Steve Andreasen and Steven N. Simon: Beyond war, how engaged are we?

"We have to decide today whether we will design the future or resign ourselves to it."

HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

As the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 1968, Hubert Humphrey ran when an unpopular U.S. president was in his last months in office, an unpopular war was being fought overseas and a turbulent debate was underway over America's role in the world. Today, history is repeating itself. And Humphrey's words remain a useful guide for judging our presidential candidates and their approach to the most immediate national-security issue they face (the crisis in the Middle East), as well as the most consequential (nuclear weapons).

President Bush's decision to "surge" additional U.S. combat forces into Iraq last spring, combined with Congress' inability to legislate a withdrawal, guarantees that a sizable contingent of U.S. troops will be in Iraq in January 2009. The future of that American force -- and more broadly, whether America should make a more determined effort to "design" the future of the Middle East -- will be the most immediate issue for our next president.

The candidate chorus regarding U.S. troops in Iraq ("should they stay or should they go") is already being heard, and rightly so: It will go far in defining America's role in the region. That said, the essential question for voters is which of the candidates are moving beyond the issue of the status of our troops to advocate the need for a deeper economic and political commitment to the region.

The outcome of our struggle with radical Islam -- including but scarcely limited to Iraq -- will depend on the ability to provide better education and economic opportunity to youths in the Middle East who are disconnected from the benefits of the global economy and thus susceptible to arguments that "globalization" is harmful to Islam. A large-scale U.S. and European trade-and-aid program will be necessary. Indeed, without such an effort -- including a more-liberal trade policy and more-effective management of our foreign-assistance programs -- it may be impossible to design a future involving a large, educated middle class in the region that is tolerant of our interests. Foreign aid is never a popular campaign issue, but the absence of increasing foreign assistance as part of an electoral mandate for our next president will severely hamstring any attempt to wrestle funding from Congress.

The United States has paid a heavy price for disengaging from the peace process for most of the past seven years, resigning itself to follow the currents generated by internal Israeli and Palestinian politics. While the Bush administration has recently moved from the position of observer to active participant, a comprehensive settlement before January 2009 is unlikely. Voters should consider which of our presidential candidates is foreshadowing a personal -- and political -- commitment to design a future involving a Palestinian state that ensures the basic needs of the Palestinian people and does not threaten the security of Israel.

While the Middle East is the most immediate issue for the next president's first year in office, the danger of nuclear weapons looms as potentially the most consequential. Clandestine nuclear weapons programs like those in North Korea and Iran, unsecured nuclear weapons materials, the spread of weapons technology and terrorism all contribute to the growing risk of a nuclear weapon being used. Moreover, if a nuclear weapon explodes anywhere on the globe, it will challenge American civil liberties and freedoms and change the world as we know it.

Nuclear-weapons policy has been stagnant. The good news is that a bipartisan group of former Cold Warriors -- led by former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Sen. Sam Nunn -- have been working to define a new policy, making clear that reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming "increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective," and that none of the steps we are taking now is "adequate to the danger."

The policy hinges on a two-part formula: reasserting the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and identifying practical measures toward achieving that goal. The group's framework is generating intense interest overseas and positive reviews at home: The Dallas Morning News, for example, recently editorialized that "these are not the musings of crazed leftist peaceniks. They are some of the most level-headed, conservative and pragmatic leaders of modern times who, coincidentally, helped bring about another once inconceivable achievement: ending the Cold War."

A final question for voters: Are there any of our presidential candidates who care to join these four men in designing a more-secure future that reverses reliance on nuclear weapons globally and envisions -- as did Ronald Reagan -- a world without nuclear weapons?

Steve Andreasen, the director for defense policy and arms control on the National Security Council from 1993 to 2001, teaches at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Steven N. Simon is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.