This past week Russian President Vladimir Putin, advocate for rebuilding the old Russian empire, revealed how many believe he will indefinitely hold on to power. It was exposed that someone in China attempted a highly skilled and precise hacking of one of our most secretive nuclear research laboratories. The National Intelligence Estimate said Iran stopped actively building nuclear weapons, but warned that its confidence in this assessment was only moderate. And insurgents continue to do battle on a daily basis with American forces in the streets of Iraq.

This was all just one week, a few days, in the foreign policy of the United States. In the midst of this troublesome time, the United States is preparing for election year, judging candidates by their stances on issues near and dear to each of us, including our nation’s foreign policy.

We judge them on their stances, their speeches, and their histories, using tools our teachers taught us, the media and our parents. We call them doves or war hawks, contented with this limiting and, in some cases demonizing, framework.

Yet, is this dichotomy really sufficient to judge the merits of those seeking the most powerful office in the world?

At one point there was trichotomy in policy formulation, a recognition that between the two extremes a third camp of moderates existed. These moderates, perhaps best characterized as true hawks, abhorred war every bit as much as their dove counterparts, hoping steadfastly to avoid it.

But the key difference between the hawks and the doves was that the hawks drew a certain line in the sand, a mark beyond which the price paid to avoid war was greater than the price of war. To these true hawks, war was sometimes a necessary evil, an option that can never be idealistically abandoned so long as we function in the real world.

To the doves, this moderate group represents the greatest threat to their agenda. The warmongers, in effect, dig their own graves, their ideas far too belligerent for the mainstream of American politics and culture. Even the doves are more appealing than this group.

The true hawks, however, make the most sense, possess the most rational policy objectives and ideologies, and appeal to the broadest base of American voters. They perpetually threaten to undo what meager progress the doves have made towards aligning American policy with a European-style doctrine.

But the problem with these moderates is that they are not so easily subject to the sort of attacks that radical left- or right-wing politicians are. The answer to this conundrum was found in America’s obsession with dichotomies, and if the hawks could be made into bedfellows with the warmongers, both could be simultaneously demonized under a single category: the war hawks.

The winners in this game of politics are the extreme left, who gave themselves traction on issues by demonizing their opponents and building a base of support great enough to capture the attentions of Democratic candidates running for president.

Beholden to this far-left camp, each of the frontrunners has called for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and pledged to establish diplomatic relations with rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea. Ironically it was one of their own, fellow candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., whose campaign fought heartily during the YouTube debate to ask the candidates a simple question: What next? Though the question was not asked, his query raised eyebrows because it made evident the unrealistic expectations thrust upon national political leaders by groups advocating radical agendas.

The losers in this game of politics are the people who, because of their realistic worldviews, are referred to sneeringly as crazed warmongers. And because they are made to be warmongers, their ideas are scoffed at as well. In a world as troubled and divided as ours, with China rising in the ranks and terrorism showing no signs of diminishing in influence or scale, there could not be a worse time for the doves to launch an unfounded assault against the character and value of the hawks and their ideas.

As the election season approaches rapidly, and the democratic principles of the nation allow us to select our next leader we need to keep this political struggle in mind, and not be swayed by the smear campaigns of one group against another.

America cannot afford a dove, nor can it afford a warmonger, in the Oval Office. The times ahead are simply too perilous, the future of our national status too close to a dangerous precipice, to allow either extreme to dominate politics and reshape our foreign policy to fit a radical agenda.

The next president, whether Democrat or Republican, needs to be a true hawk, recognizing the value of diplomacy, but drawing a line in the sand for which no peace is ever worth crossing.