Where is US foreign policy heading?

The final turns are now being taken in the US presidential election. At the hours when this article was being prepared, people in the US were getting ready for the 2nd big debate of the presidential election, to be held on Sunday night.

After the first debate, according to the polls, Clinton is ahead of Trump by 4-5 points. In fact, it is hardly possible to say that this situation stems from Clinton's successful election campaign. Many observers think that the only thing that will make Clinton president is Trump's being the Republican Party's candidate. As will be recalled, it was discussed that a process similar to Ronald Reagan's first-term candidacy process might take place within the Republican Party, and it was claimed that Trump might not be nominated, but in the end Trump's presidential candidacy was finalized. Nevertheless, the debates within the Republican Party did not end.

The debate to be held tonight may take the debates within the Republican Party to another level, because many respected party figures have announced that they do not support Trump's candidacy. After these announcements, debates have started again over Trump's withdrawal from the presidential candidacy. Of course, from this point on, it seems quite difficult for the Republican Party to change its presidential candidate. In this respect, Trump's performance in the second debate is also awaited with curiosity. The performance Trump shows in the debate tonight seems likely to markedly affect the course of the split within the Republican Party.

And it is in fact said that Trump has an important chance in tonight's debate, because foreign policy issues are expected to take a central place in the second televised debate.

The recordings of Kerry's voice leaked to the press last week and the rising tension with Russia brought with them a harsh debate over Obama-era foreign policy. The foreign policy of the Obama administration is criticized especially over the Syria issue. Therefore, the decisions the Obama administration has taken in foreign policy, especially on Syria, and scenarios about the course of the Syrian crisis gain importance. In this respect, it can be said that foreign policy issues have come to occupy a much more central place in presidential election campaigns. If Trump can systematically criticize the Obama administration and its line through the damage done to the US's global position, he can turn the process in a positive direction for himself.

However, how US foreign policy will take shape in the coming period has become a systemic matter that far exceeds the debates to be held in the presidential election. There is a marked confusion about the US's position in the current international system. The US cannot bring itself to make the moves that would resolve this confusion. We can say that the decisions the Obama administration has taken regarding crisis regions have created marked damage to US power.

As in Joseph Nye's phrase

The Paradoxes of American Power

had begun to be clearly seen, but the Obama administration, rather than controlling these paradoxes, tried to get rid of the paradoxes and thereby made the damage to the US's global position evident. It is hard to say that, from this point on, the problems experienced in foreign policy by the US, which has gone through the absurdity of presenting the strategy of using terrorist organizations against the terrorist organization DAESH as a great diplomatic success in resolving the Syrian Crisis, can be changed only by the preferences of presidents. That is, the choice between Clinton or Trump will not bring about a marked change in US foreign policy in a short time.

In recent days, an inquiry was published on the website of Foreign Policy magazine about how US foreign policy will take shape in the coming period. This inquiry is quite important in showing the center of gravity of foreign policy debates in the US.

Foreign Policy poses to its own writers 18 questions that it thinks will be a priority in US foreign policy in the coming period. The great majority of the questions focus on the Middle East, the situation in Syria and DAESH. There are one or two questions on China and the Asia-Pacific equation. Interestingly, relations with the EU are hardly dwelt on at all. On NATO too, which is among the foreign policy issues most debated since the Second World War, there is no issue that attracts the writers' curiosity. The questions, whose answers 18 important international relations researchers, from Stephen Walt to Thomas Rick, seek, are in fact a panorama of US foreign policy.

The decisions the US took and failed to take on Syria in the Obama period frequently caused the US's position within the system to be questioned. So much so that

the US reached a point where, because of Russia, it could not carry out a clear intervention in the region it had declared a vital area of interest with the Eisenhower Doctrine.

Even though Third Worldist movements were influential in the Middle East during the Cold War years and there was marked sympathy for the USSR, Russia had not been able to obtain such a serious sphere of influence in the region. Moreover, Iran, which the US had tried to contain and confine within its borders in the region after 1979, has reached a point the US cannot balance in the short term. What is more, the Obama administration made room for Iran despite all the objections of Israel, one of its most important allies in the region.

If it had been said, when the US's intervention in Iraq took place and Saddam was overthrown, that 10 years later an important geography in Iraq, including oil fields, would be ruled by an organization similar to al-Qaeda and that the US would be helpless against this organization, probably no one would have believed it.

From the early 1990s, theses had been put forward that the US should turn its attention to the Asia-Pacific. So much so that these theses tied the US's position as a superpower to its presence in the Asia-Pacific. But it was the wrong steps and decisions taken in the Middle East that caused the US's position in the system to be questioned. This must be a twist of fate for the US.