Questions for the candidates

There has been unusual interest end-to-end the world in the U.S. Presidential race.

sceptic, of whom there are quite a few, say the political campaign is just a endurance contest show that has little to do with real policymaking. Even if there's a grain of truth in that, in an interdependent world the statements of the contenders for the White House are more than just rhetoric addressed to American voters.

Major policy problems today cannot be solved without United States - and United States cannot solve them alone.

Even the domestic help problems of the United States are no thirster purely internal. I am referring first of all to the economic system. The job of the huge U.S. Budget deficit can be managed, for a time, by continuing to flood the world with "bill," whose rate is declining along with the value of U.S. Securities. But such a scheme cannot work everlastingly.

Of course of study, the norm American is not concerned with the complexities of global finance. But as I talk to ordinary Americans, and I visit the United States once or twice a year, I sense their anxiousness about the state of the economic system. The irony, they have said to me, is that the center class felt little benefit from economic growth when the functionary indicators were pointing upward, but once the downswing started, it hit them instantly, and it hit them hard.

No one can offer a simple fix for United States's economic problems, but it is hard not to see their connexion to U.S. Foreign policies. Over the past eight years the rapid rise in armed forces spending has been the main factor in increasing the Federal soldier budget shortage. The United States spends more money on the armed forces today than at the tallness of the Cold War.

Yet no candidate has made that clear. "Defense spending" is a subject that seems to be surrounded by a wall of silence. But that wall will have to fall one day.

We can expect a serious debate about foreign policy issues, including the role of the United States in the world; America's claim to global leadership; fighting terrorism; nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the problems caused by the invasion of Iraq.

Of course I am not pretending to write the script for the presidential candidates' debates. But I would add to this list of issues two more: the size of America's defense budget and the militarization of its foreign policy. I am afraid these two questions will not be asked by the moderators. But sooner or later they will have to be answered.

The present administration, particularly during George W. Bush's first presidential term, was bent on trying to solve many foreign policy issues primarily by military means, through threats and pressure. The big question today is whether the presidential nominees will propose a different approach to the world's most urgent problems.

I am extremely alarmed by the increasing tendency to militarize policymaking and thinking. The fact is that the military option has again and again led to a dead end.

One doesn't have to go very far to find an alternative. Take the recent developments on nonproliferation issues, where the focus has been on two countries - North Korea and Iran.

After several years of saber-rattling, the United States finally got around to serious talks with the North Koreans, involving South Korea and other neighboring countries. And though it took time to achieve results, the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program has now begun.

It's true that nuclear issues in Iran encompass some unique features and may be more difficult to solve. But clearly threats and delusions of "regime change" are not the way to do it.

We have to look even deeper for a solution. "Horizontal" proliferation will only get worse unless we solve the "vertical" problem, i.e. The continued existence of huge arsenals of sophisticated nuclear weapons held by major powers, particularly the United States and Russia.

In recent months there seems to have been a conceptual breakthrough on this issue, with influential Americans calling for revitalizing efforts aimed at the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have now endorsed that goal.

I have always been in favor of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. On my watch, the Soviet Union and the United States concluded treaties on the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons - Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) missiles - and on A 50 percent reduction of strategic weapons, which led to the destruction of thousands of nuclear warheads.

But when we proposed complete nuclear disarmament, our Western partners raised the issue of the Soviet Union's advantage in conventional forces. So we agreed to negotiate major cuts in non-nuclear weapons, signing a treaty on this issue in Vienna.