A Romney presidency would be a foreign policy disaster
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
If you thought a Mitt Romney presidency would bring disastrous domestic consequences – and it will, especially for the poor and the middle class although not for the richest one percent Romney represents and embodies – check out his views of foreign policy. Its impact might be even worse.
During his first presidential campaign George W. Bush said he would conduct a humble foreign policy. He did just the opposite when he became president. Romney, in contrast, is promising up front to throw the weight of the United States around the world, from Teheran to Beijing – not to mention Moscow and who knows where else.
Should Romney become president, and if his actions match his campaign rhetoric, expect a reprise of George W. Bush – on steroids. Bush, like his father and like Ronald Reagan, only took on countries that could scarcely defend themselves against the awesome might of the United States military, nations like Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In comparison, Romney is not only constantly issuing implied threats against Iran, a tougher nut than all four of the countries invaded by Reagan and the two Bushes combined. He also seems hell-bent on antagonizing the real heavyweights, throwing punches even before the ring has been set up.
W’s invasion of Iraq was reckless and stupid, but there was never a real danger that Iraq could retaliate and hurt the United States. In Afghanistan and Iraq the Unites States was like a cat toying with mice, although even there the rodents turned out to be rabid.
Russia and China really do have weapons of mass destruction in numbers Iraq or Iran could only dream of, plus the capacity to make serious trouble for the United States in myriad other ways, including China’s ability to wreak havoc with the ailing U.S. economy. Romney is sparing in an entirely different weight class. Even Iran, if attacked by the United States and/or its client state Israel, would be able and almost certainly willing, to strike back in an unpredictable but undoubtedly nasty fashion.
So for Mitt Romney to constantly issue vague threats against Iran, Russia, and China, partly to score cheap political points against President Obama but also as reflection of his own warped view of the world of the twenty-first century and the role of the United States in it (as well as what former National Security Adviser Brzezinski has called Romney’s failure to grasp foreign policy realities), is beyond irresponsible. It is insane.
Romney’s latest salvo targeting Obama involved what he considers the president’s intention to cave-in to Russia if he wins reelection because of a supposedly private conversation caught by a microphone in which Obama told Russian president Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” after reelection. In the course of Romney’s broadside against the president he called Russia “our number one geopolitical foe.”
Really? Somehow, Romney seems to have missed that Russia, or what was then the Soviet Union, literally caved in more than twenty years ago. That implosion drastically changed the global balance of power and ended the Cold War. Now Romney cynically wants to revive it. Moreover, since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, there have been multiple Russian cave-ins, as the United States and the West have inexorably gained more and more influence deeper and deeper into what was Russia’s sphere of influence even before the Bolsheviks came to power.
The line in the sand that the Russians are now trying to draw against U.S. missiles on its Eastern European backyard is a last gasp attempt at maintaining a remnant of geopolitical credibility by a wounded country now a shadow of its former self. Yet it is foolhardy and dangerous to back into a corner a wounded and frustrated bear, especially one in possession of an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of ending civilization.
On the other front, talking smack about “getting tougher” on the Chinese may be good politics on the campaign trail, but there are a few problems. For one, it doesn’t become Romney, whose company and its business buddies have been up to their necks in exporting American jobs to China. Incidentally, that’s one more case of Romney speaking through both sides of his mouth. The other problem: Can the self-touted business-savvy candidate par excellence have possibly failed to notice that the Chinese have a weapon of mass financial destruction to wield against the United States in the form of huge claims on the U.S. Treasury?
One thing is clear: Romney’s capacity for demagoguery far exceeds his grasp of things foreign. Perhaps there is no better example than Miami four years ago when Romney, pandering to the Cubans in Little Havana, cried out “Patria o Muerte,” the iconic slogan of the Cuban Revolution. But there he was, four years after that fiasco, pandering this time in Tampa, saying he hoped to be the president when Fidel Castro leaves this world. Even the hardest-bitten anti-Castro Cubans are sick of this sham repeated every fourth year.
Some of what Romney is espousing re foreign policy can be put down to mere election-year politics. But lack of grasp – or sheer ignorance – combined with belligerent talk and hostile action is exactly what Romney is telling us he holds in store for this country and the world. He’s playing with fire, and the precautionary principle says we better take him at his word for he may even be telling the truth this time, and then we will burn. Or, at least, many other innocent people will. And, do we really want to entrust a man with the cruelty and lack of sense to tie his dog to the top of the family car on a twelve-hour trip with the codes to unleash Armageddon?
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