The revealing way the Democratic candidates talked about Syria

Syria is probably the biggest foreign policy issue in the US right now, but it hasn’t really been a focus of the Democratic primary. So it was interesting to see how the Democratic candidates handled the issue at Tuesday night’s debate — and it turned out to be quite revealing.

The Democrats showed no real new ideas or proposals for dealing with Syria’s crisis; their answers were generally vague or meekly supported something like the status quo. There was one exception: Hillary Clinton, who was able to draw a clear contrast with President Obama only because she is so much more hawkish, which at least in theory should be a political liability in the Democratic primary, but so far does not seem to be.

This is a remarkable difference from the 2008 Democratic primary, when Clinton’s hawkishness and her support for the Iraq invasion — which she’s still defending — was a major liability in her campaign against then-Sen. Barack Obama. Her positions haven’t changed or become more acceptable to Democrats, and yet she seems to no longer be suffering for them.

The big policy change Clinton suggested in her answer was to, as she’s argued previously, propose setting up a “safe zone” inside Syria for Syrian civilians. She also suggested this would help force Russia to negotiate on a political settlement on Syria’s war:

We have to stand up to [Putin’s] bullying and specifically in Syria, it is important and I applaud the administration because they are engaged in talks right now with the Russians to make it clear that they’ve got to be part of the solution to try to end that bloody conflict and to provide safe zones so that people are not going to have to be flooding out of Syria at the rate they are.

Later in the debate:

What I believe and why I have advocated that the no-fly zone, which of course would be in a coalition, be put on the table is because I’m trying to figure out what leverage we have to get Russia to the table. You know, diplomacy is not about getting to the perfect solution. It’s about how you balance the risks.

I think we have an opportunity here and I know that inside the administration this is being hotly debated to get that leverage to try to get the Russians to have to deal with everybody in the region and begin to move toward a political diplomatic solution in Syria.

This is consistent with Clinton’s long-held interventionist approach to the world, which is generally more aggressive than what most Democratic voters are comfortable with.

You’d think that her chief rival, Bernie Sanders, would pounce on this. Yet Sanders didn’t say much about her policy. His most direct hit was more tepid: “She is talking about, as I understand it, a no-fly zone in Syria, which I think is a very dangerous situation. Could lead to real problems.”

On foreign policy, Sanders actually isn’t that far to Clinton’s left, and he is more in line with Obama. “I support airstrikes in Syria and what the president is trying to do,” he said during the debate. Indeed, if you look at his more extensive Syria policy answer, he basically called for what Obama is already doing:

Let’s understand when we talk about Syria, you’re talking about a quagmire in a quagmire. You’re talking about groups of people trying to overthrow Assad, other groups of people fighting ISIS. You’re talking about people who are fighting ISIS using their guns to overthrow Assad and vice versa. I’m the former chairman, Anderson, of the veterans committee. In that capacity, I learned a powerful lesson about the cost of war. I will do everything that I can to make sure that the United States does not get involved in another quagmire like we did in Iraq. The worst foreign policy drummed up in the history of this country. We should be putting together a coalition of Arab countries who should be leading the effort. We should be supportive. But I do not support American ground troops in Syria.

That points to the big difference between 2008 and now. In 2008, American troops were dying in a disastrous war started by a Republican. Today, a Democratic president is running a foreign policy that’s generally popular among Democrats — one that Clinton helped shape as secretary of state. Democrats to her left just end up defending the status quo, which isn’t really going to fire anyone up.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s answer is a case in point. When asked point blank whether Clinton was “too quick” to use force, including in Syria, he refused to take her on directly. Like Sanders, he reiterated his support for the Obama approach to the problem:

I believe as president, I would not be so quick to pull for a military tool. I believe that a no-fly zone in Syria at this time would actually be a mistake. You have to enforce no-fly zones and I believe especially with the Russian air force in the air, it could lead to an escalation because of an accident we would deeply regret. I support President Obama. I think we have to play a long game and ultimately, you want to talk about blunders, I think Assad’s invasion of Syria will be seen as a blunder.

This isn’t a bad answer on policy grounds (“Assad’s invasion of Syria” aside). But it’s also just the status quo: not the kind of new approach to a very hard problem that could get either policy wonks or the Democratic voting base excited about O’Malley’s candidacy.

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee tried to position himself as the dove on the stage. He said his biggest break with Obama would be “certainly ending the wars,” and later said, “We just bombed a hospital. We’ve had drone strikes that have hit weddings. We need a new paradigm in the Middle East.” His opening statement was full of thinly veiled jabs at Clinton’s foreign policy record. But he didn’t articulate anything more detailed about what he’d do about Syria — which, to be fair, isn’t necessarily his fault, as he wasn’t directly asked about it, but doesn’t suggest he has that bold new paradigm in hand.

Finally, there’s Jim Webb. Webb decided to address Syria after Anderson Cooper asked him about Libya — and then decided, for some reason, to switch to talking about China:

COOPER: Senator Webb, you said as president you would never use military force in Libya and the attack on Benghazi was, in your words, “inevitable.”

WEBB: I’m trying to get in this conversation. Let’s start with why Russia is in Syria right now. There are three strategic failings that have allowed this to occur. The first was the invasion of Iraq, which destabilized ethnic elements in Iraq and empowered Iran. The second was the Arab Spring which created huge vacuums in Libya and in Syria that allowed terrorist movements to move in there and the third was the recent deal allowing Iran to move forward and eventually acquire a nuclear weapon which sent bad signals, bad body language about whether we’re acquiescing in Iran becoming a strong piece of the formula in that world.

I say as someone five years in the Pentagon and opposed the war in Iraq, whose son fought in Iraq, I fought in Vietnam. But if you want a place where we need to be in terms of our national strategy, a focus, the greatest strategic threat that we have right now is resolving our relationship with China. We need to do this because of their aggression in the region. We need to do it because of the way they treat their own people. I would say this. I’ve been waiting for 10 minutes. I will say this.

The Syria part of this answer is weirdly focused on the reasoning behind Russia’s intervention, which it somehow manages to botch — Russia is in Syria to prop up its teetering ally, Bashar al-Assad, not because of the Iraq War. It also presents no policy ideas for dealing with the Russian intervention, or the mess in Syria more broadly.

The bottom line, then, is that for Democratic primary voters, there really isn’t much in the way of alternatives to either the Obama status quo or Clinton’s somewhat more hawkish take on it. Unlike on the Republican side, foreign policy just isn’t what the Democrats want to be fighting about.