Romney to Campaign in Europe and Middle East

Republican Mitt Romney, Barack Obama’s main rival in the U.S. presidential election this November, is transitioning to the foreign policy front. He will leave in late July for a major pre-election campaign trip to several European and Middle Eastern countries. Experts in Washington believe Romney will not pass up this opportunity to reiterate his negative statements vis-à-vis Moscow, having already declared Russia the “number one geopolitical foe” of the U.S.

Although the current presidential campaign in the U.S. revolves almost entirely around domestic political and economic issues, ex-governor Romney’s campaign finally seems to have decided to present the candidate as a self-confident foreign policy leader who would be received well in foreign capitals.

The winner of the Republican primaries will begin a series of appearances on international affairs with a visit to the conference of the Association of Veterans of Foreign Wars, which will take place in Nevada on July 21-25. Then, according to the Politico blog, Romney is planning to visit the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland, as well as Israel and possibly Afghanistan.

Although the details of the upcoming trip are still in the works, it is already known that the Republican will attend the opening of the Olympics in London and give a major speech on foreign policy. In Tel Aviv, he will meet with key Israeli politicians, and in Poland, he is likely to voice his (still unknown) opinion on European missile defense and remark on his stance towards Russia.

The main goal of the tour, which commentators say is strongly reminiscent of Obama’s own overseas pre-election trip in the summer of 2008, will be the presentation of Romney’s foreign policy platform.

Over the course of the primaries, the former governor of Massachusetts has already made aggressive statements directed at Moscow, Beijing and Tehran and sharply criticized the current occupant of the White House for Obama’s “failure of American global leadership.”

Romney’s own platform, however, does not include extensive foreign policy material, with the exception of a few paragraphs on the official site of the candidate from the “Elephant Party” under the general heading of “Strategy for an American Century.”

Earlier in an interview with RG, Dmitri Simes, the president of the Washington Center for the National Interest, said that Romney’s positions on foreign policy represent a “provisional perspective, which is based on neither his previous experience nor serious analysis.”

We are talking “about statements on foreign policy topics during an election campaign, not a carefully considered foreign policy platform,” said the expert. Romney’s rhetoric will not necessarily guide his actions in the case of a November victory, since “when a person lands in the Oval Office of the White House, his entire decision-making process changes based on entirely new sources of information. And most importantly, his sense of responsibility for his actions changes,” Dmitri Simes told RG.

U.S. public opinion surveys conducted by CNN show that on foreign policy issues, the majority of respondents – 52 percent – prefer Obama, while only 36 percent are in favor of Romney. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that the Republican is working diligently to reduce the serious gap between himself and the current commander-in-chief with his upcoming trip, presenting his alternative foreign policy portfolio to both foreign audiences and American voters.