Foreign-policy credentials: Perry lived in Germany and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s while flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force in Latin America, North Africa, and Europe. "I saw all of these different types of governments and I made the connections to how the people acted and looked, and it became abundantly clear to me that, at that particular point in time, that America was this very unique place and that our form of democracy was very rare," he told the Abilene Reporter-News in April. As governor of Texas, he has traveled abroad and worked particularly closely with Latin America.

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Overview: Perry may appear like an aggressive, American Exceptionalism–trumpeting defense hawk at first glance, but his views on issues such as the Afghanistan withdrawal, illegal immigration, and "military adventurism" complicate the picture. "We respect our allies, and we must always seek to engage them in military missions," he told a gathering of veterans in August. "At the same time, we must be willing to act when it is time to act. We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multilateral debating societies."

Advisors: The campaign recently hired Victoria Coates, a research director for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance art and history, to advise Perry on foreign policy. The Texas governor told Sean Hannity in November that he also discusses international affairs with Liz Cheney and John Bolton -- people "who actually understand, intimately, where these countries are, why they think like they think."

On the Issues:

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Perry wants to transfer responsibility to Afghan security forces and bring U.S. troops home, but he opposes President Barack Obama's withdrawal timetable and in September quickly walked back from an apparent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal. He thinks Pakistan isn't being "honest with us" and wants to cut off foreign aid to the country. "Their political people are not who are in charge of that country," Perry claims. "It's the military. It's the secret service."

Military spending: The governor hasn't called for defense cuts, but he has warned against a "foreign policy of military adventurism" and declared that America "should only risk shedding American blood and spending American treasure when our vital interests are threatened." Still, he told the conservative Values Voter Summit in October that "we must never put the military on the chopping block for arbitrary budget cuts as part of some political horse-trade." The key question, he added, is "not what we can afford to spend on our military, but what it costs to remain secure and free."

Immigration/borders: Perry has pledged to beef up the Border Patrol and dispatch Predator drones to the U.S.-Mexico border to gather intelligence. During a debate in October, he argued that Mitt Romney was guilty of the "height of hypocrisy" for talking tough on immigration while hiring illegal immigrants -- a charge Romney denies. But Perry's own nuanced record on immigration has left him vulnerable to charges from Republican opponents that he's soft on the issue (Bill Clinton, for his part, praises Perry's stance). Perry has defended his decision as governor of Texas to grant in-state tuition to some undocumented students. "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," he argued in September. Although Perry wants to construct fencing in "high traffic areas," he ridicules the notion of erecting a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border -- or, as he put it, echoing a line from Obama, the idea of building a "double fence" with "alligators between it" and "lava in there."

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