Foreign Policy: The Dividing Lines Between Romney and Obama

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney revealed his foreign policy views on Monday. He castigated Barack Obama’s passivity and called for a “change of course” in the Middle East. Below, we look at five areas where the two rivals differ.

Absent for a long time from the presidential contest, foreign policy now occupies more and more space in the candidates’ speeches. On Monday, Romney, a seasoned critic of the President’s record, used a speech to the Military Institute of Virginia to initiate hostilities and announce the key points of his “aggressive diplomacy.” Here we analyze the five big international issues that divide the candidates, and their different proposals.

Terrorism in the Middle East

This issue is one that President Romney would use to distinguish himself. The Republican candidate considers the current administration to have underestimated the threat to the U.S.A., taking as proof the death of the American ambassador to Libya and three other Americans in an attack in Benghazi on September 11. In his speech on Monday, the former Massachusetts governor stated: “I know the President hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with us. I share this hope. But hope is not a strategy.”

The Republican candidate wants to “change course” in the Middle East, to “back up words with deeds” and to increase the American defense budget. Obama’s campaign website, which presents his program for the elections in November, restricts itself to extolling several aspects of his foreign policy record, notably the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which has severely weakened Al-Qaida.

The Israel-Palestine conflict

The program listed on Mitt Romney’s campaign site criticizes his rival’s strategy in the resolution of the conflict, stating that Obama should never have distanced himself from Israel as a means to win the trust of Arab nations. This is because, according to the Republican candidate, “the key to negotiating a lasting peace is an Israel that knows it will be secure.”

His two priorities, then, are to re-establish America as more than an interested friend to Israel, and furthermore, to reduce aid to the Palestinians if they continue to include Hamas in their demand for recognition from the U.N.

Romney has also promised to make aid to Egypt dependent on respect for the peace treaty with Israel. However, in a video recorded by a hidden camera, he unwittingly revealed that he does not believe in the creation of a Palestinian state, despite generally defending in public a two-state solution, an ambition also defended in 2008 by Barack Obama. The president seems to have put such a solution on the back burner in this election year; nonetheless, he reminded the U.N. General Assembly in a speech on September 25 that: “The road is hard but the destination is clear- a secure, Jewish state of Israel; and an independent, prosperous Palestine.”

Iran

The two candidates are in full agreement that Iran must be stopped from developing nuclear arms, even if that means resorting to force. Where they differ is on the red line that must not be crossed. Obama would wait until the Iranian government took direct measures to acquire a nuclear bomb. For Romney, sufficient justification for an attack would be demonstrable possession of nuclear capacity, even if this capacity wasn’t enough to construct a nuclear weapon. Romney’s program promises a renewed series of mostly financial sanctions. Furthermore, he intends to demonstrate to the Iranian regime, with deeds rather than words, that the military option is on the table through restoring American air forces in the Persian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean.

Afghanistan

At first glance, the vision for Afghanistan does not greatly divide the candidates. They agree on the principle of an end to the fighting, expected by the Obama administration within the next two years. Nor do they differ on a gradual reduction of American troops in the time between now and the end of the conflict. It is on the form of this transition that Obama and Romney disagree. Obama wants to negotiate peace alongside the Taliban as well as the Afghan government, an unpalatable option for his Republican adversary: “I do not negotiate with the Taliban. That’s something for the Afghans to decide how they are going to pursue their course in the future,” he insisted in a debate during the Republican primaries.

Syria

This is perhaps the hottest topic, and one on which both candidates enjoy the opportunity to disagree with the other. In his speech to the Military Institute of Virginia, Romney accused his rival of “failing to lead.” He repeated his wish to provide the rebels with the arms that they need, an option rejected straight out by the Obama administration on the grounds the Syrian opposition remains too nebulous. While the Republican candidate wishes to see his country involve itself more with the situation in Syria, neither he nor his rival currently support any direct intervention against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. However the president stated in an August press conference at the White House that, “a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus; that would change my equation.”

Obama’s record may come in for criticism, but Mitt Romney has yet to convince based on his policies announced on Monday. The gap between the candidates remains slight: 46 percent of Americans believe that Barack Obama would perform better than Mitt Romney on foreign policy, with 40 percent believing the opposite, according to a survey released at the end of September. The televised debates given over to foreign policy on Oct. 16 and 22 offer voters the opportunity to compare and contrast the two candidates’ programs on these issues; they also perhaps offer the opportunity for Obama’s campaign, increasingly unsure following the debate on October 3, to reinvigorate itself.