Romney continues to misunderstand what peace through strength actually means. This is what he said in the latest debate:

And hopefully we can do it as we did with Osama bin Laden, as opposed to going to war as we had to do in — in the case of — of Iraq [bold mine-DL]. The right way, Congressman Paul, in my view, is — to keep us from having to go to those wars is to have a military so strong that no one would ever think of testing it.

The U.S. didn’t “have to” go to war against Iraq, since it was a war of choice. Having an even larger military wouldn’t have prevented the war in Iraq, because the U.S. and our allies started the war. An even larger military would make it easier for the U.S. to wage more preventive wars. At the same time, it’s not really possible to create “a military so strong that no one would ever think of testing it” when it comes to combating terrorist groups. Terrorist groups wage asymmetric warfare and they aren’t going to be deterred from attacking by the strength of a state’s military. Indeed, to the extent that the terrorist groups hope to lure major powers into fruitless wars to try to exhaust them, a huge military is no guarantee against terrorist attack. Insofar as the U.S. keeps a large military presence in countries where the U.S. and/or allied governments are unpopular, a large military presence overseas becomes an invitation to attack.

Romney’s statement came in the context of ruling out any negotiations with the Taliban. That suggests that Romney favors the indefinite continuation of a U.S. military presence in Afghanistan until the Taliban are “defeated.” In other words, the candidate posing as the advocate of “peace through strength” favors endless war.