sisyphusshrugged | Newsweek has a few questions they want answered in the debates

and I don't think Our Fearless Leader is going to like some of their answers

In Miami this week, the topic is foreign policy. This is fitting. Though there are crucial issues at stake about the economy, health care and the environment, war and diplomacy dominate the news, day after day, bomb after bomb; 2004 is the first foreign-policy election in the United States in a quarter century. In fact, in some ways, this year parallels 1960. Then, too, foreign affairs were at the top of the agenda. Of the four Nixon-Kennedy debates, three were exclusively devoted to foreign policy. Americans were scaredÑthose were the years of the civil-defense drills with schoolchildren ducking under their desks. And fear is what gets Americans interested in the world. The United States was in an intense geopolitical struggle, and voters wanted to understand how the two candidates would lead. The election hinged on the question of leadership in war. So it does today.

Many Democrats believe that if John Kerry spends too much time talking about foreign policy, he is playing on Bush's turf. But that misunderstands the moment. If Kerry does not demonstrate his capabilities as a wartime president, he will cede the election to Bush. After all, take Iraq away and you have an incumbent president with an economy growing at more than 3 percent, which is a formula for re-election. Over the past year Bush's approval ratings have been hammered because of his handling of war, not health care. Iraq is the main event of this campaign, and whoever handles this issue best will win.

The candidates should face three tests that help reveal their strengths and weaknesses as leaders in war. First, how do they define this conflict? Second, how do they define success? Finally, how do they think victory can be achieved? As we watch the debate this week, we should bear these questions in mind, listen for answers and judge the candidates accordingly.

The first test is potentially the most important, because all else follows from it. What kind of conflict are we in? The Bush administration has striven to make the case that we are in a war much like World War II. Both the president and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly implied this. Cheney has often made specific analogies to it. The president's supporters explain that in a life-and-death struggle with a mortal foe, you have to fight anywhere and everywhere. Things don't always go well. Churchill and Roosevelt made many mistakes during the second world war. But they kept pressing forward. Looking back today, who knows if the North African invasion was worthwhile? Sometimes you take the wrong hill. That's war.

It's a powerful interpretation because, if accepted, it gives the administration a virtual carte blanche. All errors are forgiven, all blunders swept aside, all excesses dwarfed by the overarching conflict. Iraq may have been badly handled, but it is just one front in a many-front war. Abu Ghraib may have been appalling, but consider the pressures. During World War II, the United States interned Japanese-American civilians. It wasn't right, but it was war.

An alternative interpretation would hold that we are not in a classic war with a powerful and identifiable country. Rather, this new war is really much more like the cold war. It has a military dimension, to be sure, but in large part it's a political, economic and social struggle for hearts and minds. In such a conflict, as in the cold war, the question of where and how military force is used is crucial. Its battlefield successes always have to be balanced against political effects. An understanding of culture and nationalism becomes key because the goal is more complex than simple military victory. It is creating like-minded societies. Thus, if you are not sophisticated in your application of power, you can find yourself in a situation like Vietnam where you win every battle but lose the war.

One can argue that this is precisely the situation in Iraq, where America could easily crush the insurgency but at a political price that would make victory utterly counterproductive. And beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, of course, the conflict becomes even more complex and less military. In Iran and North Korea, the military option is more bluster than fact. And how does one defuse militant extremism in, say, Indonesia, Morocco and Egypt? By working with those governments to find terrorists, and with those societies to help modernize them. And if this is the bulk of the task going forward, does it really resemble a war?