with "Czechoslovakia" in 2008.) Similarly, is it more likely that President Obama doesn't know that "Maldives" and "Malvinas" are different places or that he just slipped and mentioned the wrong island chain that starts with Mal-? These errors would get a contestant kicked off "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" but they don't actually tell us much about a candidates' knowledge of the world.

The problem with Herman Cain's Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan moment was not that he can't immediately recall the name of every head of state, it's that he mocked the idea that such knowledge would ever be necessary. Sarah Palin would have deserved a lot more slack for the infamous Katie Couric interview if she had merely mixed up whether Putin was president or prime minister or some such slip. The problem was that she was clearly feigning having any sort of knowledge about the vitally important country right next door. 

It's good that we want to test candidates' knowledge of world affairs, but a geography bee isn't the best way to do it. In this election cycle, there will be more than enough actual ignorance to go around. 

Santorum drops out

Rick Santorum, the last credible rival for the GOP nomination, dropped out of the race on Wednesday leaving a clear path for front-runner and presumptive nominee Mitt Romney. "This game is a long, long, long way from over," Santorum told supporters. "We are going to continue to go out there and fight to make sure that we defeat President Barack Obama." Notably, Santorum did not mention Romney in his concession.

With 651 delegates, Romney may have the contest all wrapped up, but nobody appears to have told Newt Gingrich, who still vows to stay in the race until Romney collects the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. "I want to do what I do best, which is talk about big solutions and big approaches," Gingrich told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I want to keep campaigning." But $4.5 million in debt, Gingrich's campaign suffered a further indignity this week when its $500 check for the filing fee to appear on the Utah primary ballot bounced.

North Korea

On Thursday night (EDT), North Korea attempted -- but failed -- in an attempt to launch a satellite into orbit. Though the botched launch of the long-range missile, which broke apart before entering orbit, was a humiliation for North Korea's young leader Kim Jong Un, it also essentially scuttled a year of diplomatic outreach by the Obama administration, which culminated in a now-nullified deal on Feb. 29 under which Pyongyang agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment program in exchange for food aid.

The Romney campaign was quick to respond with a statement saying that the launch demonstrated the "incompetence" and weakness of the Obama administration's foreign policy. "Instead of approaching Pyongyang from a position of strength, President Obama sought to appease the regime with a food-aid deal that proved to be as naive as it was short-lived," he said.

A cold shoulder to Brazil

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was in Washington on Monday for a White House meeting with Barack Obama. But in contrast to her fellow BRICS leaders Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh, arguably the second most powerful leader in the Western hemisphere got only a 2-hour meeting with the president on a day dominated by the White House lawn Easter Egg roll. The Brazilian government has repeatedly criticized Washington for monetary and interest rate policies that they say unfairly advantage U.S. exports and for visa requirements for Brazilian travelers that take up to 35 days to process.

The two leaders will meet again this weekend at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.

Afghan war

Public support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low according to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, with only 30 percent of respondents saying it has been worth the effort and expenditure. For the first time, a majority of Republicans do not approve of the war. As to the president's leadership, 48 percent of those polled approve of Obama's handling of the war, while 43 percent disapprove. In a sign of an accelerated effort to transfer responsibility to Afghan forces, the United States agreed this week to hand over control of the controversial nighttime raids that were once seen as critical to winning the war.    

Numbers game

Romney may have a steep hill to climb if he aims to win the foreign-policy fight in the campaign. New polling shows that voters trust Obama over the GOP frontrunner by a 15 percent margin. Writing for Foreign Policy, Washington Post polling analyst Scott Clement notes that "Romney's weakness on foreign policy doesn't appear to result from Obama's strengths. Americans give Obama middling ratings on international affairs overall: 47 percent approve while 44 percent disapprove."

After the bruising primary, Romney appears to have sketched out a decidedly hawkish platform on foreign policy. Moving into the general election, with Americans increasingly skeptical of military action abroad, it remains to be seen whether the candidate will moderate his views to appear to undecided voters.

What to watch for:

Latin American summits are typically a good showcase for some outlandish behavior. Obama's opponents will likely be on the lookout to see how the president interacts with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He was criticized for embracing the leftist leader in 2009.

The latest from Foreign Policy:

Aaron David Miller says the notion that presidents have more "flexibility" to act in their second terms is a myth.

Will Imboden gives six reasons we should hope Obama's not more flexible.

Daniel Drezner questions Romney's seriousness on foreign policy.

Michael A. Cohen looks at who's leading on the big international issues that will define the contest between Romney and Obama.

Update: On Aug. 11, Mitt Romney named Ryan as his running mate.

If you believe the buzz among political pundits this week, Mitt Romney may have not just picked up a primary win and endorsement from Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) in Wisconsin. He may have found a running mate. The Washington Post's Philip Rucker notes that Ryan, in what smacked of a VP tryout, appeared by Romney's "side at every turn" in Wisconsin, while the Washington Examiner's Charlie Spiering highlights a recent speech in which Ryan sounds very much like a vice presidential candidate -- conjuring up memories of "flipping burgers at McDonald's" and "waiting tables to pay back my student loans" in a paean to the American dream.     

Other political analysts are arguing that whether or not Romney puts Ryan on the ticket, President Obama may run as much against the Wisconsin congressman -- the architect of the House Republican budget plan -- as against Romney. On Tuesday, Obama declared that the budget proposal, which would slash $5.3 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, would pit rich against poor in what amounted to "social Darwinism."   

As the campaign spotlight lingers on Ryan, it's worth pointing out that the House Budget Committee chairman isn't a one-trick pony. Sure, he's styled himself as an intellectual leader on fiscal policy. But he has a distinct worldview as well. Here are some of the components of the other Ryan plan.

• American exceptionalism: In a June 2011 foreign policy speech at the Alexander Hamilton Society, Ryan rejected isolationism and argued that "America is the greatest force for human freedom the world has ever seen," warning that "a world without U.S. leadership will be a more chaotic place." A firm believer in American exceptionalism, he agrees with columnist Charles Krauthammer that American decline "is a choice." The country's fiscal policy and foreign policy "are on a collision course," he explains, "and if we fail to put our budget on a sustainable path, then we are choosing decline as a world power."

• China: Ryan appears to be less hard-line and hawkish about China than Romney, who has pledged to designate Beijing as a currency manipulator on his first day in office. True, Ryan has shuddered at the idea of a world led by China and Russia and criticized China's restrictions on freedom of expression, "coercive population controls," and "unsound economic policies." But he's also argued that "we stand to benefit from a world in which China and other rising powers are integrated into the global order with increased incentives to further liberalize their political and economic institutions." 

• BRICS: Ryan wants to forge better relations with the world's emerging economies -- particularly "the rising democratic powers of India and Brazil, which share many of our core principles and interests." America, he says, "must be willing to listen and accommodate their legitimate concerns as we preserve the framework of the international system and solidify our leadership within it." More generally, he charges the Obama administration with taking America's "allies for granted" and wants to revitalize those relationships. 

• Arab Spring: Ryan has greeted the uprisings in the Middle East with the same mixture of praise and trepidation that several Republican presidential candidates have displayed this year. "We are seeing long-repressed populations give voice to the fundamental desire for liberty," he's observed, while adding ominously that in these societies "the most organized factions often lack tolerance and reject pluralism." It's too soon, he says, "to tell whether these revolutions will result in governments that respect the rights of their citizens, or if one form of autocracy will be supplanted by another."

• Saudi Arabia: Ryan cites America's alliance with the Saudis as an example of when its interests run up against its ideals, and when "American policy should be tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power to control events in other regions." There are "voices in the Kingdom calling for reform," he notes. "We should help our allies effect a transition that fulfills the aspirations of their people."

• Iraq/Afghanistan: Ryan believes that America's "ability to affect events is strongest in Iraq and Afghanistan," and that the United States can't cut and run from the battle against "global terrorism" in these countries. Ryan was an early supporter of the surge in Iraq. "This whole thing is a big gamble," he said in 2007. "But it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel and allowing sectarian genocide to take over." His estimate that America could save roughly $1 trillion over the next decade by winding down the wars was later adopted by congressional Democrats and the White House.   

• Defense spending: Ryan's 99-page "Path to Prosperity" plan, released last month, provoked an outcry in calling for boosting military spending while slashing the international affairs budget -- funding for entities such as the State Department and USAID -- by nearly $5 billion. When Ryan said "we don't think the generals are giving us their true advice" in reference to the military budget, he was quick to walk back his comments. "I really misspoke," he explained.

In the wake of Ryan's foreign policy address last year, Matthew Yglesias argued in the American Prospect that Ryan seemed to subscribe to "more or less the liberal internationalist vision that's already at the core" of the Obama administration's approach. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait mocked Ryan's "Norquistian-Churchillian foreign policy." The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote that Ryan was one of the few politicians who could draw a connection between "conservative economic principles and American foreign policy and values."

Ryan's worldview, in other words, appears to be a bit of a Rorschach test. And in a general election where appealing solely to the Republican base just won't cut it, that might be exactly what Romney needs.

Russia Rumble

This week, the campaign was unexpectedly dominated by a debate over Russia policy. The back-and-forth was sparked by an embarrassing "hot mic" incident on Monday at a summit on Seoul, when President Barack Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more "space" to tackle controversial issues such as missile defense after the election. "This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility," he told the outgoing Russian leader, who promised to "transmit this information to Vladimir."

Mitt Romney was quick to seize on the incident to bolster his argument that Obama has ignored the security threat posed by Russia. He went a bit over the top with the rhetoric, however, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "this is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe, they fight every cause for the world's worst actors, the idea that he has more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling indeed."

Democrats -- and a few Republicans -- disputed the notion that Russia is the nation's primary foe. "You don't have to be a foreign policy expert to know that the Cold War ended 20 years ago and that the greatest threat that the president has been fighting on behalf of the American people is the threat posed by al Qaeda," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Romney doubled down on his charge against the president with an op-ed in Foreign Policy, writing that "In his dealings with the Kremlin, as in his dealings with the rest of the world, President Obama has demonstrated breathtaking weakness -- and given the word ‘flexibility' a new and ominous meaning."

A group of Romney's senior advisors also published an open-letter on the website of the National Review detailing a list of the president's main foreign policy failings. The Obama campaign's senior foreign policy advisors pushed pushed back with a letter to Romney published in FP demanding that Romney "clarify exactly how and why you would depart from many of President Obama's policies."

Romney even got into it with Medvedev himself this week. The Russian president said the candidate's rhetoric "smacks of Hollywood" and advised him to "check his watch" to see that it's no longer the 1970s. The Romney campaign struck back with a press release calling him "President Medvedev (D-Russia)" and accusing him of "campaigning for Obama."

Santorum's Jelly Belly foreign policy

Rick Santorum chose an unusual venue on Thursday for a national security-focused address meant to reinvigorate his struggling campaign: The Jelly Belly headquarters in Fairfield, California. Attempting to associate himself with the foreign-policy acumen of GOP icon and famous jellybean fiend Ronald Reagan, Santorum made the case that "Of all of the failings of this administration, of all of the failings, perhaps the greatest is on national security."

Santorum also seized on the hot mic gaffe: "Ronald Reagan didn't whisper to Gorbachev, ‘Give me some flexibility.... He walked out of Iceland and said, ‘You either do this, or we have no deal.'"

H.W. goes all in

While Santorum while trying to channel the Gipper, his vice-president and successor George H.W. Bush officially endorsed Romney -- no surprise as he had publicly praised the candidate earlier in the race and his son Jeb endorsed last week. The 87-year-old (mis)quoted Kenny Rogers when asked about Romney's rivals, saying, ‘It's time when to hold ‘em and time when to fold ‘em."

The meeting raised questions as to when George W. Bush will make an endorsement in the race. "I haven't met with President George W. Bush. We speak from time to time," Romney said.

Newt loses his sugar daddy

The struggling campaign of Newt Gingrich, who has won only South Carolina and his home state of Georgia so far, has been kept afloat by the largesse of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The staunch Israel hawk has donated over $20 million to Gingrich's Super PAC. It appears, however, that Adelson's generosity has its limits. Speaking at the Jewish Federations of North America's annual TribeFest conference in Las Vegas this week, the billionaire said this week that Gingrich may be "at the end of the line" since mathematically, "he can't get anywhere near the number" of delegates needed. Adelson has reportedly been reaching out to supporters of the Romney campaign.

Gingrich, the onetime frontrunner, laid off one-third of his staff this week.

Is Paul coming around to Romney?

Ron Paul, currently running in fourth place with a total of 50 delegates in the bag, has previously suggested that foreign policy might be an obstacle to him throwing his support behind Romney. This week, however, Paul paid the frontrunner the mildest of compliments in an interview with Bloomberg television: "I think Mitt Romney is more likely to be more willing to listen to his advisers.... If he decides he wants to go and bomb Iran, maybe he might listen to somebody else. I'm afraid the other [candidates] would just go do it anyway."

What to watch for:

Maryland, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia hold primaries on Tuesday. Romney is favored to win all three contests. (Santorum isn't on the ballot in D.C.)

After that, it's a long wait until a set of five northeastern primaries on April 23. Santorum's Gotterdämmerung may very well come in his home state of Pennsylvania, where the latest polls show him in a statistical dead heat with Romney.

The latest from FP:

Romney's Russia op-ed.

The Obama campaign's response.

Scott Clement says that Americans really don't think of Russia as an enemy anymore.

Daniel Drezner on the dirty, little secret of second-term presidents.

Michael Cohen argues the president's real constitutional overreach wasn't healthcare, it was Libya.

In honor of Santorum's Jelly Belly address, Uri Friedman recaps the year in political food fights.