Michael Cohen also noticed Clinton’s neglect of foreign policy in her speech last week, but offers a different explanation from mine:

This year, to the extent that Clinton is facing opposition from within her party for the Democratic nomination, very little of the focus is on her past hawkishness or support for the Iraq War. Part of the reason is the striking level of unanimity within the Democratic Party on foreign policy and national security issues.

Cohen is right about part of this. There isn’t that much opposition to Clinton specifically on foreign policy grounds, and to the extent that there is criticism of her record it has been fairly mild so far. Sanders disagrees with Clinton on some foreign policy issues, but that doesn’t seem to be the main reason for his challenge. He hasn’t used her Iraq vote to say that she shouldn’t be president. The exception to that might be Chafee’s attacks on her Iraq war vote, which is so far the only argument he has made that has gained any traction. By contrast, his attempt to bash her over the “reset” was as clumsy and stale as could be. O’Malley offers the least foreign policy-oriented challenge. He arguably has the least credibility on these issues of any of Clinton’s opponents, and he probably has the fewest substantive disagreements with her. Assuming that Jim Webb formally enters the race in the next few weeks, he would probably end up being the sharpest and most effective critic of Clinton’s record, and he would be well-positioned to hold her accountable on a wider range of issues rather than just focusing on Iraq. More than any of the others, Webb was a vocal opponent of the Libyan war from the beginning, and of all the challengers he would have the best chance to force Clinton to defend her role in that disaster. Clinton also benefits from having been out of office for several years. Even the most recent parts of her foreign policy record are to some extent old news and they are unlikely to excite many activists one way or the other. The Iraq war was a major and live issue in 2004 and 2008. If her challengers want to use her record against her, they will be revisiting issues that have long since ceased to hold the public’s attention if they ever did.

I’m not sure that it’s true that there is as much unanimity within the party on these issues as Cohen claims. It is true that foreign policy issues are not a high priority for Democratic voters this year, which is true for most voters regardless of party affiliation, but that masks the divisions that still exist. Clinton is much more of a foreign policy “centrist” and a hawk than most Democrats. Because these issues are not a high priority for voters, the gap between Clinton’s foreign policy and the one that would be preferred by most of her party may not be as obvious as it was in the past.

Another factor that mutes the differences within the party is that a Democratic president is still in office. The divisions in 2004 and 2008 reflected the tensions between Democrats that had previously sided with Bush on a major issue and those that had opposed him, which made the policy disagreements into a fight over party identity and the future of the party’s foreign policy as well. Because Obama is still in office and is still broadly popular in the party, there is more incentive for Democratic candidates to dull foreign policy criticisms since they would also be directed at Obama’s record. The reality that none of her challengers is in a realistic position to prevent Clinton from receiving the nomination also contributes to the impression that there is more agreement on foreign policy than there really is. Her challengers also have incentives as partisans not to do too much damage to Clinton by drawing attention to her bad foreign policy judgment, and so she may be able to get away without facing that much scrutiny on these issues.

It still seems more likely to me that Clinton isn’t saying much about foreign policy at this point because she doesn’t want to remind her voters about her record. Her status as the prohibitive favorite for the nomination makes it easier for her to avoid rehashing the more embarrassing parts of that record. Because the nomination seems to be practically sewn up already, the real divisions in the party over foreign policy will be kept out of sight. Should a Republican end up winning in 2016, I imagine that we would see them return with a vengeance. If Clinton goes on to win, they will be suppressed for a while for partisan reasons, but they aren’t going away anytime soon.