NightSwimmer
Senator
Mitt Romney's overseas trip revealed his clumsy grasp of protocol, diplomacy, social graces and message control, but what did it tell us about Romney's actual foreign policy positions?
Some are promoting the idea that the actual distance between the foreign policy positions of Romney and Obama aren't so great, once you get past the rhetoric. Fred Kaplan takes a closer look in this article:
Reckless Romney
First, on many issues, Romney has articulated no views at all, except contradictory ones. He has criticized Obama for withdrawing prematurely from Afghanistan, but has also said he’d abide by the same 2014 deadline (which NATO set at Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s request). He has blamed Obama for causing “the Arab winter” (as he calls it), but hasn’t explained how he would have handled the uprisings differently or controlled their outcomes any better. (Would he have bolstered Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt? Funneled more aid to the rebels? In either case, how, and to what end?)
Second, there are many crucial issues on which the two disagree profoundly. Romney has denounced Russia as America’s “number-one geopolitical foe” and assailed the New START arms-reduction treaty as a danger to national security. U.S.-Russian relations aren’t without their tensions, but the realms of cooperation opened up by Obama’s “reset” policy—on trade, counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, Iranian sanctions, among others—are well worth preserving. Romney has said he would declare China to be a “currency manipulator,” which could well unleash a trade war that we cannot afford. He has called for spending 4 percent of GNP on the military, as distinguished from Obama’s 3 percent, without saying how he would spend it or where he would get the extra $1 trillion over the next six years.
Not least, there is the issue of Iran. It is often stated that both Romney and Obama call for ratcheting up sanctions against Iran and for taking no military option “off the table.” But Romney went further than this on his European trip, or at least his senior foreign-policy adviser Dan Senor did. “If Israel has to take action on its own,” Senor said in a briefing before Romney’s speech in Jerusalem, “the governor would respect that decision.”
Some are promoting the idea that the actual distance between the foreign policy positions of Romney and Obama aren't so great, once you get past the rhetoric. Fred Kaplan takes a closer look in this article:
Reckless Romney
First, on many issues, Romney has articulated no views at all, except contradictory ones. He has criticized Obama for withdrawing prematurely from Afghanistan, but has also said he’d abide by the same 2014 deadline (which NATO set at Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s request). He has blamed Obama for causing “the Arab winter” (as he calls it), but hasn’t explained how he would have handled the uprisings differently or controlled their outcomes any better. (Would he have bolstered Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt? Funneled more aid to the rebels? In either case, how, and to what end?)
Second, there are many crucial issues on which the two disagree profoundly. Romney has denounced Russia as America’s “number-one geopolitical foe” and assailed the New START arms-reduction treaty as a danger to national security. U.S.-Russian relations aren’t without their tensions, but the realms of cooperation opened up by Obama’s “reset” policy—on trade, counterterrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, Iranian sanctions, among others—are well worth preserving. Romney has said he would declare China to be a “currency manipulator,” which could well unleash a trade war that we cannot afford. He has called for spending 4 percent of GNP on the military, as distinguished from Obama’s 3 percent, without saying how he would spend it or where he would get the extra $1 trillion over the next six years.
Not least, there is the issue of Iran. It is often stated that both Romney and Obama call for ratcheting up sanctions against Iran and for taking no military option “off the table.” But Romney went further than this on his European trip, or at least his senior foreign-policy adviser Dan Senor did. “If Israel has to take action on its own,” Senor said in a briefing before Romney’s speech in Jerusalem, “the governor would respect that decision.”
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