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China’s Rise

The issue: Between the crackdown on protesters in Tibet, the Sichuan earthquake, and the buildup to the Summer Olympics, China dominated the world’s headlines for much of 2008. A veritable cottage industry emerged of pundits forecasting the United States’ decline and China’s emergence as an economic and military superpower. Yet the country that is home to 20 percent of the world’s population, that owns 20 percent of U.S. foreign debt, that has the world’s largest army, and that is America’s largest trading partner was strangely absent from this presidential election. Tellingly, during the only presidential debate focused on foreign policy, not one question on China was asked.

Why it will matter: Although China’s growth has slowed along with the rest of the global economy in recent months, the West is still enviously eyeing its $1.9 trillion in currency reserves. If Beijing agrees to Western requests and contributes to a global bailout fund, you can bet the Chinese will demand more sway in global financial bodies such as the International Monetary Fund. Military analysts are also watching China’s military modernization and fledgling space program with increasing alarm.

What was said: There’s fairly little daylight between Barack Obama’s and John McCain’s China positions. Obama promises to stop “borrowing [money] from China to send to Saudi Arabia,” and McCain has decried the “half-a-trillion dollars we owe China.” Obama spoke out against the Tibet crackdown, though he has pledged to “not demonize” China; McCain also favors engagement but stresses that “how a nation treats its citizens is a legitimate subject of international concern.”

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Drug Violence in Mexico

The issue: If a U.S. ally deployed 40,000 troops into combat in its own territory and more than 4,000 deaths resulted from the fighting in less than two years, you would think it would raise a few eyebrows. If that country were right on the U.S. border, you would think it would be treated as a major crisis. Yet the violence that has wracked Mexico since President Felipe Calderón declared war on his country’s drug traffickers last year has been largely ignored, not just in the presidential race, but by most of the U.S. media. Meanwhile, gruesome events such as the discovery of 12 decapitated corpses in the Yucatán, the bombing of an Independence Day parade that killed seven in Michoacan, and the assassination of a popular young mayor in a Mexico City suburb are becoming increasingly common. The cartels have also successfully infiltrated national and local police units.

Why it matters: Sadly, the United States is funding both sides of this war. While Mexico receives U.S. taxpayer money to fight the war on drugs through a $400 million aid package, the cartels perpetrating the barbaric violence are being funded by Americans’ demand for cocaine and narcotics. It’s also estimated that 90 percent of the weapons used by the cartels are purchased at U.S. gun stores and gun shows, a consequence of lax gun-control laws north of the border. U.S. drug czar John Walters has also warned that the violence is starting to spill over into the southern United States.

What was said: Both McCain and Obama have praised Calderón’s crackdown. McCain visited Mexico in July and described the fighting as “a common struggle with a common enemy.” Obama has pledged to increase U.S. aid and focus on issues such as corruption. But if either candidate is open to rethinking the four-decade war on drugs that has done almost nothing to reduce U.S. demand or foreign supply, he hasn’t mentioned it during this campaign.

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Instability in Somalia

The issue: Somalia is the world’s most failed state and potentially also one of the most dangerous. The country has been essentially without a central government since the early 1990s. Armed militias and extremist groups operate more or less openly. Neighboring Ethiopia sent troops into Somalia in 2006 to push the increasingly powerful Islamist coalition out of Mogadishu, the capital. Since then, however, the Islamists have regrouped and control wide swaths of territory. Somalia’s instability has also spilled over onto the high seas, with pirate gangs staging ever more brazen attacks on shipping through the Gulf of Aden. At least 60 ships have been attacked this year, including the headline-grabbing hijacking of a Ukrainian freighter carrying tanks and military equipment.

Why it matters: The Horn of Africa could very well be the next major front in the war on terror. U.S helicopters attacked a suspected al Qaeda safe house near the Kenyan border in January 2007. Leaders of the Shabaab militant group that controls much of southern Somalia have openly stated their support for Osama bin Laden. Piracy is also hurting international trade. Two major shipping firms are now sending ships around the southern tip of Africa rather than risk the more direct Suez Canal route that passes near Somalia, and NATO has dispatched warships to the region to fight the pirates.