(CNN)The second presidential debate showed the poor choice American voters face in November's election, at least on foreign policy. That was no clearer than on an issue that has vexed the Obama administration, and which has exposed the shortcomings of the foreign policy establishment's thinking: Syria.

Sadly, for Americans, both candidates' views on US policy to Syria are misguided and even dangerous.

Although a hawkish Hillary Clinton promised in Sunday's debate not to use American ground forces in the Syrian civil war, she didn't seem to count US Special Forces or military trainers already on the ground in the region. Even more troubling, she still backs a "no-fly zone" in Syria, apparently in part to obtain leverage in negotiations with the Russians over the troubled country's future. She would also ramp up assistance to the Kurds and target the leader of the ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Of course, all this promises a gradual escalation, a la Vietnam, for the same reason -- competition with Russia over a nonstrategic, backwater country. When these initial US actions fail to have the desired US outcome -- whatever that is -- such escalation will likely become necessary because "we can't let cocky Vladimir Putin humiliate the world's superpower." Such escalation might be more dangerous than it was in Vietnam; the creation of a US no-fly zone might cause American aircraft to come into direct and overt hostile contact with those of a nuclear-armed nation

The Cold War has been over for a quarter-century and Russia is only a shadow of the Soviet Union, yet old rivalries and ways of operating die hard. The Russians care more about Syria than does the United States -- and should -- because that country is the only ally they have left in the Middle East. Yet the US government regards Russian boldness in Syria as threatening US global dominance.

It is difficult to limit competition with Russia over Syria when the US foreign policy establishment sees the situation through these lenses -- the way it was with American involvement in Vietnam when the US-Soviet rivalry loomed. And the reality is that if the United States gets dragged into a third quagmire, this time in Syria (Iraq and Afghanistan alone have cost between $4 trillion and $6 trillion) and if the domestic entitlements and debt crisis continue at home, the United States might no longer be able to afford, in the long term, being a superpower.

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Ivan Eland is a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute. The views expressed are his own.