Everyone says that Howard Dean has pulled away from the pack because of his position on the war in Iraq. Of course that means everyone is ignoring everything else Dean and his campaign have achieved. But Dean’s foreign policy remains the single biggest defining factor in the Democratic race so far. In fact, he’s done almost as much to define the rest of the field as George W. Bush. As Bush’s polls rise in the wake of Saddam’s arrest, and Dean comes under new fire, it’s worth taking another look at the leading Democrats’ foreign policy.

DEAN

In journalistic shorthand, Howard Dean is the antiwar candidate. In truth, he is more accurately the anti-Bush candidate. When it comes to the war, he says he always opposed it. Yet his actual positions on Saddam Hussein, the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and the justification for war, are far more nuanced. If you extract his anti-Bush rhetoric, Dean’s position is not vastly different from his Democratic rivals. He just expresses it with far more vigor.

Take the case of Saddam himself. Listening to the attacks of John Kerry and Dick Gephardt, you could be forgiven for thinking that Dean dismissed Saddam’s capture as meaningless. But this is what Dean said in Los Angeles on Monday: “The capture of Saddam is a good thing, which I hope very much will help keep our soldiers safer. But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer.” Like most of his rivals, Dean thinks Iraq was a diversion from the battle against Al Qaeda terrorists.

As for the war itself, Dean says it was “launched in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at an unbelievable cost.” In other words, his antiwar position is limited to the style and manner of the run-up to war. Peaceniks, beware. If you really loathe all wars, take another look at Dennis Kucinich.

On the positive side, Dean wants to rebuild American alliances and improve intelligence coordination. He wants to spend more on securing loose nuclear material. And he wants to revert to a Carter or Clinton style of peacemaking in the Middle East. You could find many Republicans who want the same. Beneath the rhetoric, Dean is hardly the foreign-policy maverick that has become his caricature.

CLARK

While the rest of the pack delivered worthy speeches this week, Gen. Wesley Clark was showing why they used to call him Supreme Allied Commander. Clark testified about war crimes at the international tribunal in The Hague, a United Nations creation that is helping to remake the former Yugoslavia. Let other candidates blather on about Saddam’s arrest. Clark was instrumental in the downfall of another murderous tyrant: Slobodan Milosevic.

Like Dean, Clark welcomes news of Saddam’s downfall but cautions that Iraq is not about to turn the corner as a result. “The entire resistance in Iraq was not run by a pathetic ex-dictator hiding in a hole,” the retired general told a foreign-policy crowd in The Hague this week. His solution in Iraq is no different from his rivals: getting help from American allies. But his pitch is all the more compelling because of his experience in Kosovo.

“We won the war, in no small measure because Belgrade could not break the will of 19 democracies united in common cause,” Clark said. “I believe alliances are indispensable, not inconvenient,” he continued. “I would rather have capable European forces with a say in making decisions, than to have Tonga and the Marshall Islands with no strings attached.”

Clark’s entire candidacy hinges on this. “The threshold issue in the 2004 campaign is: who is going to keep America safe and best serve as commander in chief,” says Chris Lehane, a consultant to the Clark campaign. Yet Clark is also campaigning as Supreme Allied Commander, promising to revive NATO’s mission with a new charter. In essence, he’s running as both a military and diplomatic whiz, pitching for the White House and State Department at the same time. It’s an ambitious workload, and an unwieldy platform for a campaign.

KERRY

His critics say he’s been unclear on the war. Yet Kerry’s position sounds awfully familiar. He wants to internationalize the war. He thinks it’s been a diversion from the battle against Al Qaeda. What’s unclear about John Kerry is his style of delivery, and the character of the candidate, more than his policy. That’s why he’s set about attacking Dean with such gusto this week: it helps give a sharper definition to his position. “Those who believe today that we are not safer with [Saddam’s] capture don’t have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president,” Kerry said in Iowa on Tuesday.

Kerry’s package of solutions for Iraq amount to executing the Bush administration’s policies successfully. Where the White House failed to get more international troops, Kerry says he would succeed. Where their plan for an Iraqi constitution has struggled, his would include a “reasonable timetable” and therefore succeed. And where the Bushies have stumbled in retraining the Iraqi Army and police, Kerry would ensure, in his campaign’s words, that “the United States needs to do a better job of getting this done.”

This is hardly a revolutionary change of style or substance in Iraq policy–more a matter of nudging it in the right direction. But since Kerry’s position is essentially no different from most of his serious rivals, that’s not solely his problem. The question remains: can Kerry convince the voters he will indeed succeed where Bush has failed? The answer boils down to character.

THE BEST OF THE REST

Joe Lieberman has entered full combat mode against his new sworn enemy, Howard Dean. He’s proving effective in highlighting the more flagrant misstatements by Dean and in displaying his own solid footing in foreign policy. “With Howard Dean, Saddam would be in power,” he said on Tuesday. “With me, he would be in prison.” The only problem here is that Lieberman is drawing a bigger contrast with his own rivals than with the current president. After all, with Bush in power, Saddam is in fact already in prison.

Dick Gephardt says Dean is “playing politics with foreign policy.” That’s a smart way of playing politics with Howard Dean and suggests that Gephardt would never indulge in anything as bad-natured. Gephardt wants to bring NATO into Iraq, end the Bush policy of pre-emption and be tough on the Saudis. Like Dean’s prescriptions, this is a populist pitch–as much as foreign policy can be populist at all. Gephardt has a scrappy foreign policy, worthy of a hard-fought primary season. It’s less of a worldview than an effective piece of, er, politics.

John Edwards wants to focus on “prevention not preemption”: a fine slogan, but hardly a vote-winner. His plan is to spend more on securing loose nukes, and he wants to create a “nonproliferation director” to better coordinate U.S. policy on weapons of mass destruction. Edwards prescriptions are so motherhood and apple pie, he makes Kerry look robust and downright radical.

THE BIGGER FIGHT

The Democratic candidates are offering a broadly similar package: more allied troops in Iraq, better alliances around the world, and a greater focus on Al Qaeda. In December 2003, that sounds just fine as a way of attacking President Bush. But when it comes to a general-election strategy it runs huge risks.

First, the White House can say it already tried to get more allied troops in Iraq. The sad truth is they don’t want to come.

Second, the notion of better alliances is fine. But what if those alliances improve by November of next year? Even the French are trying to patch things up by making the right noises about forgiving Iraq’s debts.

Finally, Al Qaeda. The general election will be fought after a Republican convention in New York that consciously harks back to the president’s finest hours, in the days after the 9/11 attacks. Saying you want to focus on Al Qaeda might just sound a little hollow after the GOP’s celebration in New York.