Tonight is, thank heavens, the last debate for this presidential season. It will be on foreign policy. I can tell you in advance what will happen. Each side will tear into the other saying their opponents foreign policy will assure the total destruction of the United States. There will be little of anything but put-down and counter-put-downs.

If I were running for president I would give you very clearly what I would proudly call RJ’s Doctrine:

• You leave us alone and we will leave you alone  –  Lets face it much of the rest of the world, especially those in the Middle East don’t like us very well. The main reason for that is that we continually interfere in their part of the world. We tell one country after another how they are supposed to act, vote, live and how much oil we are expecting from them.  We should just get out where we are not wanted and let the region suffer, or maybe celebrate, the consequences.

• We will take our war machine outside our country by invitation only — If 50% of the countries in a regional conflict want us there then we will consider sending our drones to help them. We have already spent way too much or our human capital (i.e. our kids) in war so that is off the table.

• We will match others contributions to a regional conflict — If the rest of the world is only interested in putting up $50 billion to solve a conflict then that is how much we will spend. If others don’t see the value of a war then we won’t support it.

• We won’t get into another war until the last one is paid for — We have to learn our lessons of the last dozen years or so that putting our wars off-books just moves the debt onto our grandchildren. We need to stop that and do only a pay-as-you-go-war. If it is worth our kid’s lives it is surely worth our immediate dollars.

• Our military will consume no more of our resources than our safety net  — Lets face it, we seem to have a bottomless purse, or more appropriately an endless IOU,  when it comes to our war machine. We need to make sure we take care of ourselves before we run off and “improve” the rest of the world.

• If you invade our country you are toast  –  This is probably the foundation for RJ’s doctrine. You attack us on our soil and we will send so many drones over your borders that nothing will be left of your country. Mr. Bush called a stunted version of this “Shock and Awe”, other have called it “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD). I call it drawing a line in the sand.

I present this list mostly in jest but wouldn’t it be nice to hear a few of these things coming from at least one of these guys tonight? Why do we insist on being the policemen of the world when it is clearly bankrupting us in the process? But in reality our war machine has become so intrinsically linked to our American bravado that no president can openly admit that he wants to reduce it. To do so would be tantamount to denying “God and Country” and that is political suicide.