At the pre-Christmas Democratic debate, Clinton was asked about her advocacy of a no-fly zone in Syria. Photograph by Richard Perry / The New York Times via Redux

Some suspect that the Democratic National Committee, which has sponsored three Presidential debates in 2015, is out to render Hillary Clinton’s two remaining opponents—the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and the socialist New England senator Bernie Sanders—hors de combat. O’Malley and Sanders seem to think so. After all, the past two debates were scheduled on Saturday nights—including the Saturday before Christmas—and it was no surprise that they drew about a third as many viewers as the Republicans, who have had five debates. Clinton’s sparring partners have had fewer chances to embarrass her by bringing up her vote for the 2002 Iraq War resolution, or her interventionist impulses in Libya, or the e-mail controversy. But if that’s been the aim of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic Party chairman, she’s done Clinton no favor. The Republicans, meanwhile, have become more practiced and assured with every outing.

And yet, unlike Clinton, the Republicans—especially cheerfully hawkish ones, like Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, who says he wants to see “if sand can glow in the dark”—have never had responsibility for bombing real people, and have the luxury of sounding ill informed and irresponsible. Foreign policy ought to be Clinton’s best issue, so it’s baffling that she doesn’t take more command of it. She is better informed about international issues than any candidate in either party. But after serving four years as Secretary of State, facing some of what might be in store for the forty-fifth President, her foreign-policy positions often seem confused, most notably when it comes to dealing with the Islamic State and the politics of the Middle East. You heard that during the pre-Christmas Democratic debate, when ABC’s Martha Raddatz tried to pin down Clinton’s advocacy of a no-fly zone in Syria. “ISIS doesn’t have aircraft, Al Qaeda doesn’t have aircraft,” Raddatz pointed out. “So would you shoot down a Syrian military aircraft or a Russian airplane?” Clinton’s reply was that “I do not think it would come to that. We are already de-conflicting air space.” When Raddatz persisted—“But isn’t that a decision you should make now?”—Clinton said that she favored the no-fly zone “because I think it would help us on the ground to protect Syrians.” She sees the dilemma but seems unwilling to deal with it. Without mentioning Iraq or Libya, Sanders put it clearly when he said, “I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change, and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be…. You’ve got to think about what happens the day after.” Clinton didn’t really have a response.

Clinton had faced that sort of questioning before, in September, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” when John Dickerson led her into a swamp of platitudes. When he brought up “arming the Syrian rebels” and asked if “this a bad idea … or was this a good idea, poorly executed?,” the former Secretary of State sounded somewhat passive: “I did recommend that, at the beginning of this conflict, we do more to help train those who were in the forefront of leading the opposition against Assad”—Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria—“looking to try to bring the moderates together.” She continued, “A lot of these rebels, originally, they were—they were businesspeople, they were professional people, they were students. They had no training in going up against the Syrian army, which Assad clearly was going to use to the ultimate effect.” Eventually, she said that “A lot of what I worried about has happened…. So where we are today is not where we were. And where we are today is that we have a failed program.” Ouch. Clinton finally said the sort of thing that some Republicans say when they don’t know what else to say: “But I think we still have to keep working with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with others of our partners. We also have to do more to support the Kurds, something that I have also advocated.” As for a Russian role, Clinton’s sharp response was “Well, I hope we're not turning to the Russians,” even though her successor as Secretary of State, John Kerry, is trying to look for a way to work with Russia in the war against the Islamic State. (The crowd-pleasing Republican view seems to be that of the New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who in the last Republican debate sounded almost eager to shoot down a Russian plane, or perhaps of the Ohio governor John Kasich, who wants to give Russia a “punch in the nose.”)

Henry Kissinger, who, for all his flaws, understood the stakes and possible outcomes when he served as Secretary of State for two Republican Presidents—Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford—has observed that “the complexity of the emerging world requires America to operate within the attainable and to be prepared to pursue ultimate ends by the accumulation of nuance.” It’s not a bad way to look at the seemingly limitless problems that are bound to face the next President, and it’s a useful guidepost for Hillary Clinton, the increasingly presumptive nominee, as she tries to disentangle herself from the knots of her own foreign-policy positions.