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by Barry Rubin
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Previewing Romney’s VMI Foreign Policy Speech: Is It Real Change?

October 8th, 2012 - 2:32 pm

(Note: This article was written using excerpts provided by the Romney campaign. The full text when delivered might change some of the analysis.)

Update 1:49 PM Pacific Time: My take on Romney’s Middle East Speech can be found here.

Mitt Romney’s team has released excerpts of a speech he is to give momentarily at the Virginia Military Institute today, which is to focus on U.S. Middle East policy. Without attacking President Barack Obama’s policy with more passion and detail or confronting the revolutionary Islamist threat more directly, can Romney persuade people that he has a different view that matters?

He begins by quoting former Lexington, Virginia, resident George Marshall, who led the U.S. military during World War II and later became secretary of state and secretary of defense:

“The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.” Those words were true in his time — and they still echo in ours.

Romney views President Barack Obama as vulnerable on his international leadership, or rather lack of it. Romney argues that Obama’s policies are contributing to regional instability and future wars in the Middle East:

The attacks on America last month should not be seen as random acts. They are expressions of a larger struggle that is playing out across the broader Middle East — a region that is now in the midst of the most profound upheaval in a century.

Romney further says that the cause of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya was not a video:

 [It was] terrorists who use violence to impose their dark ideology on others, especially women and girls; who are fighting to control much of the Middle East today; and who seek to wage perpetual war on the West.

Here, Romney does not recognize the systematic revolutionary Islamist challenge to U.S. interests. We are back on the safe ground — on which Obama basically agrees — that the problem is just al-Qaeda, rather than also the Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafist groups. (Obama’s problem is that having said he already defeated al-Qaeda, he cannot admit that this supposedly destroyed group just assassinated an American ambassador.)

If Romney wants to focus his policy on just al-Qaeda, how can he compete with Obama’s ability to point out that he killed Osama bin Laden? One could even argue that Romney’s approach — the problem is bad terrorists who kill Americans — plays into Obama’s hands.

Obviously, Romney should not foreclose his options in dealing with Egypt, for example, by declaring its regime to be an enemy — despite the fact that even Obama has admitted it is no longer an ally. Yet Romney could have done better in defining the situation.

Continuing his approach of trying to avoid appearing too critical of Obama, Romney continues:

I know the president hopes for a safer, freer, and a more prosperous Middle East allied with the United States.

But this hope is not sufficient in a situation where America cuts defense spending and is perceived as passive. Consequently:

It is time to change course in the Middle East.

Yet without dealing with Obama’s biggest failure in the region — supporting the empowerment of American enemies — how can Romney make a persuasive case on this issue? He cannot. The approach that Obama is a well-intentioned nice guy who is just in over his head cannot make the alternative case on the Middle East.

So what would Romney do if he became president? I want to quote him directly before analyzing these points. On Iran:

I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf the region — and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination. For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions — not just words — that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated.

Romney is basically saying: I will be credibly tougher. The problem is that Obama can say that he has done these specific things. He does not deal with the wider strategic problem of Iranian ambitions or attitudes toward the opposition in that country. There is no substantive difference with Obama’s stated policy, nor is there a discussion — it is understandable of Romney wanting to avoid this — of how he would view an attack on Iran or even the possibility of containing Iran. His statement is thus reasonable, but not compelling in proving that Romney would do a better job.

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