Continuing a list of reasons why Perry would struggle in a general election campaign…
3. Perry’s knowledge of foreign policy does not seem very impressive based on his performance at the Orlando debate.
When asked what he would do if the Taliban gained control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, Perry said (in a response so bad that you almost have to listen to it to believe it):
Well, obviously, before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region. That’s one of the things that this administration has not done. Yesterday, we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with … and that’s the terrorist group directly associated with the Pakistani country. So, to have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States. For instance, when we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F-16s, we chose not to do that. We did the same thing with Taiwan. The point is, our allies need to understand clearly that we are their friends, we will be standing by there with them.
It was good to find there was a point to his rambling answer: if our allies know that we are their friends, there will apparently be no problem if the Taliban gets access to nukes.
Compared to the logic of Perry’s garbled response, it’s a rather minor point that India chose not to buy F-16s from the US, rather than the US choosing not to sell F-16s to India.
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