2011 Essays

Will Foreign Policy Be a Campaign Issue in 2012?

Mitchell, Lincoln A.

As the 2012 presidential campaign begins to take shape it is striking, and probably even more so to non-Americans, how little attention is being paid to foreign policy in the campaign. There is, of course, some criticism of President Barack Obama's foreign policy, but it is mostly moderate and fairly generic, usually along the lines of viewing Obama as insufficiently loyal to America‘s friends around the world and not fully aware of potential threats. This criticism, however, is not intense or central to the Republican campaigns.