With the third and final presidential debate, what was unsaid is far more revealing than what was said. MSN's Tom Phillips suggests the rather depressing game of going to the transcript of the evening, hitting cmd+F, and typing in various keywords for important foreign policy areas.
It's a rough-and-ready form of statistical analysis, but some of the exclusions are terrifying.
No mention at all of "climate" or "environment" (used in the ecological sense) carries over a trend from the first two debates. Climate change is not something either of these candidates want to talk about: so they don't. That's not to say there aren't differences between them when it comes to policy to tackle the issue, but the one thing they both know is that saying anything concrete on it is likely to be political poison.
There was also no mention at all of India or Brazil, and South Africa only got one mention when Romney declared that he would treat Ahmadinejad as though he was a member of the apartheid regime. The other two BRICS economies got far more airtime, though, with a "China" count of 32 and a Russia count of 10.
Of the three major macroeconomic crises the world could face in the coming year, just one - the US fiscal cliff - is domestic. The risk of a Chinese "hard landing" (that is, the risk that China's miraculous growth will end with a bang) got no discussion, but at least China itself was covered amply. The third is the Eurozone. Which got no mentions. No mentions either for the euro. And "Europe" was dropped just once, when Obama decided to show off about how much we love him:
Governor Romney, our alliances have never been stronger. In Asia, in Europe, in Africa, with Israel where we have unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation, including dealing with the Iranian threat.
Despite the ongoing embargo, and the strong difference between the two candidate's stance on its continuation, "Cuba" was mentioned just once as the historical location of the missile crisis, while "Guantanamo" - one of Obama's most glaring failed promises - got no mention at all. There are still 167 detainees in the Guanatamo Bay camp.
The most telling distinction of all was that in the Middle East. "Palestine" wasn't said once, while "Palestinians" got its sole use in this passage from Romney:
Is — are Israel and the Palestinians closer to — to reaching a peace agreement? No, they haven’t had talks in two years.
Israel was mentioned a total of 34 times, more than any country other than America itself. (Although "China" and "Chinese" combined got 35 outings.)
I feel like these debates are always a Mean Girls three-way phone call where one of the candidates doesn't know Israel is on the other line.
— Jack Moore (@BuzzFeedJack) October 23, 2012
One of Obama's strongest hits of the night may have been attacking Romney over the fact that the latter brought his donors with him on his trip to Israel, but it's clear that America's closest ally doesn't run much risk of losing that position any time soon.