In the last three presidential elections, foreign policy played second fiddle to the economy, health care and pensions.
But Jay's letter shows that the Foreign Office was convinced that foreign policy played a key role in radicalising young Muslims.
To the extent that foreign policy plays a role, a senior official said, it is more likely to pose a downside risk – Europe's debt crisis, for example, or the dislocations caused by the Arab Spring.
On Somalia, the Philippines and all over the world, British foreign policy plays a consistent role, applying sanctions, being involved in negotiations to defuse some of the world's most dangerous situations.
The irony is that, back in the 80s when Sanders was starting his political career as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, foreign policy played an outsized role in his small town mayoralty.
Historically, foreign policy plays a major role in presidential elections only during times of crisis, most notably in the 1968 contest at the height of the Vietnam War and in the 1980 election, during the Iran hostage crisis.
Cage says it has suffered for its outspokenness and doggedly sticking to its world view in the face of government denials that foreign policy plays a role in terrorist violence.
And there are parallels, too, between the role foreign policy played in the 1948 campaign — as a secondary issue that nonetheless probably helped Truman's cause, mostly because his opponent wasn't sure when to agree with the incumbent and when to out-hawk him — and the role it played in the election season we've just experienced.
Jokowi begins his presidency with two high-profile international events the East Asia summit and the G20 summit in the same week, but foreign policy played little part in his campaign, and at least in the short term he will be a more inward-looking president than his predecessor.
Poor President Obama, trying to figure out if the Russians and Iranians are offering trick or treat to America on W.M.D., as he lurches about with a foreign policy played out extemporaneously and ambivalently in "Obama's brain and Ben Rhodes's mouth," as The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier puts it.
