Should a conflict arise between Kosovo and Serbia – which could involve Russia – where stands the United States? ~Clinton Whitehurst

Well, a good place to start would be to make sure that Kosovo is not an independent nation that would be entitled to the member state guarantees of the U.N. Charter.  This would help to ensure that any conflict that does occur would remain an internal Serbian matter and not an occasion for broader international conflict (provided that meddlesome outside powers do not use it as yet another occasion to attack Serbia).

Mr. Whitehurst has one valid point: there’s more to foreign policy than the three I’s (Israel, Iraq and Iran), and the candidates (especially the amateurs who don’t even have an Iraq policy yet) should be forced to address these other questions. 

The rest of his article doesn’t interest me very much, except that it is  noteworthy for being a laundry list of conventional interventionist concerns.  For instance:

Looking elsewhere, we should also ask candidates how they intend to ensure that a politically divided Ukraine continues toward integration with Europe and not move closer to Russia.

This is certainly a different area of foreign policy, but it is a strange question.  Why should any of the candidates want to ensure this?  Why does it actually matter to American citizens whether Ukraine moves toward “integration with Europe” or not?  What if large numbers of Ukrainian citizens, be they Ukrainian nationalists or ethnic Russians or what-have-you, don’t want to integrate with Europe?  Why is it Washington’s business to make that happen?  What does that integration entail?  EU membership?  NATO membership?  Both?  Does it make any sense to incorporate a sharply politically and “ethnically” divided Ukraine into NATO?  Does it make sense to make security commitments to a country that sits on one of Huntington’s “civilisational” fault lines?   (I am skeptical about the civilisational quality of the division between Ukrainians and Russians, but there is certainly something of a real division there.)  Asking these questions would be much more helpful in revealing the foreign policy visions of the different candidates.

Other parts of the article are less illuminating:

Imagine the expression on a candidate’s face if he/she were asked, “What is your position with respect to the United States establishing air bases and stationing personnel in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan?”  

Well, assuming for the moment the unlikely scenario where the candidate is well-informed about the present state of military operations in Central Asia, he would have a perplexed look on his face, since we have already established bases in both of these countries.  We lost our basing rights in Tajikistan.  The latest news is that some Kyrgyz legislators are agitating to remove the base in their country–FYI, Kyrgyz for “Yankee, Go Home” is Yankee Ketsin.  The question gives the impression that this is a hypothetical policy option rather than an ongoing deployment.  It would be like asking the candidate, “Do you think we should deploy American forces to South Korea?”

Many of the answers to Mr. Whitehurst’s questions are already known long before any of the major candidates give their speeches.  The drug war in Colombia will continue, no matter who wins, and the sanctions on Cuba will almost certainly continue.  These are foolish policies, but they have become deeply entrenched and have powerful interests behind them.  Fearmongering about Venezuela will be a feature of any future administration approach to Latin America, though the intensity of this may differ according to candidate, as it provides Washington with an easy scapegoat for things that go “wrong” in Latin America.  Caracas’ connection with Tehran also allows the more belligerent to demagogue Latin America policy as part of opposing Iran.  Increasing ties to India will proceed apace regardless of the election outcome.  This latter development is, for the most part, a good and desirable one. 

Russophobia, which pervades a significant part of our foreign policy establishment, and misguided NATO expansion goals will continue to push Moscow into an increasingly adversarial posture.  Mr. Whitehurst’s Ukraine question is actually mostly redundant, since there is broad consensus that the “Orange Revolution” was good and pro-Western and democratic and that the West should continue to festoon its decaying corpse with ribbons.  As James has noted in a different conversation, holding on to the Georgian satellite will remain part of our set policy (though, unlike James, I see no good reason, whether oil-related or no, for retaining this satellite in the teeth of Russian opposition).