Mitt Romney attacked the president’s foreign policy today in a speech at the Virginia Military Institute. The Obama team was having none of it.
“We’re not going to be lectured by someone who’s been an unmitigated disaster on foreign policy every time he’s dipped his toe in the foreign policy waters,” said [Obama] campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Romney spent 80% of his speech making nagging little complaints about the president’s stellar foreign policy record. His only ideas were to increase defense spending (especially on the Navy), get involved in Syria’s civil war, stay longer in Afghanistan, make more bellicose threats against Iran, cozy up more to Israel’s right-wing government, and to make all foreign aid in the Arab World conditional on them endorsing Israel’s (and our) foreign policy.
He didn’t mention allies like Australia, South Korea or Japan. He didn’t mention Latin America except to lie once again by saying that the president hasn’t signed any new free trade agreements (tell that to Panama, Colombia or South Korea). Romney didn’t have anything to say about our relations with Pakistan. His only new policy for NATO was to demand that they spend more money on weapons.
He actually said the following:
It is time to change course in the Middle East. That course should be organized around these bedrock principles: America must have confidence in our cause, clarity in our purpose and resolve in our might. No friend of America will question our commitment to support them… no enemy that attacks America will question our resolve to defeat them… and no one anywhere, friend or foe, will doubt America’s capability to back up our words.
Correct me if I am wrong, but confidence, strength, and resolve are not principles. You cannot base your foreign policy on those things. You can have confidence in your principles and you can be resolved to promote and defend your principles with strength, but those things are not, in themselves, principles.
Romney doesn’t really articulate his principles except insofar as he is willing to withhold foreign aid from countries who don’t share them.
I will make further reforms to our foreign assistance to create incentives for good governance, free enterprise, and greater trade, in the Middle East and beyond. I will organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results. I will rally our friends and allies to match our generosity with theirs. And I will make it clear to the recipients of our aid that, in return for our material support, they must meet the responsibilities of every decent modern government—to respect the rights of all of their citizens, including women and minorities… to ensure space for civil society, a free media, political parties, and an independent judiciary… and to abide by their international commitments to protect our diplomats and our property…In Egypt, I will use our influence—including clear conditions on our aid—to urge the new government to represent all Egyptians, to build democratic institutions, and to maintain its peace treaty with Israel. And we must persuade our friends and allies to place similar stipulations on their aid.
So, Romney supports the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, human rights, freedom of speech, and democracy. That makes him different from which United States president? That promotes which principle that is currently being neglected?
If anything, it’s Obama who has been willing to be different. He didn’t try to put the lid on the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring. He went to Cairo and encouraged the Arab people to pursue justice. Then he carefully managed the resulting unrest and political turmoil. For once, America didn’t sell its principles in the Middle East for a little bit of stability.
Romney is like a swarm of gnats. He has nothing interesting to say about foreign policy, but is annoying nonetheless.
