Americans Deserve to Know the Foreign Policy of Their Next Commander-in-Chief

The first presidential debate between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump was promoted by the networks as a Super Bowl–like affair, a contest between two heavyweights who not only despise each another personally but differ substantially on policy and the direction in which they would like to take the country. The debate played out as expected: More than 80 million Americans reportedly tuned in to a rhetorical slugfest. For the television networks, the debate was great for their bottom lines, but for our servicemen and -women, the first presidential debate didn’t live up to expectations.

What tens of millions of Americans were afforded this week was a battle over personality and temperament. These qualities are undoubtedly important in a president, but they are hardly foremost for the American voter and the American servicemember concerned about the vast number of international and domestic crises that the United States faces at any given moment.

NBC’s Lester Holt, the man in charge of picking the topics and moderating the debate, decided to leave national-security questions until the very end, when viewership typically drops off. Holt asked only one forward-leaning national-security question, and that was whether the U.S. should adopt a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons.

Debates are supposed to encourage the candidates to confront each other on their vision of U.S. foreign policy over the next four years. And yet Clinton and Trump used the debate, perhaps predictably, to highlight their own personal qualities and decision-making acumen. Regardless of which candidate one supports, there is something distressing about the presidential nominees of the two major parties’ opting to delve into what the other may have said or done in the 1970s rather than what they plan to do for America’s national security over the next four years. Holt failed to steer the conversation back to the issues.

None of that would be troubling if U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were not engaged overseas in a number of international conflicts even as the candidates spoke.

Afghanistan came up once during 90 minutes of the debate, and that was only in relation to NATO allies’ invoking Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks. There was no discussion at all about what the nominees believe the United States should do in Afghanistan after 15 years of being militarily engaged in that country.

Whoever gets elected in November will enter the White House with 8,400 U.S. military personnel continuing to perform advise-and-assist missions, special-operations raids, and air strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, in partnership with Afghan national-security forces. It’s not unreasonable for U.S. soldiers deployed in that war zone — or who are in the pipeline for deployment — to want to know what the military and political strategy of the next commander-in-chief would be.

The same goes for the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. Air Force has conducted more than 11,000 air strikes on ISIS positions in the past two years and deployed roughly 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground in an advisory capacity, to the tune of $12 million a day — $9 billion since the campaign began.

The battle against ISIS rightly was included as a topic during the debate, but the nominees spent most of the time bashing each another’s record. They never got around to explaining how Washington’s strategy toward the war could be improved or how U.S. national-security interests could best be met with the military resources the country currently has. For the U.S. soldier in Iraq today preparing to back up the Iraqi army in its operation to retake the city of Mosul, it would have been nice for the candidates to delve deeper and raise the discussion above the level of talking points and rhetorical barbs.

#related#Fortunately, the second presidential debate, on October 9, will focus more on foreign policy. It will be critical at that time to hear detailed policies and proposals to deal with the pressing national-security problems that are turning some regions of the world into cauldrons of instability, from North Korea’s challenge to the non-proliferation regime to the devastating impact that the the civil war in Syria is having on Middle East stability. To be perfectly honest, neither the soldier defending America nor the taxpayer funding America’s armed forces was likely satisfied with the questions posed to the candidates earlier this week. Nor is it a stretch to say that most Americans were probably not impressed with the candidates’ answers.

— Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities.