Absurd Analysis of the Iowa Race from the Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations puts out a daily briefing that goes out to its member, key high ranking corporate officials and media throughout the country.

In its breakdown of the Iowa race, it states that there is no difference between the candidates on foreign policies, or for that matter even a difference with the policies conducted by President Obama. Here's the relevant passage:

Top of the Agenda: Presidential Race Kicks Off in Iowa 

Voters today begin caucusing in Iowa (CBS), kicking off a U.S. presidential race likely to be dominated by debate over the economy. Six Republican presidential candidates will compete in their first official test (BBC)of the election season. 

Analysts say it is unlikely that the caucuses will predict the Republican nominee but in the past has caused the early end of some candidacies (Bloomberg). Candidates Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum have been leading opinion polls heading into the voting. According to Politico, thanks to tweaks in the GOP's primary calendar tonight's results could narrow the field considerably or start off a long unpredictable slog among several candidates through April.
Analysis 

Pressing questions about the economy, jobs, and immigration are among those Iowans want answered,according to a debate published in the New York Times. 

Looking ahead to the Iowa caucuses and upcoming primaries in January, CFR's James Lindsay says Republican candidates are taking aim at President Obama's foreign policies, yet it's unclear what they would do differently.

Now, the brief does link to a CFR member James Lindsay interview that leads off:

James M. Lindsay, CFR's top political analyst, says on foreign policy, that other than Ron Paul who is strongly non-interventionist, Republican candidates "occupy the same space" as internationalists with the aim of questioning President Barack Obama's abilities as commander in chief. "There are probably differences of degree among those candidates, and while they clearly argue that they would produce a better foreign policy than Barack Obama, it's not clear just how different their foreign policy would be," Lindsay says.

But the entire idea of the brief is so that busy executives don't have to read dozens of briefing papers. The CFR Daily Brief is supposed to give the key points of what is going on. In this case, the Brief distorts what is going on, by failing to mention that Ron Paul's foreign policy position is exactly opposite of the other Republican presidential candidates.

Thus, it is impossible for anyone reading the briefing to deduce that Ron Paul's opposition to foreign interventions may be another  important reason for his growing support.

And, that is how the CFR rolls.

Council on Foreign Relations: U.S.-Saudi Relationship Increasingly Strained

The U.S.-Saudi relationship has become strained by increasing mistrust and misunderstanding—most recently over Egypt and Bahrain—and gone are the old foundations of the informal alliance: the Cold War and U.S. operation of Riyadh's oil fields. This is according to F. Gregory Gause III in a Special Report written for the Council on Foreign Relations: Saudi Arabia in the new Middle East.

Gause writes that Saudi Arabia is the "least affected of the major Arab states by the upheavals of 2011." He explores the foundations of Riyadh's present political stability and concludes that the House of Saud is likely to remain in place.

Gause says that Saudi concerns about the Iranian nuclear program

are so intense that they have signaled in numerous ways that—without saying it directly—they would feel it necessary to obtain their own nuclear deterrent if faced with an Iranian nuclear capacity...Riyadh would, in all probability, support an American military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, allowing U.S. forces access to Saudi facilities if needed (though without any publicity) and upping oil production to try to calm markets in the immediate aftermath, if Washington chose that path. But the Saudis would also blame the United States for any Iranian counterstrike.

Council on Foreign Relations Asks if Ron Paul Has a Foreign Policy Problem

Yes, the elitists think Ron Paul isn't warmonger enough to win. In a "2012 Campaign Roundup", the CFR states under the headline "Is Foreign Policy a Problem for Ron Paul?":

A common trope so far in campaign 2012 is the argument that Republicans have turned isolationist. Someone apparently forgot to tell voters in Iowa. Polls currently have Ron Paul running fourth there. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports that what’s hurting him with many Iowa Republicans is his non-interventionist foreign policies...

The reservations that Iowans have about Paul’s foreign policy views are striking. Why? Because the Midwest has historically been a stronghold of isolationist sentiment in America, and Iowa is the most Midwestern of states. (Indeed, Hollywood delights in movies in which Iowans are reluctant to go to war.) So perhaps “isolationism” doesn’t quite capture the complexity of the debate within the Republican Party on foreign policy...

But by the end of their report, they hedge their bets and quote a CFR president emeritus, who thinks Ron Paul is one of the few who knows what actually is going on in the world:

Les Gelb, CFR’s president emeritus, worries that Republican presidential candidates are looking backward to a “bygone world of dire military threats” rather than forward toward the new truth of world politics—economics matters. Looking back at the CNN presidential debate last week, Gelb observes:

The real shocker was how all those candidates, save for [Ron] Paul and [Jon] Huntsman, almost totally neglected the now-central economic dimension of international affairs. Only those two noted the new reality of world politics—that economic strength now matters more than military might.

The gathering eurozone crisis may force the GOP presidential hopefuls to address the topic of international economics, regardless of whether they are ready to or not.