Huckabee and Richardson's Foreign Policy Visions
And from the estimable Foreign Affairs, Democratic candidate, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Republican hopeful, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee lay out their foreign policy visions. Interesting that Richardson calls for a "new realism" while Huckabee, despite his clear evangelical appeal in Iowa where he is currently "surging", seems much more liberal in his approach than the other GOP candidates.
Richardson plays it safe (maybe hoping to parlay his resume into a VP nod) and while Huckabee impressed me with a reference to Sayyid Qutb (probably the most significant intellectual figure in the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and various violent Islamist groups from the 20th Century) as a founder of the most significant strain of bin Laden's al-Qaeda messaging, most of his arguments are conventional while not touching on China much or our relations with India (or any of the growing economic powers of East Asia). The fact that he ignores Asia and only zeroes in on the Middle East (mostly Iraq and Iran with Pakistan thrown in too) is not particularly encouraging. His only references to China and Russia are in the context of Iran (and India in the context of Pakistan) and he offers no clues as to how he will engage with any of them.
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