Enuf already: the fixation on Iraq.

As an editor at a magazine covering international affairs, I should be overjoyed that the coming U.S. presidential election is widely touted as the first such contest in decades to focus on foreign policy. Indeed, Howard Dean's antiwar stance has propelled the formerly obscure governor to the forefront of his party's nomination race, while other contenders increasingly deploy their opposition to the war or to President George W. Bush's doctrine of preemption as a campaign rallying cry. Meanwhile, Bush and his national security team seem eager to stake their claim for reelection based on foreign policy, arguing that they have made America safer by waging war in Iraq--the so--called new front of the war on global terrorism--and by capturing deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.

This debate also poses a major problem for all foreign-policy junkies. The sound and fury over Gulf War II has obscured debate on virtually every other key foreign-policy issue that the next president--whether Bush in his second term or a Democratic commander in chief in his first term--will face. The Iraq controversy, whether concerning the war or the subsequent occupation, has effectively hijacked discourse on U.S. foreign policy, in the media as well as in the primary debates. In the first election in years to center on foreign policy, precious little foreign policy has actually been discussed.

Pop quiz. Would Howard Dean cut the defense budget? Did Senator John Edwards vote in favor of a national missile defense system? Would General Wesley Clark seek to renegotiate the Kyoto Protocol on climate change? Did Senator John Kerry vote in favor of expanding the visa program for skilled workers to enter the United States? Did Congressman Dennis Kucinich vote in favor of the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba? Did Richard Gephardt vote in favor of U.S. withdrawal from the World Trade Organization? (The answers, for the record: no, yes, yes, yes, yes, and no. I had to look them up.)

The irony with the fixation on Iraq is that, for all the disagreements over whether the war was justified, there is precious little that any new or repeat occupant of the Oval Office could or would do differently in Iraq now. Virtually all serious candidates agree that the United States must remain in Iraq to ensure the country's security and transition toward democracy. Aside from making tepid pleas to "internationalize" operations, Democrats ranging from Hillary Rodham Clinton to Howard Dean have admitted that "failure is not an option" in Iraq (Clinton) and that the United States cannot simply "cut and run" from Iraq (Dean). Even financier and philanthropist George Soros, who has given millions of dollars to Democratic organizations and calls unseating Bush "the central focus of my life," acknowledges that the U.S. military must stay in Iraq and get the country back on its feet.

Such consensus means the American electorate is being subjected to a largely retrospective foreign-policy debate. Unfortunately, "would've ... should've ... could've" is not the most useful sort of discussion to be having when the nation is seeking to elect its president.

If candidates or journalists truly wish to make foreign policy the focus of the the 2004 election, they must look forward, not back. International trade would be a good place to start. A great irony of the current campaign is that even while the Democrats slam President Bush for alienating the international community, several of them are speaking out against trade agreements or against further opening of U.S. markets to foreign goods. What better way to reach out to the world than to open markets so that foreign farmers and businesses can trade freely with the United States, thus helping reduce poverty and giving all nations a stake in the global economy?

Instead, viewers and voters are treated to empty or tendentious rhetoric. For instance, in the January 11 debate among the Democratic candidates, Gephardt discussed trade and lamented how billions of people live on less than one dollar per day. "It's immoral," he said. Yet, rather than calling for an end to rich nations' trade barriers--which cost poor countries more than $100 billion annually, according to World Bank estimates--he offered a vague and impossible proposal for an "international minimum wage" to be established via the WTO. "We've got to start getting the standards of living up for people all across the world," he explained earnestly. Such calls are uninformed at best, hypocritical at worst.

The Democrats are right to want to mend fences with the rest of the world. To do so, they must debate the issues that matter. Unfortunately, Iraq gets cheap applause, and antitrade positions buy cheap votes. Apparently, all foreign policy is local, too.

Carlos Lozada is the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.