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Romney’s Foreign Policy: An “Anything But Obama” Vision That Pretends To Be More Than It Is

The Wall Street Journal reports on Romney’s hawkish outbursts: The Russia remark has fanned concerns among both Romney supporters and nonpartisan foreign-policy experts that Mr. Romney’s desire to contrast himself with President Barack Obama has led the GOP candidate to take positions that would be difficult to maintain if he wins the presidency. “I think […]

The Wall Street Journal reports on Romney’s hawkish outbursts:

The Russia remark has fanned concerns among both Romney supporters and nonpartisan foreign-policy experts that Mr. Romney’s desire to contrast himself with President Barack Obama has led the GOP candidate to take positions that would be difficult to maintain if he wins the presidency.

“I think Obama’s foreign policy is seriously flawed, but I worry that too much of Romney’s criticism is driven by what he thinks is best politically, and not by any larger strategic vision [bold mine-DL],” said Dimitri Simes, a Russia expert who was a Romney foreign-policy adviser in 2008.

No doubt Simes is right that Romney’s foreign policy is driven to a large degree by political considerations, but what may be even more worrisome is that Romney thinks he has a larger strategic vision when all that he really has is a grab-bag of “Anything But Obama” reactions. His hostility towards Russia is so pronounced because he is opposing Obama’s relatively more accommodating Russia policy, but his campaign also maintains that his description of Russia as our top geopolitical foe is a “carefully thought-out position.” It’s possible that no thought has gone into it at all, but based on what we have heard from Romney over the last few years that doesn’t seem right. It’s just that the thinking involved wasn’t very good.

Romney has been developing his foreign policy vision for several years, and according to that vision he sees the world as divided among “four different competing nations or groups of nations, representing four different ways of life, that are vying to lead the world.” He may not use this exact phrasing anymore after it was so mercilessly mocked, but his positions on Russia, China, and Iran suggest that he is still using this framework. This is tied to Romney’s idolatry of the idea of American exceptionalism, and his insistence that the U.S. must remain preeminent to prevent the emergence of a “Chinese century.” Like Paul Ryan, he claims to believe that without American “leadership” the “leadership” of the world will pass to Russia or China. Romney favors U.S. global hegemony, he seems to react very strongly against the possibility of a multipolar world, which he equates with American weakness and decline, and he sees major and regional powers that get in the way of hegemony as our main antagonists. It goes without saying that this is a flawed and incomplete way to understand the world and America’s role in it, but it is an attempt to make Romney’s foreign policy appear to be more substantive than it is.

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