Worldview: GOP field makes sorry showing on foreign policy

When it comes to foreign policy, the current Republican candidates are so incoherent they make George W. Bush look like a savant.

I know that what candidates say on foreign affairs on the stump is often abandoned once in office. Yet it certainly looks as if the old guard of Republican foreign-policy experts is obsolete in the age of angry tea party populism. At a time when diplomatic savvy is desperately needed, outrageous remarks get the most cheers from the base.

The comments on international affairs at Republican debates are often so clueless they've become grist for satire in foreign capitals. Believe me, they aren't helping efforts to assert U.S. leadership abroad.

Take Monday's debate in South Carolina. One might have hoped the absence of Herman "Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan" Cain and Michele Bachmann would have elevated the discussion.

But along came Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who has confused India and Pakistan in the past) with his claim that NATO ally Turkey is run by "Islamic terrorists." Perry went on to lump Turkey with Syria and Iran.

"Not only is it time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to be in NATO," Perry stated, "but it's time for the United States, when we look at their foreign aid, to go zero with it."

Perry has it exactly backward. Turkey's elected leaders, who come from a party with Islamic roots, are prickly and some of their policies are questionable, including a crackdown on domestic critics. But this Turkish government is the key offset to Iranian influence in the region.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken a strong stand against the Assad regime's slaughter in Syria, and helped stabilize Iraq; he has permitted NATO early warning radars to be based on Turkish soil. Erdogan even lectured Egypt's victorious Islamist parties on the virtues of a secular state.

As for U.S. "foreign aid" to prospering Turkey, that amounted to only $5.4 million in 2011, most of it for security programs in which the United States has a shared interest. Perhaps Perry confused Turkey with Pakistan (which does get substantial U.S. aid).

One could laugh off the Texan's gaffes were it not that, amazingly, he's still in the running. His remarks got huge play inside Turkey, and prompted a strong Turkish government rebuttal.