There was little doubt about the kind of foreign policy a Mitt Romney administration was going to run from the moment he met with Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Lech Walesa in Warsaw. It is even likely that the bust of Sir Winston Churchill might be returned to the Oval Office. Romney, however, gave an address last night which is presented as channeled through Rush Limbaugh whose take I could not improve on. First Limbaugh:
Another tremendous speech by Mitt Romney just now. Let me tell you something. This man is truly showing his presidential timbre.
And now Romney, this from his speech:
When we look at the Middle East today, with Iran closer than ever to nuclear weapons capability, with the conflict in Syria threatening to destabilize the region, and with violent extremists on the march — and with an American ambassador and three others dead likely at the hands of Al-Qaeda affiliates — it’s clear that the risk of conflict in the region is higher now than when the president took office. I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and more prosperous Middle East allied with us. I share this hope.
But hope is not a strategy.
What a line! Hope (and change) is not a strategy. The difference between Romney and Obama could not be more clear and the distance could not be greater. If they elect Obama after this, the US will have raised the white flag and we here, way off in the South Pacific, are for all practical purposes to be left on our own.
The full speech can be found here. Articulate and as clear eyed as you could wish in the increasingly dangerous world in which we live.
Finally: Obama hits it out of the park…
Obama knocks Romney for not showing up on Nickelodeon.
C.L.
9 Oct 12 at 10:09 am
I posted this on the OT a little earlier.
VID: Mitt Romney Gives An Address On Foreign Policy
Superb foreign policy speech by Mitt Romney – positive but a damning indictment of Obumma.
23 mins – excellent.
Recommended
JamesK
9 Oct 12 at 10:16 am
Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that another term of the colonially scarred West hating Obama might well force Australia to plan its own nuc defence.
Hold off on the Collins replacement fellas, the next one better have room for cm tubes. And no little Aussie battler incompetent engineering operations this time, please. Dolphin class is used by the IDF for just such purposes.
Alfonso
9 Oct 12 at 10:40 am
Read Romney’s book “No Apology” to get a clear view on where he stands on foreign policy – a long way from Obama’s empty chair and good for Australia as well.
GeorgeL
9 Oct 12 at 11:51 am
Dead right. No question it would be best to avoid another war but history teaches us that a just war is sometimes the lesser of 2 evils.
The Night Storker
9 Oct 12 at 11:54 am
Hmmm. I’m not surprised the empty chair sees kiddies as a key constituency…
Rabz
9 Oct 12 at 11:58 am
I know Americans are generally not that interested in foreign policy, but Obama is highly vulnerable on it. If Romney can make it relevant to voters, there will be a lot of votes won.
DavidLeyonhjelm
9 Oct 12 at 12:00 pm
Gillard understands that hopeless leaders like to spend time in schools. It is very non-threatening.
H B Bear
9 Oct 12 at 12:15 pm
Well yes. But the Libyan people’s expulsion of militants is the only clear case of a people’s revolt in favour of liberty.
Egypt’s revolt paved the way for elections that shifted the country from a pro western dictator who generally ensured the law was enforced to a militant Islamacist who is rattling sabres against Israel and acquiescing in US embassy sieges. Tunisia is not much different
A Democratic prosperous Palestine is an oxymoron when opinion polls shows the electorate split between those who would like to bomb the Jews now and those who would wait until they are more able to do so.
The civil war in Syria is not looking good with the Baathists suffering at the hands of fighters shouting “God is Greatest”
And the Romney sympathy for ‘our ally Turkey’ is not really necessary as Turkey could anhialate Syria if necessary.
Obama’s Hope slogan is empty but Romney has just rebadged it as far as the miltantly Islamic Middle East is concerned
Alan Moran
9 Oct 12 at 1:03 pm
Nice to see an adult treating the business as being somewhat different to American Idol or X Factor.
Mick Gold Coast QLD
9 Oct 12 at 3:03 pm
@alanmoran
Lets “make” Egypt build windmills and put up solar arrays.
NoFixedAddress
9 Oct 12 at 3:11 pm
Romney’s plans to arm the Syrian Rebels is also a worry. There is good evidence that the Free Syria Army is predominantly foreign Islamicists who are indulging in some ethnic cleansing of their own, massacring Alawites and Christians while blaming Assad’s forces.
Cold-Hands
9 Oct 12 at 3:23 pm
No weapons for rebels,remember what happened when the US gave Sting Missiles to the Fascist talibanists? Let the Russians keep supplying Assad ,islamofascists killing islamofascists is a Very Good Thing ,keep it up !m
Borisgodunov
9 Oct 12 at 3:45 pm
Ron Paul is more sensible on Iran. why pick a fight?
The obnoxious nature of the Iranian regime does not negate the realities of deterrence. The United States has a nuclear delivery system that can launch retaliatory strikes with pinpoint accuracy.
The Government of Iran is repulsive, but it is not suicidal:
• the rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map is ideological blather.
• Israel has more than a sufficient capability to deter an Iranian nuclear attack.
• Any government in Tehran would have to realize that an attack on America would be a regime-extinguishing event. Such an attack would be suicide, both politically and literally.
The USSR and China also played the ‘I am crazy ideological zealot’ card too: remember Mao and Khrushchev!
China became a nuclear power under Mao Zedong, a leader who exceeded even Stalin’s record of genocide. Mao’s publicly enunciated views on nuclear warfare were alarming in the extreme.
China emerged as a nuclear power on the eve of the Cultural Revolution where the fanaticism made today’s Iran look like a normal, even sedate, country.
Jim Rose
9 Oct 12 at 4:46 pm
the rhetoric about wiping Israel off the map is ideological blather.
• Israel has more than a sufficient capability to deter an Iranian nuclear attack.
No and no. Deterrence only works when the other guy is sane, and Ahmadinejad and all his Islamist fellow travellers are not. Sting was wrong about many of his politics, but his belief that the Russians loving their children too was the right call. The Islamists don’t love their children too – they use them as suicide bombers, and in the Iran-Iraq war the Iranians used them as mine-clearing tools.
Also, Iran is geographically large enough to take several nukes and survive as a nation; Israel is not. Iran must be militarily emasculated before it strikes.
perturbed
9 Oct 12 at 9:53 pm
***correction*** “That the Russians loving their children too was what was preventing a nuclear exchange was the right call.
perturbed
9 Oct 12 at 9:54 pm
Also: does withdrawing military security and air assets from an ambassador begging to retain them constitute a foreign-policy blunder that Romney can use against Obama in the next debate?
perturbed
9 Oct 12 at 11:13 pm
That’s a remarkably stupid and potentially massively fatal belief Jim.
What’s the basis of your belief that the Iranian theocracy preparing the way for the 12th Imman will behave like the oligarchs of the USSR?
JamesK
9 Oct 12 at 11:25 pm
“Deterrence only works when the other guy is sane, and Ahmadinejad and all his Islamist fellow travellers are not.”
Iran has behaved as a rational actor despite all the rhetoric. They will continue to do so. Jim Rose is correct.
Jarrah
9 Oct 12 at 11:40 pm
Are you prepared to bet on that, Jarrah? Or will you only be proved wrong to your satisfaction when a mushroom cloud rises above what’s left of Tel Aviv?
perturbed
10 Oct 12 at 12:23 am
Iran a “rational actor.”
Wow. Just wow.
C.L.
10 Oct 12 at 12:26 am
Good speach. Some PC in it, but he he must be diplomatic in case he is indeed elected. But some bluntness as well, particularly on Russia and China. Good balance.
The question is whether he will be able to make it happen. No president has been succssful in foreign policy after Eisenhower. As CATO institute said, if all the investment the US made (both in terms of aid and military action) can be undermined by one U-tube video., you’d have to question the value of that investment.
Boris
10 Oct 12 at 2:20 am
A few random points:
1) I believe Iran is, and probably will be, a rational actor. Keep in mind that ‘rationality’ here doesn’t mean you can’t be extremely ruthless or vicious. But you’re not suicidal.
2) Contrary to perturbed, there are only a few major cities in Iran. They are the heart of Persian culture and tradition, and you could pretty much annihilate them with a fraction of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. There’s a lot of space in between those cities, but its mainly empty or low-density agriculture.
3) Don’t overplay the ’12th Imam’ thing. The vast majority of Shiites, even the most devout, believe it to be something that will happen at some point in future, not necessarily within their lifetimes (just like Christians view the resurrection). Furthermore, as I understand it, the 12th Imam’s gonna come when he wants to come; you can’t engineer this by starting a war.
4) Despite the above, there ARE very good reasons for stopping the Iranians from getting nukes. For one thing, it could drive a wave of proliferation through the Middle East, with all the attendant risks of ‘accidental’ nuclear war and weapon leakage that weren’t present in the US-USSR standoff.
5) Strikes on Iran probably wouldn’t substantially degrade their nuclear program. If they could have taken it out permanently, or for a long time, the Israelis would have done so already.
6) Economic pressure is having a substantial effect. Romney is basically promising to continue Obama’s policy.
7) If you REALLY wanted to take out the Iranian program, through military means, here’s what you’d do: launch a limited invasion. Most of the nuclear sites, like Natanz, are in the middle of nowhere. The US has huge airmobile forces. With airpower destroying the nearby elements of the Iranian army, US special forces and airmobile troops could seize the nuclear bases, show the world what’s going on there, and then comprehensively destroy them.
8) You would take casualties that way. You might also drive the world economy into stage II of global recession. Is it worth it? I would argue you keep going with the economic sanctions for the moment, while preparing the military alternative if they don’t work.
Piett
10 Oct 12 at 3:14 am
Wow. Just wow.
Currency Lad’s rebuttal is pure genius.
Billy Nudgel
10 Oct 12 at 10:19 am
Tom Schelling noted that threats that leave something to chance are always more powerful. There is great political advantage is being seen to be unpredictable – mad such as Iran tries and (and mao tried) to project
On Iran, Tom Schelling said:
• That he did not know if there is any way to stop the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons.
• If they do, we should try to persuade them to declare as the Indians and Pakistanis have done, that they are for deterrence, not offensive use.
• The USA should assist the Iranians in making sure custody of their weapons are secure in any time of disruption. In the case of a riot in the streets, will the weapons be safe? Who might grab them in case of civil war?
Schelling suggested that it is important for the Iranians to have access to technology that disables bombs if they get into the wrong hands. U.S. weapons have permissive action links— a radio signal code that arms weapons but automatically disarms them it if launched at an unauthorized target.
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 4:03 pm
Face it jarrah.
You’re a fucking idiot so your unargued assertions hardly matter.
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 4:05 pm
What did Tom Schelling say about Adolf Hitler before 1939 or Saddam Hussein?
Just another change in strategic calculation?
I’d laugh at such a pathetic line of reasoning if it weren’t so dangerous.
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 4:15 pm
Certainly random but not a sane ‘point’.
For an atheistic USSR or Chinese oligarchy maybe but not for those who believe that have a role in the coming of the 12th Imman.
Suicide bombers ‘act rationally’ too by your reckoning.
They actually do but not by our standards
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 4:19 pm
jamesK, daniel Ellsberg once gave a lecture on Hitler’s diplomacy entitled “The Political Uses of Madness.”
Hitler used unpredictability to win a lot of land back without firing a shot.
schelling developed the idea that deterrence is never fully credible (why retaliate once you are wiped out?). The best deterrent might involve pre-commitment [e.g., the Doomsday Machine], some element of randomness [e.g., ambiguity about one’s deterrent strategy], or a partly crazy leader [e.g., a madman such as General Ripper in Dr stangelove that schelling was briefly an advisor to Kubrick.
Madness can be wickedly rational. a foe believes your self-destructive threats not because it thought you might slip up at the brink but because your foe believes you just might be lunatic enough to go over the edge deliberately.
Nikita Khrushchev, in Nixon’s eyes was “the most brilliant world leader I have ever met,” because he nurtured a reputation for rashness and unpredictability that “scared the hell out of people”.
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 4:35 pm
The thing is Hitler wanted to survive and thrive in this world.
So did Brezhnev and Khrushchev.
The mullahs not so much necessarily.
Suicide bombers not so much either.
I don’t want to be rude but why are you so dense Jim?
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 4:40 pm
jamesK, then all these threats to punish Iran for getting nukes are a waster of time becaus ethey do not respond to incentives?
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 5:00 pm
“The difference between Romney and Obama could not be more clear and the distance could not be greater.”
Then you haven’t been paying attention, Steve.
RTWT.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/08/mitt-romney-delusional-foreign-policy
Jarrah
10 Oct 12 at 5:06 pm
8 years of history has shown they haven’t so far.
Not even marginally.
What makes you think they will in the next 6 months Jim?
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 5:17 pm
Iran was afraid of Bush,, but not obama.
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 6:01 pm
Iran is not afraid of Obumma.
In fact it’s encouraged by him
But Iran was a great deal more watchful and restrained with Bush.
Bush would also have actively and morally encouraged the Green Revolution
Iran can fly over Iraqi airspace now with impunity.
That’s is solely thanks to Obumma.
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 6:08 pm
this means that the Iranian leadership is rational and responds to incentives.
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 8:06 pm
I’ve always wondered about that line of thought.
Yes, the clique of leaders Iran are rational, but also amoral.
Mao was rational, but he was willing to see tens of millions die rather than lose power.
Token
10 Oct 12 at 8:20 pm
This is not very relevant thinking unless you understand the drivers of the leadership clique.
Are the forces of internal pressure so great they need an external threat to keep the factions in control?
From experience the incentives of the west are mostly irrelevant as Russia proving expertise and scientists, and China is buying their main export.
Iran knows both Russia & China are immune to sanctions, so it has developed direct bilateral relationships with both and offer each something each power values.
Token
10 Oct 12 at 8:23 pm
No it doesn’t.
They will always be rational by their standards.
By ours in appearance only – until they have nuclear weapons capability.
Being rational by our standards is quite unnecessary when they have nuclear weapons and the delivery systems they want.
You are not thinking rationally Jim
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 8:24 pm
JamesK, see my comments above.
The fact is the US has very little leverage while Iran can skirt around most of the sanctions with the assistance of Russia & China.
We need a president that understands power politics and is approaches it like Reagan (the last successful US leader)
Token
10 Oct 12 at 8:26 pm
I think military action is inevitable Token.
Obumma has left Israel +/- Romney no options
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 8:28 pm
I agree, JamesK. When the Obama admin leaded the news that Azerbijian was willing to provide access to Israeli jets to its air space it was clear much of the non-Farsi muslim world thinks so as well.
Obama’s admin also leaked the fact a US agent unleashed the virus in the nuclear facilities.
Both actions has empowered Iran and assisted the mullahs to keep the nuclear program going.
It will take an exceptionally wily and strong US president to avoid conflict.
Token
10 Oct 12 at 8:43 pm
Wait until Iran has the nuclear option and can threaten oil supplies through the straight of Hormuz with nukes.
We’ll then see why the exploitation of CSG across the world, but most especially in North America is critical.
What will happen to the budgets of Europe’s welfare states if/when the Irani use their new leverage the straights of Hormuz to increase the price of petrol and the Islamists in Cairo force everyone to pay to go through the Suez.
The morons in Europe better be planning for a future with nuclear energy & coal.
Token
10 Oct 12 at 8:48 pm
JamesK
You keep going on about the “12th Imman” (sic). I’m not persuaded that you know anything about Shia Islam, Iran, or the Middle East in general. FYI, as I tried to explain @3.14am, Shiites don’t believe that you can deliberately trigger the re-emergence of the 12th Imam. From his purported “last letter” before vanishing:
The Iranians have not been acting in a way that suggests they’re on a messianic quest to engineer a nuclear war. Why? Because the nuclear program has been crawling along very, very slowly.
I recall reading about it in 1995. Back then, they were supposedly only 5 years away from the bomb. All throughout the last decade, there was a steady flow of articles telling us that Iran was only 2 or 3 years away. They’ve been taking their time, haven’t they?
And this probably explains why there hasn’t been an Israeli strike. They know that it might not accomplish much, except to spur the Iranians into greater efforts. Are you aware that a bunch of very senior former military and intel people in Israel are publicly against attacking?
One final thing for you to ponder. If airstrikes would actually achieve much, why didn’t Israel do them during the Bush Administration? Was he holding them back? Unlikely.
Piett
10 Oct 12 at 9:29 pm
That was an issue for the game theorists at Rand in the 1950s when deciding how to model Russian responses.
Schelling viewed strategic situations as bargaining processes. The two superpowers had both shared and opposing interests. Their shared interests involved avoiding a nuclear war, while their opposing interests concerned dominating the other
Since the exploitation of potential force is better than the application of force, it is key to use threats and promises while avoiding to act upon these. The challenge is to communicate threats and promises in a credible manner.
apparent irrationality, recklessness, or unreliability turn out to be a good way to achieve credibility and can therefore be strategically rational
the Iranians are both rational and rationally irrational.
Jim Rose
10 Oct 12 at 9:42 pm
The Iranians have learned from how the Israeli’s took out the Iraqi reactor in the late ’80s. They have the facilities dispersed and in positions which would make air strikes have limited effects.
This is why I note the US president needs to be wily and able to apply pressure. Reagan was able to do that and only used force in the most extraordinary circumstances (remember he became president due to the disaster in Iran).
Token
10 Oct 12 at 9:45 pm
Piett to describe your world view as naive would be an understatement.
Reza Kahlili, Daily Caller: Iran vows to back any nation that fights America, Israel
John Bolton, Weekly Standard: The Negotiation Delusion
Iran talks fail again.
JamesK
10 Oct 12 at 10:01 pm
how do you stop a country acquiring arms other than by not giving them the incentive to do so? but, the mullahs do not respond to incentives, apparently?
Jim Rose
11 Oct 12 at 5:19 am
Difficult now 6 months away from success.
Much easier 4 and 12 years earlier to respond to pressure and positive incentive.
If your resolve is farcical and the implementation of sanctions laughable – even today – and Russia and China are laughingly playing sillybuggers without cost then your resolve is an international joke.
What kind of incentive is an international joke for Iran’s hate-filled mullahs?
JamesK
11 Oct 12 at 6:38 am