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.

A few weeks ago, a video circulated online of Rick Santorum claiming that 1 in 20 deaths in the Netherlands are caused by involuntary euthanasia. According to Santorum, elderly Dutch wear bracelets that say "do not euthanize me" and "don't go to the hospital, they go to another country, because they're afraid because of budget purposes that they will not come out of that hospital if they go into it with sickness."

The remark was met with some bafflement in the Netherlands, and a Dutch television reporter recently cornered a Santorum spokesperson to ask about it: 

"It's a matter of what's in his heart. He's a strong pro-life person," press secretary Alice Stewart replies. 

After all, like the origin of the universe or the existence of a supreme being, Dutch medical statistics are ultimately unknowable -- just another of the unresolvable mysteries that have confronted us since the dawn of mankind. Who are we? Why are we here? What are the laws in the Netherlands concerning doctor-assisted suicide? We all have our own beliefs. 

Santorum knows in his heart that elderly Dutch people are routinely euthanized against their will by doctors. He believes this to be true, no matter what the elite media tries to tell him.

It's the same way I know that one in four Laotians are born with an extra finger and that the most common name in Chad is Chad. It's just what I believe. 

Nail-biter in Michigan

Mitt Romney easily won the Arizona primary on Tuesday and eked out a victory against a surging Rick Santorum in Michigan, where Romney was born and his father was a popular governor. While Santorum cast the close contest as a victory of sorts ("a month ago, they didn't know who we are," he told supporters), the results solidified Romney's status as the frontrunner in the topsy-turvy Republican race. The former Massachusetts governor, who now has roughly double the number of delegates as Santorum, is leading the pack of remaining GOP candidates comfortably in most national polls.

Iran and gas prices

Last month, Newt Gingrich shifted the focus of his campaign to energy in a bet that owning the issue of rising gas prices could help him claw back into the race. Gingrich has pledged to lower gas prices to $2.50 per gallon by increasing domestic energy production through initiatives such as the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, as tensions mount with Iran over its nuclear program and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to visit Washington, the other candidates are following suit. Romney accused President Barack Obama of stifling fracking -- a controversial technique to unlock oil and gas in underground rock formations -- through excessive regulations, Santorum went so far as to brandish a piece of oil-rich shale rock during his Michigan concession speech to demonstrate his support for the energy industry. (In another nod to stage props this week, Ron Paul waved a silver coin at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to argue for returning to the gold and silver standard.)

Obama has been talking energy too, calling for an end to $4 billion in annual tax breaks and subsidies for oil and gas companies. A Pew survey released on Thursday found that voters are spreading the blame for rising gas prices among the administration, oil companies, and Iran -- though Republicans are much more likely to blame Obama.

Obama: "I don't bluff"

In an interview with the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg on Iran ahead of a meeting with Netanyahu, Obama declared that the United States would consider taking military action to destroy Iran's nuclear program if economic sanctions fail to compel it to comply with international inspections, but added that now is not the right time for a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. "I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff," he noted. "I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are." On Twitter, former Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann shot back: "Obama doesn't ‘go around advertising exactly what our [foreign policy] intentions are?' What about #Iraq/#Afghanistan?"

As he launches his reelection campaign, Obama has been trumpeting foreign policy successes such as ending the war in Iraq and killing Osama bin Laden. While "the other side traditionally seems to feel that the Democrats are somehow weak on defense," he recently told supporters, "they're having a little trouble making that argument this year" (a poll last month found that voters trust Obama more than Romney to handle international affairs). Yet Bloomberg's Terry Atlas points out that, in an election dominated by economic concerns, "foreign policy barely registers as an issue in public opinion polls," though an "arc of crises from Libya to Afghanistan" may yet change all that.

Read what George W. Bush advisors Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie have to say on the matter in the latest issue of Foreign Policy -- and a spirited rebuttal by Democratic pollsters Stanley Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner.

Apologizing in Afghanistan

The Republican candidates have long accused Obama of apologizing for America's actions abroad, and this week the refrain came in the context of the president apologizing to Afghans for the burning of Qurans at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan even as U.S. soldiers were killed in retaliation. Gingrich called the apology "astonishing" and suggested that the United States tell Afghans, "You're going to have to figure out how to live your own miserable life." Santorum accused Obama of "weakness" while Romney also criticized the decision.

In a larger piece about the Republicans and Afghanistan, Dominic Tierney at the Atlantic argues that the Republican Party is deeply divided about Afghanistan. The fundamental question facing the GOP, he writes, is whether the "end of defeating radical Islam [is] worth the means of big government nation-building."

Santorum's ‘snob' snafu

Santorum stirred controversy this week by suggesting that Obama was a "snob" for wanting "everybody in America to go to college." Obama "wants to remake you in his image," the former Pennsylvania senator argued. "I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his." Santorum appeared to subsequently backtrack from the comments, noting in his Michigan concession speech that his mother was an "unusual person for her time" by getting a college education in the 1930s, but the comment nevertheless touched off a debate about U.S. education. News outlets pointed out that Obama also supports the type of vocational training that Santorum champions, and that the former Pennsylvania senator backed increasing grants for college students during his reelection campaign in 2006.

What to watch for

All eyes now turn to Super Tuesday on March 6, when ten states will vote and more than 400 delegates will be up for grabs. The biggest battleground is the delegate-rich swing state of Ohio, where Romney has steadily been cutting into Santorum's lead. "For Romney," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza notes, "it's uniquely possible that winning the Buckeye State on Tuesday would effectively clinch the presidential nomination for him."

The latest from FP

Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie offer a primer to the GOP candidates on how to beat Barack Obama on foreign policy.

Jeremy Rosner and Stanley Greenberg respond by pointing out that Americans have confidence in Obama as commander in chief.

Michael Cohen adds that Rove and Gillespie are "stuck in a 9/12 mindset."

Reza Aslan presents readers with a quiz: Who said it, Rick Santorum or Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei?

Gal Luft wonders whether Obama will remake himself into a war president when faced with a choice between high gas prices and a nuclear Iran.

Michael Levi argues that Obama's record on energy is stronger than his Republican rivals claim.

Vaclav Smil explains why Mitt Romney is right to focus on the importance of Canadian energy.

Scott Clement points out that while Americans may not like North Korea, few want to go to war over its nuclear weapons.

Jack Chow makes the case for why a President Santorum would be great news for the AIDS fight in Africa.

Susan Glasser connects the dots on the nasty rhetoric in the U.S. and Russian elections.

Daniel Drezner maintains that Santorum's views on manufacturing are antiquated.

Last night's debate in Arizona featured the usual rhetoric in the economy, more conversation than usual about contraception, and more evidence for the theory that Ron Paul is essentially running as a blocking tight-end for Mitt Romney at this point, repeatedly hammering at Rick Santorum's credentials as a fiscal conservative. We also got the first extended conversation about the situation in Syria, though everyone seemed anxious to pivot back to the comparatively more comfortable topic of Iran. To the highlights:

We kicked off our national-security discussion with the question of women in combat. Santorum had made some waves a few weeks ago by suggesting that he has reservations about opening more front-line duties to women since "men have emotions when you see a woman in harm’s way." He also made some inaccurate statements about Israel's stance on this issue. The other candidates proceeded to hang Santorum out to dry on this one. 

Romney: 

I would look to the people who are serving in the military to give the best assessment of where women can serve. We've had over 100 women lose their lives in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was with Governor Bob McDonnell. His daughter has served as a platoon leader in Afghanistan. He said that she doesn't get emotional when she faces risk, he's the one that gets emotional as she faces that kind of risk. And I believe women have the capacity to serve in our military in positions of significance and responsibility, as we do throughout our society. 

He then transitioned to a discussion of defense cuts and national security more broadly. 

Gingrich -- surprise, surprise -- thought it was a "misleading question":

You live in a world of total warfare. Anybody serving our country in uniform virtually anywhere in the world could be in danger at virtually any minute. A truck driver can get blown up by a bomb as readily as the infantrymen. So I would say that you ought to ask the combat leaders what they think is an appropriate step, as opposed to the social engineers of the Obama administration.

Paul's answer doesn't "want even the men to be over there."

Santorum grumbled: 

I still have those concerns, but I would defer to at least hearing the recommendations of those involved. But I think we have civilian control of the military, and these are things that should be decided not just by the generals, but we should not have social engineering, as I think we've seen from this president. We should have sober minds looking at what is in fact the best proper -- proper roles for everybody in combat.

Then it was on to Iran, where Gingrich is no longer so enthusiastic about asking generals for their input:

General Dempsey went on to say that he thought Iran was a rational actor. I can't imagine why he would say that. And I just cannot imagine why he would have said it. The fact is, this is a dictator, Ahmadinejad, who has said he doesn't believe the Holocaust existed. This is a dictator who said he wants to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth. This is a dictator who said he wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East. I'm inclined to believe dictators. Now I -- I think that it's dangerous not to.

If -- if an Israeli prime minister, haunted by the history of the Holocaust, recognizing that three nuclear weapons is a holocaust in Israel, if an Israeli prime minister calls me and says, I believe in the defense of my country. This goes back to a point that Congressman Paul raised that we probably disagree on. I do believe there are moments when you preempt. If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons.

Romney pounded home his talking points:

Ahmadinejad having fissile material that he can give to Hezbollah and Hamas and that they can bring into Latin America and potentially bring across the border into the United States to let off dirty bombs here. I mean -- or -- or more sophisticated bombs here, this -- we simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weaponry. And -- and -- and this president has a lot of failures. It's hard -- it's hard to think of -- economically his failures, his -- his policies in a whole host of areas have been troubling.

But nothing in my view is as serious a failure as his failure to deal with Iran appropriately. This president -- this president should have put in place crippling sanctions against Iran, he did not. He decided to give Russia -- he decided to give Russia their number one foreign policy objective, removal of our missile defense sites from Eastern Europe and got nothing in return. He could have gotten crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not. When dissident voices took to the street in Iran to protest a stolen election there, instead of standing with them, he bowed to the election. This is a president... who has made it clear through his administration in almost every communication we've had so far, that he does not want Israel to take action. That he opposes military action. This is a president who should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They're not just on the table. They are in our hand. We must now allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes. America will be at risk. And some day, nuclear weaponry will be used. If I am president, that will not happen. If we reelect Barack Obama, it will happen. 

Santorum took the opportunity to remind the crowd of his long record on Iran, take a shot at the vice president, and stand resolutely behind.... Hosni Mubarak:

I would say that if you're looking for a president to be elected in this country that will send that very clear message to Iran as to the seriousness of the American public to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, there would be no better candidate than me because I have been on the trail of Iran and trying to advocate for stopping them getting a nuclear weapon for about eight years now.

I was the author of a bill back in 2008 that talked about sanctions on a nuclear program that our intelligence community said didn't exist and had the President of the United States, president bush oppose me for two years.

And, by the way, so did Joe Biden on the floor of the Senate, and Barack Obama. I always say if you want to know what foreign policy position to take, find out what Joe Biden's position is and take the opposite opinion and you'll be right 100 percent of the time.

But they opposed me. He actively opposed me. We did pass that bill eventually at the end of 2006, and it was to fund the pro- democracy movement, $100 million a year. Here's what I said -- we need to get this -- these pro-American Iranians who are there, who want freedom, want democracy, and want somebody to help them and support them.

Well, we put -- we put some money out there and guess what? Barack Obama cut it when he came into office. And when the Green Revolution rose, the pro-democracy prose, we had nothing. We had no connection, no correlation and we did absolutely nothing to help them.

In the meantime, when the radicals in Egypt and the radicals in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood, when they rise against either a feckless leader or a friend of ours in Egypt, the president is more than happy to help them out.

When they're going up against a dangerous theocratic regime that wants to wipe out the state of Israel, that wants to dominate the radical Islamic world and take on the great Satan, the United States, we do nothing. That is a president that must go. And you want a leader who will take them on? I'll do that. 

Paul, ignoring the boos, said there's no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapon, and went on to plea for a return to declarations of war: 

Now, if they are so determined to go to war, the only thing I plead with you for, if this is the case, is do it properly. Ask the people and ask the Congress for a declaration of war. This is war and people are going to die. And you have got to get a declaration of war.

And just to go and start fighting -- but the sanctions are already backfiring. And all that we do is literally doing the opposite. When we've been -- were attacked, we all came together. When we attacked the -- when we -- when we put them under attack, they get together and it neutralizes that. They rally around their leaders.

So what we're doing is literally enhancing their power. Think of the sanctions we dealt with Castro. Fifty years and Castro is still there. It doesn't work. So I would say a different approach. We need to at least -- we talked -- we talked to the Soviets during the Cuban crisis. We at least can talk to somebody who does not -- we do not have proof that he has a weapon. Why go to war so carelessly? 

Then came what Chuck Todd called the " first news of the debate", an extended discussion on Syria. However, when asked if he would support intervention against the Assad regime, Santorum seemed anxious to bring the discussion back to Iran:

Syria is a puppet state of Iran. They are a threat not just to Israel, but they have been a complete destabilizing force within Lebanon, which is another problem for Israel and Hezbollah. They are a country that we can do no worse than the leadership in Syria today, which is not the case, and some of the other countries that we readily got ourselves involved in.

So it's sort of remarkable to me we would have -- here again, it's -- I think it's the timidness (sic) of this president in dealing with the Iranian threat, because Syria and Iran is an axis. And the president -- while he couldn't reach out deliberately to Iran but did reach out immediately to Syria and established an embassy there. And the only reason he removed that embassy was because it was threatened of being -- of being overtaken, not because he was objecting to what was going on in Syria.

This president has -- has obviously a very big problem in standing up to the Iranians in any form. If this would have been any other country, given what was going on and the mass murders that we're seeing there, this president would have quickly and -- joined the international community, which is calling for his ouster and the stop of this, but he's not. He's not. Because he's afraid to stand up to Iran.

He opposed the sanctions in Iran against the -- against the central banks until his own party finally said, "You're killing us. Please support these sanctions."

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a president who isn't going to stop them. He isn't going to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. We need a new president or we are going to have a cataclysmic situation with a -- a power that is the most prolific proliferator of terror in the world that will be able to do so with impunity because they will have a nuclear weapon to protect -- protect them for whatever they do. It has to be stopped, and this president is not in a position to do that.

Gingrich used the Syria question to pivot to his energy plan: 

Well, the first thing I'd do, across the board for the entire region, is create a very dramatic American energy policy of opening up federal lands and opening up offshore drilling, replacing the EPA.

The Iranians have been practicing closing the Straits of Hormuz, which has one out of every five barrels of oil in the world going through it. We have enough energy in the United States that we would be the largest producer of oil in the world by the end of this decade. We would be capable of saying to the Middle East, "We frankly don't care what you do. The Chinese have a big problem because you ain't going to have any oil."

[...]

Second, we clearly should have our allies -- this is an old- fashioned word -- we have have our allies covertly helping destroy the Assad regime. There are plenty of Arab-speaking groups that would be quite happy. There are lots of weapons available in the Middle East.

And I agree with -- with Senator Santorum's point. This is an administration which, as long as you're America's enemy, you're safe.

You know, the only people you've got to worry about is if you're an American ally. 

Not sure if "allies" or "covertly" was the old-fashioned word Gingrich was referring to. 

Romney was the only one who actually advocated a position on intervention in Syria, and showed off his briefing on Syria's political ethnography:

We have very bad news that's come from the Middle East over the past several months, a lot of it in part because of the feckless leadership of our president. But one little piece of good news, and that is the key ally of Iran, Syria, is -- has a leader that's in real trouble. And we ought to grab a hold of that like it's the best thing we've ever seen.

There's things that are -- we're having a hard time getting our hands around, like, what's happening in Egypt. But in Syria, with Assad in trouble, we need to communicate to the Alawites, his friends, his ethnic group, to say, look, you have a future if you'll abandon that guy Assad.

We need to work with -- with Saudi Arabia and with Turkey to say, you guys provide the kind of weaponry that's needed to help the rebels inside Syria. This is a critical time for us.

If we can turn Syria and Lebanon away from Iran, we finally have the capacity to get Iran to pull back. And we could, at that point, with crippling sanctions and a very clear statement that military action is an action that will be taken if they pursue nuclear weaponry, that could change the course of world history. 

An exasperated Ron Paul tried again: 

I've tried the moral argument. I've tried the constitutional argument on these issues. And they don't -- they don't go so well. But there -- there's an economic argument, as well.

As a matter of fact, Al Qaida has had a plan to bog us down in the Middle East and bankrupt this country. That's exactly what they're doing. We've spent $4 trillion of debt in the last 10 years being bogged down in the Middle East.

The neoconservatives who now want us to be in Syria, want us to go to Iran, have another war, and we don't have the money. We're already -- today gasoline hit $6 a gallon in Florida. And we don't have the money. 

So there you have it. The first time Syria has come up in a presidential debate, it was taken as an opportunity by the candidates to talk about the Iranian nuclear program, offshore drilling, and the national debt. I won't claim these issues are unrelated, but surely it might be possible to actually talk about potential U.S. policy responses to the situation in Syria for a few minutes?

The war in Afghanistan wasn't discussed. Neither was trade or the eurozone crisis.  

During this year's Republican primary, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum have all suggested that they would use military force if necessary to dismantle Iran's nuclear program. And tensions between Washington and Tehran have only increased as speculation swirls about an imminent Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Iranian officials trumpet their nuclear advances, and mysterious bombings appear to target Israeli diplomats in Georgia, India, and Thailand. 

But how does the American public view the situation in Iran? New polling from the Pew Research Center this morning suggests that Americans are in a rather bellicose mood when it comes to confronting Iran, and pessimistic about the power of sanctions to keep Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

In the survey, 58 percent of respondents said it was more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if that meant taking military action. Only 30 percent preferred avoiding a military conflict even if it meant Iran going nuclear. Republicans (74 percent) were far more supportive of using military force than Democrats (50 percent), but Democratic backing was still substantial.

Around half of Americans, meanwhile, believe the United States should remain neutral if Israel strikes Iran. But, as Pew points out, more respondents said the United States should support (39 percent) Israel than oppose (5 percent) it. A majority of Republicans think the United States should back Israel while a majority of Democrats think it should stay neutral. 

Pew notes that there are nuances in the data as well. Women and young people, for example, are more likely to support the United States staying neutral in an Israeli-Iranian conflict. And, not surprisingly, conservative Republicans, including Tea Party supporters, are more likely to champion American support of Israeli military action than moderate or liberal Republicans.

Where there's more agreement across the aisle is in the belief that tough economic sanctions -- a tactic the Obama administration continues to pursue -- will be ineffective in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear program. Sixty-four percent of the public thinks these measures will not work, compared with 56 percent in October 2009.

Of course, supporting military force if it means preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons (in other words, approving of it as a last resort) isn't the same as a full-throated endorsement of the military option. In a Quinnipiac University poll in November, 36 percent of respondents supported the use of force in any case, while an additional 14 percent backed the option if sanctions failed. In a CNN/ORC survey around the same time, more than six in 10 respondents selected "economic and diplomatic efforts" -- not "military action right now" -- as the best U.S. policy toward Iran's nuclear program.

If Americans are so down on economic sanctions as an effective solution, however, one wonders whether they're beginning to resign themselves to a military conflict, even if they have little appetite for it.

Romney pulls away

Mitt Romney decisively won Florida's primacy on Tuesday with 46 percent of the vote. Newt Gingrich came in second with a disappointing 32 percent. Trailing far behind were Rick Santorum with 13 percent and Ron Paul with 7 percent. But Gingrich in a concession speech that often felt more like a victory speech, vowed to continue fighting in what he described as a "two-person race" between himself and the "Massachusetts moderate." Santorum and Paul are also staying in the hunt.

Several of the foreign-policy issues that had been billed as potential game changers this season appeared not to be major factors in Florida. Candidates have been highly vocal on Israel in hopes of peeling Jewish votes away from President Barack Obama, who has publicly clashed with the Israeli government on several occasions. But if a significant number of Jews are changing their voter registration to Republican, they've been quiet so far. Poll analyst Nate Silver of the New York Times noted that only 1 percent of the voters in this year's Florida primary identified as Jewish, down from 3 percent in 2008.

Despite the heavy emphasis on immigration reform in campaign rhetoric, very few Florida voters called undocumented immigrants their top concern. Romney, who has been somewhat more hawkish than other candidates on the topic of immigration, took a majority of the Latino vote -- as well as nearly six of ten Cuban-American voters.

But things haven't been going quite so well for Romney since his sweeping victory in Florida. He has been heavily criticized for remarks on Wednesday morning that he is "not concerned about the very poor" in a CNN interview. The candidate says he misspoke, but a highly publicized endorsement from Donald Trump on Thursday may not have been the best way to combat the perception that he's out of touch with economically struggling Americans.

Politics of the pullout

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta surprised many by saying that the United States hopes to end its combat mission in Afghanistan by mid-2013, up to 18 months sooner than expected. The Romney campaign was quick to pounce, with the candidate calling the administration's plans "naïve" and "misguided."

"Why in the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the date you're pulling out your troops?" Romney said at a campaign stop in Las Vegas. "It makes absolutely no sense." Perhaps banking on low public support for continuing the war, Obama's press secretary Jay Carney countered Romney's criticism, saying troops "will not stay in Afghanistan any longer than is necessary to accomplish that mission."

The GOP front-runner has consistently criticized the administration's withdrawal plans, though earlier this year Romney himself announced his intention to "bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can."

The Iran factor

This week saw another round of speculation in Washington over whether Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. According to the Washington Post's David Ignatius,  Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood Israel will attack Iran this spring or summer, before Iran enters a "zone of immunity" to commence building a nuclear weapon.

Iran is likely to continue to dominate the campaign agenda with Gingrich warning recently that "If Iranians get nuclear weapons, they don't have to fire a missile. They can just drive a boat into Jacksonville. Drive a boat into New York harbor." Gingrich has said he would launch a U.S. strike on Iran "only as a last recourse, and only as a step towards replacing the regime."

Romney has also argued that "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."

Gates says to tone it down

Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense to both George W. Bush and Obama, addressed the GOP field in an interview with CNN on Thursday, warning against overheated campaign rhetoric calling Obama weak-willed on Iran.  "You know sometimes things get pretty heated in campaigns, but I think the reality is there is an acknowledgment on people's part around the world that this president is willing to use military force when our needs require it," he said.

Gates addressed both sides of the debate over Iran, saying, "Those who say we shouldn't attack, I think, underestimate the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon....  And those who say we should, underestimate the consequences of going to war."

What to watch for

Nevada voters will caucus on Saturday with Romney heavily favored to win. Maine will hold its caucuses throughout the week starting on Saturday. Colorado and Minnesota will both hold caucuses on Tuesday. The caucus format could provide an opening for Paul and Santorum, who both tend to inspire more enthusiasm in their (admittedly smaller) base of supporters than the two frontrunners. Paul has been campaigning heavily in Maine since last week.

The latest from FP

Scott Clement looks at why Obama shouldn't expect voters to flock to the polls to reward him for killing Osama bin Laden.

Michael Cohen says the decision to leave Afghanistan early will prove to be smart politics for the president.

Michael Shifter lays out the Latin America debate the candidates should have had in Florida, instead of just bashing Fidel Castro.

Robert Satloff channels his inner William Safire and explains why presidents should stop describing U.S. support for Israel as "ironclad."

Joseph Sarkisian asks whether a vote for Romney is a vote for war with Iran.

Peter Feaver argues that it's time for the GOP candidates to stop attacking each other and offer a sharp critique of Obama's foreign policy.

Josh Rogin reports on Romney's pledge to defend South Sudan.

Joshua Keating wonders whether Gingrich's campaign rhetoric will inspire a new generation to read the works of Saul Alinsky.

Perry and Huntsman bow out

The Republican field continued to narrow this week with two once-promising candidates dropping out before this Saturday's pivotal South Carolina primary. Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to China whose campaign touted his foreign policy credentials but never connected with primary voters, ended his run on Monday. He immediately endorsed Mitt Romney, while attacking the state of the rhetoric in the GOP primary. "At its core, the Republican Party is a party of ideas, but the current toxic form of our political discourse does not help our cause," he said.

On Thursday, Rick Perry also bowed out and endorsed Newt Gingrich on a surreal news day on the campaign trail that also saw the final debate in South Carolina. The morning started with news that Rick Santorum may actually have won the Iowa primary by 34 votes, and later that day ABC aired an interview with Gingrich's ex-wife in which she claimed the former House Speaker had asked for an "open marriage."

Perry's departure followed another lackluster debate performance on Tuesday during which he claimed that Turkey's government was run by "what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists" -- prompting an angry response from Ankara  -- and seemed to defend the U.S. Marines caught on video urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters.

The Gingrich surge

Allegations about his personal life notwithstanding, Gingrich continues to rise -- with recent polls showing him in a virtual tie with Romney in South Carolina. A Pew Poll taken last week showed Gingrich as the candidate Republican voters trust most to handle foreign policy at 33 percent, compared to Romney's 25 percent. Unfortunately for the Gingrich insurgency, an overwhelming majority of the same voters (58 percent) think Romney has the best chance of beating President Barack Obama. On the campaign trail this week, Gingrich described himself as "the only candidate in this race who understands the scale of change necessary to get this country working again."

Romney's offshore accounts

Already fending off questions about his vast personal wealth, Romney is facing additional scrutiny this week thanks to reports that he has as much as $8 million invested in funds listed in the Cayman Islands. Though Romney does still pay U.S. taxes on his income from these funds, the Cayman address offers some benefits over domestically registration, such as higher management fees and greater foreign interest -- benefits that cost the U.S. federal government billions of dollars per year.

At the CNN debate on Thursday night, Romney was booed after saying he would probably wait to release his full tax returns in April if he's the presumptive nominee since "Every time we release things drip by drip, the Democrats go out with another array of attacks."

Romney refused to say if he would release his tax returns for previous years, as his father did when running for president in 1968. "I'm not going to apologize for being successful," he said.

Paul draws jeers for "golden rule"

Ron Paul's foreign policy views continue to polarize. In Tuesday's debate, Paul was asked about his opposition to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and drew boos from the crowd by saying, "maybe we ought to consider a golden rule in foreign policy. Don't do to other nations what we don't want to have them do to us."

The Pew Poll showed only 10 percent of Republican voters thought Paul was the most trustworthy candidate on foreign policy -- though he still edged out Perry and Santorum.

"Obama's world"

President Obama sat down this week with Time's Fareed Zakaria for a wide-ranging interview on foreign policy, covering Iran, Afghanistan, the planned "pivot" to Asia, and the economy. The president defended his foreign-policy record, saying, "I made a commitment to change the trajectory of American foreign policy in a way that would end the war in Iraq, refocus on defeating our primary enemy, al-Qaeda, strengthen our alliances and our leadership in multilateral fora and restore American leadership in the world. And I think we have accomplished those principal goals."

What to watch for

South Carolina heads to the polls on Saturday with the latest RealClearPolitics poll average showing Gingrich at 32.5 percent and Romney at 31.5 percent. If he endures another weak finish in South Carolina, pressure may mount on Santorum to drop out of the race. (RCP has him in fourth place behind Paul.) Gingrich suggested on Tuesday that from the stand point of the conservative movement, consolidating into a Gingrich candidacy would in fact virtually guarantee a victory on Saturday."

The unexpected wild card in the race is comedian Stephen Colbert, who held a real-world rally with former candidate Herman Cain on Friday. Colbert's super-pac is encouraging South Carolina voters to cast a vote for Cain, though the pizza magnate was careful to assure voters, "I will not be assuming Stephen Colbert's identity. We are very different when it comes to the color of our - hair."

From South Carolina, the candidates will move on to Florida, a key battleground state, where Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog is predicting a 93 percent chance of a Romney win when voters head to the polls on Jan. 31.

The latest from FP:

Joshua Keating looks back at the foreign-policy lowlights of the Perry campaign.

Scott Clement suggests Iran could be a major liability for the president.

Uri Friedman looks at Paul's inadvertent tribute to Millard Fillmore.

David Rothkopf asks whether foreign-policy subtlety is even possible in today's media environment.

Peter Feaver thinks Zakaria missed an opportunity to probe more deeply into Obama foreign policy.

Josh Rogin looks at Obama's chummiest world leaders -- as suggested by the Time interview -- and what they say about him.

Iowa fallout

After weeks of debate and fluctuating polls, we finally have some actual results from a GOP primary. Mitt Romney won the Iowa Caucasus with 24.6 percent, edging out surprise second-place finisher Rick Santorum by only eight votes. In his rambling victory speech, Romney took the opportunity to attack the president on national security. "Iran is about to have nuclear weaponry, just down the road here, and this president, what's he done in that regard? He said he'd have a policy of engagement. How's that worked out?"

The next day, Romney received an endorsement from Sen. John McCain, who said his former 2008 rival was committed, like Ronald Reagan, to a philosophy of , "Peace through strength."

Ron Paul came in third place in Iowa and promised to continue pushing his vision for a noninterventionist foreign policy. "Our foreign policy has been a mess and drains us both economically and our military forces," he said.

After a disappointing fourth-place finish, once frontrunner Newt Gingrich promised to continue to attack "Massachusetts moderate" Romney, (he also called Romney a "liar" in an interview) but took the opportunity to blast Paul's foreign policy views as "stunningly dangerous for survival of the United States."

Rick Perry, who came in fifth with 10.3 percent of the vote, despite spending more money than any other candidate in Iowa, is apparently staying in the race for now.

After essentially finishing last (Jon Huntsman didn't contest the caucuses) Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race, vowing to "continue fighting to defeat the president's agenda of socialism."

Santorum in the spotlight

As the latest "non-Romney" to emerge in the race, Santorum's foreign-policy views are beginning to receive more scrutiny. In particular, Santorum has staked out a position even more extreme than Gingrich on the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for statehood.  "All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians... There is no 'Palestinian,'" he told a questioner back in November. (Israel probably wouldn't actually be thrilled with this position, as it would entail full Israeli political rights for Palestinians on the West Bank.)

Santorum has also recently vowed to bomb Iranian nuclear sites if they are not opened for inspections, saying that President Barack Obama's inaction against the Iranian nuclear program risks turning the United States into a paper tiger.

Huntsman's last stand

Huntsman has essentially staked his campaign on Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, opting out of Iowa entirely and campaigning non-stop in the Granite State. "We have to do well in New Hampshire," he told CBS news this week. The Boston Globe endorsed Huntsman this week, pointing specifically to his foreign policy experience. "While other candidates point toward Cold War-style rejection and isolation of China, Huntsman promises deeper engagement. But he had the courage as ambassador to walk among protesters, drawing the ire of repressive Chinese authorities," the editorial read.

Nonetheless, recent polls show that the majority of New Hampshire voters, particularly front-runner Mitt Romney's supporters, which Huntsman was hoping to pick off -- are unlikely to change their mind before Tuesday.

A new strategy for the Pentagon

On Thursday, the president announced a new military approach which aims to trim roughly $450 billion from the defense budget by shrinking the Army and Marines, focusing more heavily on Special Operations and drone forces, and making a strategic "pivot" from the Middle East and Central Asia to the Pacific.

With the exception of Paul and Huntsman, the Republican candidates all oppose large-scale defense cuts. Romney has ridiculed the idea of a strategic shift to Asia in the past, saying, "President Obama seems to think that we're going to have a global century, an Asian century. I believe we have to have an American century, where America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world."

What to watch for

The candidates will meet for two final televised debates in New Hampshire on Saturday night and Sunday morning before voters head to the polls on Tuesday. Real Clear Politics' New Hampshire poll average shows Romney with a commanding 20 point lead over Paul, followed by Santorum, Huntsman, Gingrich, and Perry -- in that order.

Then it's on to South Carolina for the Jan. 21 primary, where Romney currently holds a 19 point lead over Santorum, his closest challenger.

The latest from FP

Scott Clement looks at why Huntsman's experience as ambassador won't help him win over skeptical GOP voters.

Joshua Keating says farewell, Michele and recounts Bachmann's "greatest hits" on foreign policy. Also, what's behind Santorum's strange fixation with Honduras?

David Kenner says Santorum's views on Israel could be "profoundly damaging to U.S. and Israeli interests."

Daniel Drezner argues that Paul would make an even worse president than Gingrich -- and that's saying something.

David Rothkopf wonders why Obama has been so modest as a communicator and lists some of the president's underappreciated successes he should be crowing about.

Peter Feaver criticizes the Paul campaign for having a soldier in uniform speak at a campaign event and says the Iowa results prove there will not be a crack-up in the Republican Party over foreign policy.

The above video, where Rick Santorum provides his narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, really needs to be seen to be believed. It's from November, but has only been dredged up from the dark recesses of the Internet now because Santorum appears poised to finish strong in tonight's Iowa caucuses.

Santorum is debating with a young voter, laying out his case why Israel should not dismantle its settlements in the West Bank.  "All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis, they're not Palestinians," he says. "There is no ‘Palestinian.'"

This echoes Newt Gingrich's contention in December that Palestinians are an "invented" people -- but, for my money, Santorum's comments are worse. Historical revisionism in the service of political gain has been a staple of international affairs since time immemorial. But what Santorum is suggesting is actually profoundly damaging to U.S. and Israeli interests: If the 3 million people of the West Bank are Israeli citizens, they have the right to vote, and will fundamentally reorder the Israeli government. That's a prospect the Israelis themselves have been trying to avoid, and the reason why they have never annexed the West Bank. Too bad nobody ever told Rick Santorum.

The "dangerous" Ron Paul

With the latest polls showing him neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney in Iowa leading up to next week's caucuses, Ron Paul hasn't been toning down his non-traditional foreign policy rhetoric. Paul described sanctions against Iran as an "act of war" in front of a crowd in Iowa, and said Iran would be justified in blocking the Straits of Hormuz if they had no other recourse to respond.

Paul's unexpected poll surge has made him a target. In addition to the ongoing controversy over newsletters published under Paul's name during the 1990s, many of the attacks focus on his isolationist national security views. "One of the people running for president thinks it's O.K. for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don't," Romney told a crowd this week. Michele Bachman, whose own campaign seems to be fading fast, called Paul's foreign policy beliefs "dangerous." Influential Iowa Representative Steve King also attacked his congressional colleague, saying  "I don't think that the Paul supporters have really stepped back and thought about what would happen if Ron Paul were operating out of the Oval Office and the commander-in-chief of our armed forces." New Hampshire's influential Union Leader newspaper, in endorsing Newt Gingrich this week, blasted Paul for spouting "nonsense" on national security.

Paul's campaign has brushed off the charges of national security naiveté, touting his popularity among veterans and claiming that he has "raised more funds from active military personnel than all other GOP competitors combined."

A late Santorum surge

All but written off just a few weeks ago, the conservative standard-bearer Rick Santorum is enjoying a late surge heading into the caucuses, with one recent poll putting him in third place. "I expect him to have a significantly better caucus night than predictors, the pundits, and the polls, have said over the last month," said Steve King. Santorum's rise is fueled mainly by Iowa's evangelical voters and is significant enough that Rick Perry has begun running ads attacking the former Pennsylvania senator's past support for earmarks.

In a recent radio interview, conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt asked Santorum if President Barack Obama intended for an Islamist front to take power in Egypt. Santorum wouldn't go quite that far but said that "this is a president who doesn't believe the Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist front" and "does not understand what radical Islam is and its threat to the West." He also suggested the possibility of taking action against Iran to "show that we are not going to allow radicals to gain power and to use that power for purposes of spreading their radical jihadist ideology." 

Condi for Veep?

The Gingrich campaign's sagging fortunes don't seem to have discouraged the candidate from daydreaming of filling Cabinet posts and officials in his administration. At a speech in Columbia, South Carolina, Gingrich said he'd love to see former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a vice presidential debate with Joe Biden. "That would be about as great a mismatch of knowledge versus ignorance as we've seen," Gingrich said. Gingrich quickly denied that he was endorsing Rice for vice president, just praising her as a "terrifically smart" person. Gingrich had previously suggested he could nominate John Bolton as his secretary of state.

Gingrich wasn't the only one looking to start the veepstakes early this week. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested that Biden should switch places with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the 2012 race, in order to "stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base."

Obama on a roll

Still benefiting from this month's fight with Republicans over extending the payroll tax cut, the president's approval ratings (47 percent) are now above his disapproval ratings (45 percent) for the first time since July 2010. But, since World War II, only Harry Truman won reelection with an approval rating below 48 percent.

What to watch for

Iowans will caucus on Tuesday, Jan. 3, in the country's first major primary contest. RealClearPolitics' current poll average for the state has Romney at 21.6 percent, Paul at 21.2 percent, and Santorum and Gingrich tied at 14 percent. The New Hampshire primary -- which Jon Huntsman has chosen to focus on exclusively -- follows just a week later.

The latest from FP

Scott Clement looks at why Republican candidates are still failing to connect with Hispanic voters. 

Uri Friedman surveys the GOP field's selective approach to American exceptionalism, which makes room for Swiss healthcare, Chilean retirement schemes, and a Chinese-style (lack of) welfare state.  

The contributors to FP's Shadow Government blog, are weighing in this week with their assessments of how president Obama has handled foreign policy and national security this year.

Iowa Debate

The GOP candidates faced off in Sioux City on Thursday in what will likely be the last primary debate before the Iowa Caucuses. Foreign policy was very much on the agenda. Responding to a question about the downed U.S. drone in Iran and president's request that it be returned by Iran, Mitt Romney accused the Obama administration of weakness: "Does timidity and weakness invite aggression on the part of other people? Absolutely," Romney said. "A strong America is the best ally peace has ever owned. A spy drone downed over Iran and he says ‘pretty please?'"

Rick Perry repeated his call for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign over the controversial Operation Fast and Furious undercover gun-running scheme on the U.S.-Mexico border. In response to a question about whether Holder should take responsibility for the incident even if, as he claims, he didn't know about, Perry said, "If I'm the president of the United States, and I find out that there is an operation like Fast and Furious and my attorney general didn't know about it, I would have him resign immediately." Perry also disputed the president's assessment that the border is safer that it's ever been.

Jon Huntsman took a counterintuitive approach, using lower immigration numbers as evidence of the president's failures: "In terms of immigration, and illegal immigration, this president has so screwed up this economy, nobody is coming anymore. There is nothing to come for. There's not a problem today! Look at the numbers coming across. The numbers posted the other day -- lowest in four decades."

Rick Santorum continued his attack on Latin America policy and claims that Islamist militant groups are using the region as a safe haven: "This president has ignored that threat, has insulted our allies like Honduras and Colombia deliberately and embraced like other scoundrels in the Middle East, embraced Chávez, Ortega, and others in South America not promoting our value and interests."

Ron Paul, who has seen a recent surge in the polls, dismissed concerns about Iran's nuclear program, saying, "There is no evidence they have a nuclear weapon. This is another Iraq coming. There's war propaganda going on." Michele Bachmann responded incredulously to Paul's attitude, saying she had "never heard a more dangerous statement."

The Gingrich-Huntsman debate

Newt Gingrich finally got his wish for a three-hour Lincoln-Douglas style debate he sat down on Monday at New Hampshire's St. Anselm College with the trailing Huntsman. It was a cordial affair -- after all, a strong showing by Huntsman in New Hampshire can only be to Gingrich's advantage against Romney -- with few major disagreements between the two. (Huntsman even referred to Gingrich as a "great historian.") Gingrich disapproved of the way Obama had handled the Arab Spring, particularly how he "dumped" U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak in a "very unceremonious way." Huntsman anticipated "a hubristic, nationalistic generation" poised to take power in China.

Are Gingrich's 15 minutes up?

Once again, Newt dominated the news this week, particularly for his controversial comments that Palestinians are an "invented people," a remark that generated a sharp backlash from Palestinian leaders. Even Romney, hardly known for his pro-Palestinian views, went after Gingrich's "erratic outspokenness."

This also seemed to be a week when major Republican figures turned on Gingrich. Columnist George Will blasted the front-runner, saying he "seems to believe there is always some higher synthesis, inaccessible to lesser intellects, that makes all his contradictions disappear." The National Review piled on: "His character flaws -- his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas -- made him a poor Speaker of the House."

Whether attacks like these will resonate with primary voters remains to be seen, though Gingrich's numbers do seem to be slipping somewhat in Iowa.

Obama touts Iraq pullout

At a modest ceremony in Baghdad this week, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta marked the official pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq. In a new web video from the Obama campaign titled, "Promises Kept," the president touts his commitment to ending the Iraq war, saying, "Over the next few days, a small group of American soldiers will begin the final march out of that country... Iraq's future will be in the hands of its people." The pullout, despite being conducted along a timeline previously agreed by Obama's predecessor, is likely to be a centerpiece of Obama's pitch to voters, along with the killing of Osama bin Laden.  

Cain for SecDef?

Guess who's back? Former candidate Herman Cain, who famously struggled with even the fundamentals of foreign policy during his campaign, was interviewed by Barbara Walters this week as part of her annual "most fascinating people" segment and told her that if he had his choice of Cabinet positions, he'd like to be secretary of defense. This response prompted a rare "what?" from the veteran interviewer. Perhaps he'd settle for ambassador to Uzbekistan?

What to watch for

All eyes are on Iowa this holiday season as residents of the Hawkeye state prepare for caucuses on Jan. 3. There's now increasing speculation that Paul might have his turn as the next "anyone-but-Romney," following turns by Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. Paul has consistently polled in second or third place in Iowa, and with Gingrich's numbers beginning to fall, he may be in a position to capitalize. Expect more scrutiny of Paul's views, particularly his neo-isolationist foreign policy, in the days ahead.

The latest from FP:

Defense writer Sharon Weinberger examines Gingrich's far-out futurist vision of warfare.

Former candidate Tim Pawlenty tells FP's Josh Rogin that Gingrich is a flip-flopper on foreign policy.

Michael A. Cohen laments that more genuine disagreements weren't aired at the Gingrich-Huntsman showdown.

Poll-watcher Scott Clement explains why, despite Iraq and Osama, the president shouldn't feel safe from attacks on his foreign-policy record.