At Foreign Policy in Focus on October 16, in an article titled Six Global Issues The Foreign Policy Debates Won’t Touch, acting editor Peter Certo wrote:
“There is no other policy arena in which the president of the United States has greater latitude than foreign affairs. With U.S. foreign policy less constrained by Congress and relatively free from the media scrutiny that attends the president’s more domestic endeavors, foreign affairs largely remains the domain of the commander in chief. Indeed, broadcast regularly into living rooms all across the globe, the U.S. president is often the singular face of the United States of America in the world—especially in lands where few Americans tread.
“Yet global issues routinely get short thrift in presidential debates, especially in yet another election year characterized by economic malaise and divisive social issues. And with media coverage focused primarily on the performance of the candidates and the debates’ impact on the national horserace, crucial questions about how the United States behaves on the world stage routinely fall between the cracks. This neglect is exacerbated by the fact that, when it comes to foreign policy, there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the major candidates.
“In the interest of keeping vital global issues in the discussion, Foreign Policy in Focus reached out to scholars at the Institute for Policy Studies.”
We also reached out to those outside the IPS community. Kenneth Anderson weighed in thusly:
One thing that almost never appears on the radar, even for people with finely tuned radar, is the global machinations of corporate GMO pushers (esp. Monsanto), the various troubles that are becoming more and more manifest (superweeds, new parasites), and the rising suspicions that GMO are, or already have, introduced a host of health problems to the general population.
A Wikileaks document revealed how the US government was doing Monsanto’s duty by coercing the Sarkozy administration to relax GMO regulations in France. The EU remains resistant, and is about the only place that conducts research into GMO effects on mammals (see the recent “New study suggests tumors & organ damage from GMO foods“). Monsanto has been pushing, or is trying to push, their GMO onto farmers around the world, driving farmers in India into debt, despair and record suicides. Farmers in the US are routinely harassed by Monsanto lawyers, while evidence exists that agents purposefully seed fields with Monsanto grain where farmers have resisted using their seeds. Mega-soybean growers in South America — all using Monsanto GMO soy — are deforesting Amazonia, and devastating local ranching and farming in Argentina and elsewhere.
This is a global issue, and one which, so far as I have seen, is never discussed at any political level.