Romney gave a big foreign policy speech at VMI. In it, he shows he has basically been living in a cave since 1980. Bottom line for him: America must be strong and America must lead.
What is missing from his speech is any sense of the failures of the last ten years, particularly the naive imposition of democracy in Iraq, as well as the diplomatic support for chaotic rebels in Egypt . . . interventions that led to an Iranian puppet and a Muslim Brotherhood state respectively.
Missing too is any sense of what we are capable of, but also incapable of. We must have vision, embrace our values, and export them. Above all, we must lead, which is to say, be active.
On a practical level, he says we must support Israel, which is a standard line from both parties that is unfortunately beyond debate. But he also says we must stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, which is a defensible position solely from the viewpoint of American interests. But then what? Support Iranian democracy? Get involved in their elections? All of this is justifiable under the rubric of “leadership” as explicated by Romney.
But, all in all, this speech was very disappointing. Truthfully, I think Romney–like many business guys I’ve met–could not care less about foreign policy. His years in France seem to have left no lasting impression. The mass deindustrialization of America in the last 20 years does not diminish his promotion of free trade. Above all, he has no sense and no guidance of when to act and when to refrain. Like most conservatives, he has no idea clear idea of when a war is a losing proposition that must be abandoned, as our current campaign in Afghanistan must.
He wants to be the next Reagan, but his written-by-others foreign policy neglects to remember that Reagan was a creature of time and place: a diminished economy, much like what we face today, but also a world where American faced a sui generis and aggressive foreign policy threat in the form of the Soviet Union. Unlike today, Reagan inherited a demoralized military gutted by the post-Vietnam malaise of the 1970s. Today we have a strong and capable, if small, military, that is state of the art in every way. Whereas in 1980 out-in-front leadership and universal engagement made sense, today we are in a period of forced austerity, overcommitment, and failed nation-building.
It would be nice to see a little more skepticism from Romney of the kind of leadership that led us to Iraq, Libya, and, God forbid, may lead us into an unwinnable war in Syria. What is most distressing from Romney is that he wants to view the Middle East and our current wars as the mirror image of the Cold War with al Qaeda cast as the Soviet Union. True, both groups were evil, but they share little else in common. Unlike the Cold War, we do not have a once-civilized and Christian Eastern Europe to rescue, nor do we have a moderately predictable nation state on which to focus our energies.
Instead we have a chaotic tar pit of a region, fueled by a bellicose religion that will not easily disappear, that we seem always to harm ourselves by having the least engagement with. The value of more limited policies like punitive raids, deliberate disengagement, and aloofness is totally missing from Romney’s visisin of American “leadership.”
Barack Obama, in spite of himself really, has had some small foreign policy successes out of a combination of indifference to events and a certain skepticism of the more ambitious designs of interventionists. He has prudently stayed out of Syria–more or less–just as he disengaged from Iraq.
While Obama’s motives might include an equally naive endorsement of Third World Nationalism, in practice his policies have led us back to our natural role: one of a strong, but mostly uninvolved trading partner to much of the world, where our chief contribution to the liberty of others is through example. Romney, by contrast, will potentially multiply our enemies and our commitments, just as we should continue a policy of disengagement.
Both men, unfortunately, are steeped in varieties of liberalism and thus each fails to see how important domestic policies like immigration and border control are our chief defenses from our Islamic enemies. Why not? For both men, such an endorsement would entail destroying the entire liberal belief in universal equality that forms the genesis of Barack Obama’s leftist, cosmopolitan notions of disengagement, but equally supports Romney’s muscular, neoconservative policies of engagement and “leadership.”
Real leadership is more than an expression of will and resolution, it also includes intelligence and perception. On issues ranging from regulation to our dealings with Russia and immigration, Romney may be talking tough, but, like W before him, does not have the analytical framework to restrain his businessman’s instincts of action and problem solving.
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Barack Obama, in spite of himself really, has had some small foreign policy successes out of a combination of indifference to events and a certain prudential skepticism of the more ambitious designs of interventionists.
And, fittingly enough, his worst foreign policy failures (Libya, Egypt) are the areas where he has acted the most like a neocon.
I’m a bigger fan of Romney than you are, but it’s true that there is a real problem here; the Republicans are stuck in the 80’s, and the Democrats are stuck in the 60’s, and nobody is thinking about what we need to do to confront the unique problems we face today. To the Democrats, Bull Connor and his minions are still out there, just waiting to quash the civil rights of the black man, and to the Republicans, every tin-pot third world dictator is the next Stalin or Hitler. In the midst of all this Civil Rights and Cold War reenactment, the country goes to Hell in a handbasket. Men long dead are still at the helm of both major parties.
A procvoative insight! Just what we need!
But the military-industrial complex is our best export industry! War is a helluva business, gentlemen.
Excellent post, Chris. I’m glad Sailer noticed it. Thanks.
How about the Republicans really go 80s and restore the Reagan income tax rates? Whoops, that would be a tax increase – no can do.
“The mass deindustrialization of America in the last 20 years does not diminish his promotion of free trade.”
What? You don’t seem to know much of anything about Romney. As a general critique of “the prevailing Republican orthodoxy” your post has merit, but you lose the plot when it comes to particulars.
“How about the Republicans really go 80s and restore the Reagan income tax rates? Whoops, that would be a tax increase – no can do.”
what are you talking about? there were two rounds of these, you’re only including the first. federal income taxes have been higher than the end of the Reagan term since Bush-41.
anyway. this is a useful critique of the GOP’s lack of vision on foreign policy lately, but i’m inclined to view that mostly as rhetoric. i do not see Romney launching another Iraq-style adventure. of course, Israel-Iran could erupt relatively soon…but even there i suspect Romney doesn’t want to launch a land war, although i am not knowledgeable enough about that situation to say whether we could have no-boots-on-the-ground engagement there without ultimately getting sucked in.
also one more thing about my first comment — forgive me if i’m assuming, but i have to laugh at how liberals, who portrayed Reagan’s economic policies as The Great Destroyer of the middle class, now cynically try to position him as Mr. Moderate.
JDP I’m basing my analysis solely on Romney’s official public statement. What is the basis of your opinions?
I think you’re right that nothing which Romney has said suggests anything other than support for an interventionist neo-Con foreign policy. On the other hand, I can sympathize with JDP’s point. Romney’s personality and management style seem to emphasize calculation and accommodation, which are both no-no’s in neo-Con thought. Hopefully, all the speeches are just political posturing. Of course the question then is what his actual foreign policy will be, since as you point out he doesn’t seem to have any original thoughts on the subject.
One more minor point of contention. I think Obama’s foreign policy has actually been quite interventionist, but it just seems modest in comparison to G.W. Bush. What’s more, it’s been strikingly incompetent, with the exception of the targeted killings in Pakistan. If you look at our reactions to the Arab Spring in various countries, the more our interests aligned with the current government, the more actively we undermined it. Look at it country-by-country.
LIBYA
SITUATION: Ruled by someone who had explicitly gone out of his way to make friends with us, to show that he had learned his lesson and wouldn’t challenge us militarily, and was actively suppressing terrorists. OUR ACTIONS: We bomb him, supporting a rebellion taking place in the region of the country which sent the most foreign fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan per capita. Our “ally” Kadaffi ends up being pulled out of a drain pipe to be slaughtered.
EGYPT
SITUATION: Perhaps our most crucial Muslim ally in the region after Saudi Arabia, and absolutely critical to keeping the Israel situation in check. One of the most volatile populations in the region, the best organized Muslim Brotherhood opposition, and the most important Arab state in forming regional opinions. OUR ACTIONS: We loudly and actively support the people trying to overthrow the government and make sure the government knows we won’t be happy with them if they use force to contain the rebellion.
YEMEN
SITUATION: We cooperate with the government in fighting one of the strongest regional al Qaeda organizations in the Middle East. OUR ACTIONS: We tell the president that he needs to hand over power.
SYRIA
SITUATION: A country which has actively fought against us in Iraq, and an ally of our enemy Iran. Although I still don’t think we should have gotten involved, the case for involvement here was much better than any of the above cases. OUR ACTIONS: We initially speak of Assad as a reformer, make it clear that Syria is a “different case” than Libya, and after a while, when it’s obvious that it’s a Jihadist fight, begin to materially support the Jihadists.
IRAN (not majority Arab or technically part of the Arab Spring, but anyway): SITUATION: The Middle Eastern country which actually has some limited potential to evolve into a secular society, and which is also probably most dangerous to us. Also the country most likely to trigger a war with Israel over its nuclear ambitions, or even worse, to actually acquire a nuclear bomb. OUR ACTIONS: Absolutely nothing. Maybe this was the right move, but if any of these movements deserved our support, this was definitely the one, even if only as a threat to be used as negotiating leverage. So naturally we did nothing at all.
Let’s also not forget about the incompetence and weakness shown in Russia and central Europe, the idiocy of announcing a surge and a withdrawal date in Afghanistan at the same time, and the recent debacle in Benghazi. Overall, it’s all been a pretty darn poor showing. And really how much credit does Obama deserve for the strikes in Pakistan? I wouldn’t be surprised if this is really just pretty much an independent DOD/CIA operation which he and Clinton have very little to do with.
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Why do spics lack the Protestant Work Ethic so? Try to make a spic work more than 4 hours and you’ll get mayhem.