Where they stand

Comparing the candidates on a few foreign policy issues

"At this point, I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. But we have to send a clear message to the Iraqi government as well as to the surrounding neighbors that there is no military solution to the problems that we face in Iraq. ... So we have to begin a phased withdrawal; have our combat troops out by March 31 of next year; and initiate the kind of diplomatic surge that is necessary in these surrounding regions to make sure that everybody is carrying their weight. And that is what I will do on day one, as president of the United States, if we have not done it in the intervening months." July 23, 2007

"At the end of the day, we cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. Now, I believe that we can do a lot of things. We can have a league of democracies to impose sanctions and to cut off the -- many of the things and benefits that the Iranians are now getting from other democracies. I think it's clear that the United Nations Security Council will not act effectively with Russia and China behaving as they are. But let's see what Iran has been doing ... Iranians are sending lethal IEDs that are killing American soldiers ... We need to work together with our allies, but at the end of the day, it's the United States of America that will make the final decision." Sept. 5, 2007

"I think Iran continues to be a threat to some of its neighbors in the region, so they're still funding Hamas, they're still funding Hezbollah, and those are things we have to be concerned about. But it is absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology. And that's been the problem with their foreign policy generally. They should have stopped the saber-rattling, should have never started it, and they need now to aggressively move on the diplomatic front." Dec. 4, 2007

IRAQ

IRAN

VLADIMIR PUTIN

"We are going to be there for some period of time, but it's American casualties, not American presence. We've got troops right next door in Kuwait. We'll probably have them there for a long time. We have troops in Bosnia. We've had troops in South Korea for some 50 years. By the way, President Eisenhower didn't bail us out of Korea. But the point is that we need to protect America's national security interest. It's not a matter of presence. It's a matter of casualties. We are succeeding. ... We're not going to talk about timetables or anything else; we're going to talk about winning and what's necessary to win." Jan. 30, 2008

"This is a dangerous person. And he has to understand that there's a cost to some of his actions. And the first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and I don't care what his objections are to it. And he's going to cause us to set up a league of democracies to address issues from Darfur to Burma to Iran and others, because he and the Chinese are blocking meaningful action to keep us in a peaceful world in the United Nations. It's going to be some tough times ahead." Oct. 21, 2007

"Putin has been very clear that he will continue to have the strongest hand in Russia in terms of running the government. ... Just think back to the beginning of President Bush's administration when he ... met with Putin, looked into his eyes and saw his soul, and figured he could do business with him. He then proceeded to neglect our relationship with Russia at a time when Putin was strangling any opposition in the country... And so we did not send a signal to Mr. Putin that, in fact, we were going to be serious about issues like human rights, issues like international cooperation that were critical to us. That is something that we have to change." Feb. 26, 2008