For the Undecided Voter

If you, like me, have not yet decided which candidate to support in the primaries and care deeply about their foreign policy positions, you may be interested in the series of articles that Foreign Affairs has been running since the summer. In each issue, a Democratic and a Republican candidate present their foreign policy platforms. It makes for interesting reading.
The two candidates on my short list, Obama and Clinton, took many of the same positions – multilateralism, participation in international institutions, engagement with China and Russia, military withdrawal from Iraq – but with rather different tones. While Obama emphasizes partnership over patronage as our mode of interaction with other states and seeks to pursue “the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders” as the best means of ensuring American security and well-being, Clinton talks about “build[ing] the world we want,” and contrasts ideological decision-making with fact-driven analysis as our mode of determining our course of action. Obama calls upon the images of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy as visions of inspired, world-changing leadership, while Clinton calls emphatically for “more than vision” in outlining her policy prescriptions.
Of course, there’s more: check out Huckabee, McCain, Giuliani, Edwards, and Romney for the full array of would-be presidential views thus far.

Ministerial Mindbender

Today's puzzler:
Prime Minister of a former Soviet Socialist Republic for 9 months in 2005, this woman, who wears braids with the same aplomb that Bella Abzug (right) once wore hats, is the author of an alert essay on Russia, in the same Foreign Affairs edition that contains the Hunt article described above.
Who is she, and what country did she lead?
Answer below.

Does sex matter?

'Way back on February 12 Chris Brummer asked at blackprof.com (our newest "connections" link) "Is there such a thing as an 'African-American' foreign policy position?" News this week prompts a question in the same vein:
Is there such a thing as a 'woman's' policy position?
Arguments in the affirmative are well known. There's Carole Gilligan's A Different Voice, as well as the widespread though less erudite sense that women are better listeners, more caring, more nurturing. The notion seems consistent with the "Refugee Roulette" findings that, as Lakshmi Bai wrote, women immigration judges granted asylum 44% more often than men. And yet a look at individual women who've led their countries reveals many counterexamples -- "Iron Ladies" like Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, who, for good or ill, pursued policies as tough as those of any tough man.
Swanee Hunt (right) has answer to this enigma. A former U.S. ambassador to Austria now at the Kennedy School, Hunt urges readers of the May/June Foreign Affairs to "Let Women Rule." Though contending that women do govern differently, her essay acknowledges the "'masculinity'" of some past women leaders. What's needed to "change norms," Hunt argues, is a cohort, a "critical mass of female leaders" -- "approximately 30 percent of officeholders have to be female to for a significant effect to be felt on policy."
Surely there's comfort in numbers. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg admits to being "'lonely'" since Sandra Day O'Connor retired last year, and Ginsburg's oral dissents in cases that've cut back on women's rights underscore the new singularity of her voice.
But will reaching 30% make policy different? What do you think?