whither our foreign policy?

In order to carry out my citizen’s duty to vote in a responsible way, I’ve been reading up on the candidates’ policy ideas and worldviews.***

This is the first article I’ve read that puts Barack Obama’s foreign policy ideas in context—and it underscores the fact that he is no peacenik, and suggests that the war (among among Dems and in foreign policy circles) is neocons v. everyone else:

Obama believes all of what he said six years ago in Chicago. He has called for, or retroactively endorsed, interventions in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. He has advocated a humanitarian-based foreign policy for his entire public career. Since coming to the U.S. Senate in 2005, he has built up a brain trust of academics and ex-Clintonites who, like him, challenge the logic of the Iraq war but not the logic of wars like Iraq. John McCain looks at American military power and sees a way to “roll back” rogue states. Obama looks at American military power and sees a way to solve international and intranational conflict, regardless of the conflict’s immediate impact on national security. McCain seeks to aggressively confront imminent threats. Obama wants to do the same, while forestalling threats of tomorrow with just as much military vigor.

…

Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the center-left New American Foundation, has watched with mounting disappointment as Obama clarifies his stance on foreign interventions. “He’s not the Obama we thought he was,” Clemons says.

Clemons, not alone among liberal foreign policy analysts, believes Obama listens to two groups of experts: liberal interventionists and “progressive realists.” The latter group, rattled by the Iraq war, agrees with one of Obama’s most traditional homilies from his memoir The Audacity of Hope: “There are few examples in history in which the freedom men and women crave is delivered through outside intervention.” But statements like that are not at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Liberal interventionism is.

Specifics (that is: there is no international relations ideology-speak) is are here on the Obama site,

McCain’s foreign policy ideas are examined by serious journalists here and here; and here is a rundown of his positions on previous foreign engagements.

This piece runs down McCain’s “brain trust“; the subject of this interview says the McCain is the past.

I link. You decide.

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*** I was particularly interested in foreign policy, but I happened to come upon a useful rundown of their approaches to the economy and finance, which I might as well mention. You can read here. (It was written before the “financial meltdown” and so is not entirely up-to-date. The fundamentals, however, are sound. And strong. Ahem. Fair warning: It’s also pro-McCain, if that sort of thing bothers you.)