Foreign Policy Debate: Rhetoric Vs. Reality
President Obama and GOP presidential nominee Gov. Mitt Romney are getting ready to answer any and all possible questions about foreign policy for Monday night's debate, the last one before the Nov. 6 election.
Iran, Israeli-Palestinian talks and China are among likely topics for the debate — and also major issues awaiting the next president. Each case is a matter of building and maintaining alliances while applying pressure to protect U.S. interests.
In some areas, the heated rhetoric from the candidates on the stump and in the debate may look very different from the actual policies they'll pursue if elected.
Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, speaks with three experts about conflicts and countries that are likely to come up in Monday's presidential debate in Boca Raton Fla.
The Panel
Stephen Walt is a professor of international affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and co-author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.
Jane Harman, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, is president and CEO of the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan policy center.
Richard Perle is a defense policy adviser to many political leaders, most recently to the George W. Bush administration. He's a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy, a center-right think tank.
Enlarge Lucas Jackson /Reuters /Landov
At the U.N. Sept. 27, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a graphic to show how far he says Iran will be by mid-2013 in a quest to develop nuclear weapons.