Mike Huckabee isn't a worldly man by any stretch of the imagination. His international relations bloopers on the campaign trail have become infamous, with Foreign Policy magazine's Passport blog stating "Huckabee should probably have his own list," after it posted a Top 10 list of the presidential candidates' foreign policy gaffes on the eve of Iowa's caucuses.
If you're not familiar with any of these, let's revisit the top three quickly.
First, a day after the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programme was released, a reporter asked Huckabee for his take on it. His response: What is that? Second, Huckabee tried to use the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to appeal to his party's anti-immigration zealots, saying: "In light of what happened yesterday, it's interesting that there were more Pakistanis who illegally crossed the border [than] any other nationality except those immediately south of our border." Too bad that's completely false. Pakistanis, according to 2005 immigration statistics, don't even crack the top 10 nationalities in the US illegally. Third, Huckabee's geography's off. He thinks Pakistan's eastern border makes its neighbour Afghanistan rather than India.
You could chalk these mistakes up to riling key constituencies or simply to a lack of interest in the wider world or, worse, both.
You may have even been amused by Huckabee's answers to questions he pretends to know something about. But it's not funny anymore. Despite his third-place finish in New Hampshire, Huckabee's Iowa caucus win means there's an outside chance he could be the next US commander-in-chief. And with that win comes greater scrutiny, especially on foreign policy.
Luckily, Huckabee has laid down his foreign policy vision in the pages of Foreign Affairs, the prestigious academic journal, where he developed his line of argumentation without the rapid-fire questions of reporters and the fatigue of the campaign trail.
Released in mid-December by Foreign Affairs to little coverage outside conservative pundits, Huckabee's foreign policy vision is not what you'd expect from a conservative candidate.
Huckabee acknowledges that the Bush administration's arrogant "bunker mentality" produced a backlash against the US that he wants to correct. How would President Huckabee differ from President Bush? He would stop supporting secular tyrannies in the Muslim world that in turn produce jihadists. Instead he would cultivate moderate alternatives. Counter to the neoconservative strategy, he would "calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy", which would mean using America's wealth to improve life in the Muslim world to undermine Islamic radicals. He would do this without mandating democratic reforms and would be comfortable with benevolent oligarchies or tribal rule. Like Barack Obama, Huckabee would strike al-Qaida safe havens in Pakistan.
Another goal of his is to achieve energy independence through exploration, conservation and research into alternative energies to break our addiction to foreign oil. Huckabee also promises to listen to his generals, using the plight of General Eric Shinseki - who's warnings about the need for more troops to secure Iraq were famously ignored by Bush - to illustrate his point. This means there won't be a pullout from Iraq until General David Petraeus says so. But if America does go to war under Huckabee, it will do so according to the Powell Doctrine, with its emphasis on a clear endgame and international consensus - exactly the opposite way that Bush approached Iraq.
Take as well Huckabee's policy toward Iran. While not removing the military option from the table, Huckabee professes that he will deal diplomatically with Iran, a rather sensible strategy. To the chagrin of his conservative critics, he likens international relations to a family feud, saying: "When one stops talking to a parent or a friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries." This take is rather reductive, but it is also worlds away from the standard foreign policy theory conservatives adhere to: realism. Realists, counter to Huckabee's analogy, justifiably say the world is not a family of nations, and it never will be. The state system is governed by the self-interested pursuit of power. All the handshakes and photo-ops in the world will never change how the mullahs in Iran view the US and vice-versa if each state retains its specific ideologies: Islamism versus global capitalism. Huckabee's policy doesn't reflect this conservative line of thought.
In fact, as many conservative critics, such as Peter Wehner and Dean Barnett point out, this isn't a conservative foreign policy platform at all. For the most part, it's a liberal one.
Huckabee does pander to his conservative base, of course. He argues that America needs to almost double its military budget and return it to its Reagan-era height of 6% of GDP, despite the fact that the US already spends more on its military than its next seven competitors combined. While he embraces the Powell Doctrine, he also makes no mention of whether the United States has a responsibility for post-conflict nation-building, suggesting that he hasn't fully learned the lessons of Iraq, where many of America's problems arose from not using reconstruction funds quickly and efficiently to provide Iraqis with essential goods and services.
It's unclear whether Huckabee has deliberately fashioned a relatively liberal foreign policy in order to appeal to as many Americans as possible or simply has a schizophrenic notion of what American foreign policy should be. Either way, it's self-defeating. Any liberal independents he could attract will most likely be chased away by his desire for increased military spending and the use of overwhelming force, while conservatives will likely flee from his desire to spend America's wealth on aid programs, his tolerance of regimes that are not sufficiently capitalist or democratic, and his non-confrontational approach to foreign policy.
By trying to be all things to all people on foreign policy, Huckabee should be left standing alone as his foreign policy vision is shown for what it is: incoherent. As the primaries roll on, expect liberal-minded independents to choose senators Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, and a majority of conservatives to go for senator John McCain if foreign policy matters to them at all.
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