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(CNN) -- Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton have dueling opinion pieces about foreign policy in The Washington Post on Friday, but neither former presidential candidate appeared to take a stand on the current debate dominating the foreign policy arena: how to deal with ISIS.

Reviewing former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's book "World Order," Clinton writes that she and President Barack Obama share a similar world view as Kissinger, one that's rooted in "a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order."

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Clinton, who's thinking about another run for president in 2016, argues that what makes the country a leader is not only its military strength but its "soft power" -- its values, relationships and diplomacy. She likes to call it "smart power."

While she doesn't mention the emerging crisis related to ISIS, she writes, "it's time for another of our great debates about what America means to the world and what the world means to America."

"We need to have an honest conversation together -- all of us -- about the costs and imperatives of global leadership, and what it really takes to keep our country safe and strong," the Democrat writes.

Romney, in his op-ed, argues that the dominating force that keeps the U.S. on top is its military strength and that one can't equate that with soft-power values. Widely seen as the GOP's party elder, Romney warns that decreasing military budgets can lead to disastrous outcomes.

"The most ludicrous excuse for shrinking our military derives from the president's thinking: 'Things are much less dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, 25 years ago or 30 years ago.' The 'safer world' trial balloon has been punctured by recent events in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Gaza, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria and Iraq," the 2012 GOP nominee writes.

" 'Failures of imagination' led to tragedy 13 years ago; today, no imagination is required to picture what would descend on the United States if we let down our guard," he continues.

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Romney, Clinton duel on op-ed pages