As Americans roll merrily along from the Olympics into the Democratic and Republican conventions it is worth thinking about what foreign affairs issues should be on the agenda of the two parties.

There are three factors which suggest that what is said about international affairs at the two conventions doesn't matter a massive amount. This has more to do with the nature of the conventions than the issues themselves, which are, for the country, mightily important.

The first is that successful presidential candidates do not feel themselves especially bound after the elections by what they have said during the campaign. By the time the campaign is over the electorate is so exhausted by having been pounded by speech after speech that no one has the energy or the disposition to look back and see what a candidate said about the U.S. relationship with China, for example, during the campaign.

That is, unless the issue has become a critical point of differentiation between the candidates and of interest to the electorate during the final months of the campaign. That this is unlikely is the second factor.

U.S. positions in foreign affairs are generally based on interests. These do not change radically from one administration to another. There are definitely different approaches. In recent years there were differences between those of Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and (a pause for heavy breathing) George W. Bush. But some of this was rhetoric, some was posturing and much was intended for domestic consumption, not influencing the actual conduct of U.S. foreign relations overseas.

This is not to give the George II administration an E-ZPass zip through the toll booth of history. Some of its policies have been catastrophic in their results for the United States of America. They have reflected the character of this administration -- its oil-company-first, last-and-always orientation; its scare-'em-if-you-can approach to political campaigning; its unrelenting ideological dedication to ignorance and indifference to what other countries think of U.S. policies; and a deadly-for-America reliance on military-first approaches to problems.

The military approach is prevailing to the end. The Bush administration's response to the troubles in the Caucasus between Georgia and Russia has, again, been preeminently military. A U.S. Navy ship sent to a Georgian port with more to come and a new anti-ballistics missile base negotiated with Poland even though it already is protected by NATO have been the first moves the Bush administration has taken, in spite of the supposedly sophisticated knowledge of Russia possessed by its top foreign policy expert, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has to know what a military approach to a problem with Russia will produce in response. (In this case it produced a heartwarming threat by the deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces of a nuclear attack against Poland.)

The third factor causing any statements on foreign affairs made at the political conventions not to carry much water is the fact that American elections in general are about the state of the American economy. This remains the case even as the state of the American economy becomes more and more tightly interlinked with the state of the world.

Here are the issues, foreign affairs and otherwise, that should dominate the conventions:

• First, how to bring the Iraq war -- long, and costly in lives and treasure -- to an end. The war has a lot to do with the economy and is deeply rooted in the conduct of America's foreign relations. To argue otherwise would be to maintain that there is no relationship between the price of oil, the state of affairs in the Middle East and the rest of the world's perception of the United States.

• The second, new and unfortunate, is the slip-sliding of the United States back into a state of Cold War with Russia, a new Russia rich with oil and resentful of the effort on the part of the Bush administration to stand on its toes in the fractious Caucasus. This action on the part of the Bush administration gives America's NATO allies an advanced case of nerves, reflected in both their political and economic perceptions of us. Suppose the Bush administration had somehow persuaded the other 18 members of NATO to accept the membership of Georgia in that organization? NATO would now be at war with Russia. And the Republicans would be ahead in the polls?

Given the critical trading and financial relationship between the United States and Europe this, too, is an important economic as well as political issue.

• The third foreign affairs-related issue that will be present if not spoken of at the conventions is the relationship between the overall health of the American economy and any administration's ability to carry out an effective, persuasive foreign policy in world councils. The present state of affairs -- rising inflation, ruinous fuel prices, widespread home foreclosures, stagnant wages -- with the leaders of the two parties offering either anodyne bromides, such as "change," or more of the same for four more years cannot inspire foreign leaders to expect any kind of useful leadership from the United States.

Instead, they watch American leaders playing in the economic ashes of the ordinary voter, whom they have burned at the stake, while the voter dithers between choosing a relic of a long-ago war or screwing up the courage to opt for a future in spite of racial prejudice.