WASHINGTON » The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have dominated U.S. foreign policy for nine years, but debate about them is all but absent from this year’s midterm election campaigns.

From Wilmington to Cleveland to Seattle, as Republicans try to wrest control of Congress from Democrats, the subjects barely come up. Ditto for President Barack Obama’s stump speech as he zigzags around the country.

He often alludes to Iraq, albeit briefly.

"Because of you, there are 100,000 young men and women who are returning home from Iraq — because of you," Obama said Monday in Providence, R.I.

But he does not mention Afghanistan on the campaign trail — nor, for the most part, do his Republican opponents.

Both Democrats and Republicans appear to have decided that talking about the wars is not in their best interest. Democrats are divided on the war and do not want to air internal divisions in a year when they have so many other problems. Republicans are unified in support of the war in Afghanistan and Obama’s decision to send more troops there, but they see no need to stress an issue on which they are more or less allied with him.

In any case, Republicans certainly do not want to distract attention from the economy, which is working for them as an issue. In addition, Democrats and Republicans have spent more than $1 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 — not the ideal topic to bring up on a campaign trail that is dominated by concern about the budget deficit and the unemployment rate.

The lack of focus on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is a big shift from the 2008 and 2006 election cycles. In 2006, Democrats used voter unhappiness with the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war to help them gain control of Congress. In 2008, Obama stood out from the Democratic field for his early opposition to the Iraq war and his position that the United States should focus more on Afghanistan, and the wars played a key part in the general election campaign until the economy became dominant in the closing stages.

"The big strategic consideration is that the electorate is energized over jobs, not over the war right now," said Peter D. Feaver, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush.

Even in 2006, when the war in Iraq was foremost on the minds of the voting public, Feaver said the White House assessment was that the economy had as big an impact on how Americans were thinking as the Iraq war.

For the White House, the lack of a real foreign policy issue to fight with Republicans about during this campaign season is both a blessing and a curse.

Republicans sided with Obama’s decision to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, although not necessarily with his call to begin bringing them home next summer. And while liberal Democrats are unhappy with Obama’s decision to escalate the fight in Afghanistan, they have yet to challenge the White House over the issue in a concerted way.

"I think the president is an ironic beneficiary of the success of Bush’s Iraq war surge," said Charles Cook, publisher of The Cook Political Report and an independent analyst of congressional races.

At the time Bush ordered more troops to Iraq, many foreign policy experts argued that it was a move bound to fail. It did not.

"So the Afghan surge is getting a honeymoon of some time," Cook said.

But Afghanistan, political analysts say, will almost certainly be a campaign issue in 2012. By then, it will be clear whether Obama’s troop surge in Afghanistan, and his decision to begin bringing troops home next summer, have worked. The president will probably have to fend off challenges from both the right and the left on Afghanistan. From the right, some Republicans — possibly backed by the president’s own military commanders — may argue for staying the course in Afghanistan and for holding off on withdrawing U.S. troops.

Meanwhile, from the left, some Democrats may push the opposite way, arguing that the United States should abandon its troop-heavy counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan that seeks to protect the population and move instead to a counterterrorism strategy that focuses on pounding al-Qaida and other insurgents, using far fewer troops.

In Missouri, Tommy Sowers, a Democrat who is a former Green Beret, has made pulling out of Afghanistan war a major part of his battle to unseat Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican.

For Obama, "if you have any problems with your flank going into re-election, it becomes a big problem," said Cook, recalling that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s primary challenge in 1980 helped to undermine President Jimmy Carter.

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