NEXT WEEK’S ELECTION is rightly regarded as the first presidential contest of the post-9/11 world, but it is also a larger referendum on the role of the United States in the post-Cold War era. Iraq has so dominated the debate that it’s easy to forget that the security challenges of the 21st century extend far beyond Mesopotamia. Among them:

The “greater Middle East.” The most obvious difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry is over their interpretations of what we used to call the “global war on terrorism,” but more recently and more properly is regarded as the political transformation of the Islamic world. The term of art for this vast region, extending from west Africa to Southeast Asia, the “greater Middle East,” is meant to encompass not only terror groups per se, but the governments which have spawned them. John Kerry does not see Iraq as part of this larger problem, except insofar as American intervention there has exacerbated the problem of terror. At no time during the campaign has Kerry given any indication that he recognizes the region-wide pattern of illegitimate, corrupt, despotic, and collapsing regimes that have created the problem of Middle Eastern terrorism. Nor has he articulated anything resembling a strategy to respond. Kerry simply does not see a larger war.