A roundtable forum on presidential politics and U.S. foreign relations last week emphasized the importance of restoring diplomatic ties during a time of war.

The panel included former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond and political science Professor Judith Goldstein, who also is a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.

Coit "Chip" Blacker, director of the Stanford Institute for International Studies, served as moderator for the discussion, which kicked off Friday's Reunion Homecoming activities for the approximately 1,700 alumni who filled Memorial Auditorium.

"There's a huge diplomatic task ahead," said Shultz, a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution and secretary of state during the late Ronald Reagan's second presidential term. "Our military capability is strong, but we've allowed our diplomatic capabilities to atrophy."

Shultz started the discussion on an optimistic note, saying that the future "has never been more promising" and that "there is opportunity everywhere." But he said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the threat of radical Islamic groups forced political leaders out of an international police mentality and into war.

He went on to describe how changes in the international landscape, such as aging populations and nuclear capabilities in other countries, necessitate a return to multilateralism. Shultz said, in closing, that America needs to reduce its dependence on oil -- prompting a wide round of applause.

Perry, secretary of defense under former President Bill Clinton, then addressed the crowd; he has publicly endorsed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Perry said he believed in Shultz's foreign policy leadership under Reagan and that his own views on core issues such as coalition building and national security always have been nonpartisan.

But he injected the first moment of levity in describing how he as a Democrat differed from Republicans: "I don't mind paying my taxes," he said. "Somewhere deep down, I believe the welfare of my family depends on the welfare of my neighbor's family."

He then quickly returned to the discussion on diplomacy. While serving in the White House, Perry said he had worked closely with Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus on banning nuclear weapons. He added that, as a result of his diplomatic efforts, two-thirds of the troops in Bosnia during the Kosovo conflict were from NATO and Russia.

"We absolutely need the cooperation of other nations," said Perry, a senior fellow at Hoover, echoing Kerry's stump statement that more than 90 percent of the troops and casualties in Iraq are American. "No matter how strong the U.S. is, we cannot solve this problem by ourselves."

Perry argued that the current administration has not made the necessary effort to reach out to other countries, because of overconfidence in either America's military powers or the administration's own wisdom. President George W. Bush may increase diplomatic efforts if re-elected, but Perry said he is not counting on it.

Goldstein focused on U.S. foreign economic policy. In that arena, she said, no major differences exist between Bush and Kerry. She added that neither candidate has much influence over international trade and investment.

As for outsourcing of jobs, Goldstein said technology and other global factors have played a much bigger role in hurting the nation's economy. "I have to tell you," she said, "it is such a small component of why the U.S. is losing jobs that it is silly to even talk about it."

She picked up on Shultz's point about America's addiction to oil. No new oil fields have been discovered in this country since 1976, and neither candidate wants to discuss how to end what she described as the nation's "love affair with gas."

"Bush thinks we can just keep drilling," she said. "It is the backdrop of so much instability in the world."

Larry Diamond, an expert in developing democracies and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, asked the assembled alumni to imagine what would happen if a nuclear weapon decimated downtown Manhattan or the nation's capital.

That could very well occur within the next decade, he said. Having worked closely with Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser and a former Stanford provost, Diamond said he felt that the administration was convinced that weapons of mass destruction threatened America's safety.

But Diamond stated emphatically that he was not in favor of war, and having been to Iraq, he said the United States has not devoted enough troops or equipment there -- nor did the Bush administration heed strategies for a post-war Iraq outlined by the State Department in 2001.

"We landed on the ground after April 9 without any interpreters in Arabic," Diamond said. "We went to war with an appalling, grossly negligent lack of preparation for the postwar."

-- Michael Pena