Israel Is a Superpower

The speech of GOP candidate Mitt Romney made it clear that Israel plays a critical role in the upcoming election campaign and may determine the identity of the next president.

Israel was brought up six times in the speech by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican ticket for the United States presidency. China — he mentioned twice. Russia — twice.

The big neighbor Mexico — twice. The major neighbor Canada — not even once. Iraq was mentioned once. Afghanistan — three times. The important India — zero. Europe — just three times. All of Europe. France — zero, Britain — once, Germany — zero. Only Iran has measured up with Israel: six references.

But this is, of course, a mirror image: Iran is the greatest danger — Israel is the country at risk. “By 2015, will Israel be even more isolated by a hostile international community? Will those who seek Israel’s destruction feel emboldened by American ambivalence?”

This was Romney’s first keynote speech focused on American foreign policy in this round of elections. This was Friday, Yom Kippur Eve, in South Carolina. In the days preceding this address, Romney’s long list of advisers in foreign policy was revealed as well. Remarkable names: Michael Hayden who was head of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Chertoff, formerly secretary of Homeland Security, Eliot Cohen, former adviser to Condoleezza Rice, Cofer Black, the CIA’s counterterrorism man, ex-senator Norm Coleman and many more names of higher-ups from the Bush administration.

Romney’s Double Goal

In the Middle East team, there appear three names not particularly known here: Mary Beth Long who was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs to Robert Gates, Meghan O’Sullivan from Bush’s NSA, Walid Phares, an American of Lebanese origin whose appointment is already under attack because of an over-hawkishness attributed to him, as well as because of his activities in favor of the Christian militia during the civil war in Lebanon.

You can confidently conclude right now that this is one of the lists most sympathetic to Israel one could possibly put together (and for math lovers: the percentage of Jewish members in the group is dizzying).

Why would the leading GOP candidate choose to so intensively engage with Israel in his centerpiece speech on foreign policy? It is not necessarily because of its strategic importance, naturally.

China is more important, India is more important, so is Europe. It’s just that Romney’s purpose wasn’t a presentation of his priorities in communicating with countries around the globe. His aim was twofold: to attack the policy of the incumbent president, Barack Obama, who he seeks to replace, and to convince Republican voters that he is most appropriate for the position of the substitute.

The Designation of Israel

Israel had a dual role in the speech too: it is a country important to many communities of loyal Republican voters — primarily, the evangelical right wing currently looking at Romney with suspicion (mainly because of his Mormon religion), and it is valuable to him also as proof of what, in his eyes, is a fiasco of the current president. Not a management failure, but an ideological one.

“Our friends and allies must have no doubts about where we stand,” Romney said in the address. Israel, naturally, is an example of a country full of such doubt in the days of Obama’s term. As Romney describes him, Obama is a president who does not believe in America’s uniqueness and its [exceptional] ability to lead. This term is repeated in the speech more than any other: “leader,” “lead,” “leadership.” “It is far too easy for a president to jump from crisis to crisis, dealing with one hot spot after another. But to do so is to be shaped by events rather than to shape events. To avoid this paralyzing seduction of action rather than progress, a president must have a broad vision of the world coupled with clarity of purpose,” said Romney.

And this is the most scathing sentence in the speech: “If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.” Whether you accept this claim or not, the starring part the Republicans are reserving for Israel in this election campaign is no longer a secret. It is a political tool to woo voters — as well a strategic metaphor.