Mitt Romney leaves many foreign policy questions unanswered
After a fairly poorly received Wall Street Journal op-ed on foreign policy, Mitt Romney's speech today was a good opportunity to flesh out in specific terms what a Romney foreign policy would look like. While he clocked in with a considerably higher word count, questions remain.
What's clear, thematically at least, is that a Romney administration would be deeply committed to social engineering in the Middle East. What's unclear is why, exactly, anyone should have any faith he would do a good job of it.
Throughout the speech are repeated assertions that the U.S. will partner with countries and political forces that "share our values" without any explanation of who those people are, how we determine their relative strength inside a given society and what kind of aid the U.S. taxpayer is expected to provide.
How on Earth can anyone trust a President Romney to "shape events" in the Middle East if he does not offer some proof that he grasps the nuances and intricacies of the societies he's proposing to shepherd into the glorious light of pro-Western democracy? One would think, after the visible nation building failures in Iraq and Afghanistan (failures that many of Romney's senior foreign policy advisers were directly complicit in), that the burden of proof would be on those arguing for a "transformational" foreign policy in the region.
The repeated insistence that the U.S. work with people who "share our values" also winds up undermining one of the rare moments of policy specificity in the speech, on Syria:
I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad's tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets. Iran is sending arms to Assad because they know his downfall would be a strategic defeat for them. We should be working no less vigorously with our international partners to support the many Syrians who would deliver that defeat to Iran-rather than sitting on the sidelines. It is essential that we develop influence with those forces in Syria that will one day lead a country that sits at the heart of the Middle East.
So is it more important that the U.S. support Syrians because they share our values (and again, how do we know) or that they will deal a strategic defeat to Iran? What if these rebels don't share our values but yet oppose Iran? Which is more important? Romney gives us no indication how he would square that circle. Instead, he offers us only the most optimistic scenario - that Syria's rebellion can be aided at no risk to the U.S. It is also simply untrue to insist that the U.S. can dump weapons into Syria and then - magically - make sure only the "good guys" get them. Weapons are fungible and events in Syria are chaotic and fluid. Once weapons go in, it's difficult to believe the U.S. will be able to control who gets what.
But it was Romney's position on Afghanistan that was the most curious:
And in Afghanistan, I will pursue a real and successful transition to Afghan security forces by the end of 2014. President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war - and to potential attacks here at home - is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11. I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders. And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation.
So essentially Romney, like Obama, will remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2014 but he will be doing so out of high ideals as opposed to Obama's politically triangulated decision. But how does Romney's commitment to the security of the nation differ materially from Obama in Afghanistan? How will it manifest itself in the American draw down? Is Romney suggesting that if U.S. commanders tell him that they want to stay to 2020 or 2040, he would have no objection?
