What Will Romney do for...National Security?

credit: political junkie

President Obama's foreign policy plan could not differ more from Mitt Romney's.

Mitt Romney espouses a “go it alone” foreign policy vision. He has articulated a more aggressive approach to the use of military force and given indications he would have continued the war in Iraq while not drawing down in Afghanistan. Gov. Romney has voiced a desire to return to the days of the Cold War, declaring Russia to be America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” while at the same time threatening a trade war with China. In all, Gov. Romney’s stated foreign policy vision amounts to a return to the Bush-Cheney foreign policy of 2001 to 2005.

The following elements of Romney's foreign policy plan would be detrimental to our country:

• Gov. Romney’s rhetoric indicates he would be more willing to use large-scale force in a wider number of places than President Obama.
• Gov. Romney views China as a zero-sum competitor for global dominance, and the overall thrust of his China policy is military containment of an expansionist and coercive China.
• Gov. Romney does not appear to have clear positions for the global economic crisis. His major international economic policy proposal is a super-sized free-trade zone named after President Ronald Reagan that appears to duplicate many of the functions of existing institutions like the World Trade Organization.
• Gov. Romney views Russia through Cold War lenses, where Moscow is America’s “number one geopolitical foe” and any efforts to establish a working relationship with it are appeasement by definition and demonstrate weakness.
• He would have kept 10,000–30,000 U.S. troops in Iraq for an unspecified period of time following the conclusion of the 2008 U.S.-Iraq security agreement at the end of 2011.
• He takes a rhetorical hardline by threatening war if Iran does not give in to U.S. demands on its nuclear program.  
• He would abandon decades of U.S. policy of aiming to broker peace efforts between Israel, the Palestinians, and Arab states.

Additionally, Gov. Romney’s defense plans would be prohibitively expensive. He has pledged to set the Pentagon base budget (not counting war funding) “at a floor of 4 percent of GDP,” which would result in at least $2.1 trillion in added spending over the next decade compared to the Department of Defense’s current plan. Gov. Romney has not elaborated on what specific threats prompt him to call for this huge increase in defense spending. 

 

America needs to pay close attention to the specific plans Romney has in mind for our country if he were to win the 2012 election. The facts show that President Obama's actions while in office, as well as his plans for the future, are what's best for working families and middle class America.