Obama and Romney: A big shift in foreign policy

The season of America’s national party conventions is formally over and the race for the White House is now set between incumbent Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. For Arabs, and the rest of the world, it is America’s foreign policy that matters most when it comes to the candidates. In spite of its receding economic hegemony, the US remains a global superpower; a military behemoth with strategic interests in most parts of the world. Its multifaceted roles in Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa and South America are both controversial and inevitable. Whoever wins the presidency in November will dictate the pace of world politics in the coming four years and beyond.

President Obama’s foreign policy agenda has by now been outlined and put to the test. His position, and indeed his administration’s strategies and actions, have by now become clear, to a certain extent, on complex issues, including the war on terrorism, the Palestine-Israel conflict, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, trade with China, Russia, the environment and others. Many of Obama’s foreign policy positions and actions remain contentious. Some have brought initial promise only to disappoint in the end. Others have failed to deliver while few have been successful. By and large, Obama’s approach to world politics has been one of realism, multilateralism and cooperation rather than confrontation; calculation rather than going for hasty reactions.

According to his Republican foes, Obama’s foreign policy has weakened America’s standing in the world. He is criticised by Republican hardliners (Condoleezza Rice, John McCain and Dick Cheney) for his Iraq policy. “In dealing with other nations, he has given trust where it is not earned, insult where it’s not deserved and apology where it’s not due,” said the Republican presidential nominee.

But it is the state of America’s economy that Romney’s campaign is focusing on. This is what matters to American voters today, not foreign policy. Simply put, if America is strong economically, it will be strong enough to lead the world. It’s a typical view that is shared by both Democrats and Republicans alike.

We know very little about Romney’s foreign policy positions or indeed his abilities to deal with complex global challenges, which he will have to face if he becomes president. In his long acceptance speech last week, his remarks on foreign policy barely exceeded 200 words. He attacked Obama for failing “to slow Iran’s nuclear threat” and throwing allies like Israel and Poland “under the bus”. On Russia, he said the president had been too eager to give Russian President Vladimir Putin “flexibility.” He failed to mention America’s continuing war in Afghanistan, the Middle East peace process and Arab Spring.

His running mate, ultra-conservative vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, was more ambiguous on foreign policy priorities, only stating that “we will act with the conviction that the United States is still the greatest force for peace and liberty that this world has ever known”. Such hubris underlines a skewed view of today’s world and its realties.

But by not being specific on foreign policy issues, while threatening to adopt a hard line — i.e. confrontational, positions on Iran and Russia — Romney stirs unhappy memories of the George W. Bush era. He has failed to talk about Afghanistan — where Obama is seeking a quick end to America’s entanglement — when, in fact, it remains an important issue for American voters with roughly 90,000 US troops still there.

In a post published earlier last month in The American Conservative, Daniel Larison writes about Romney’s foreign policy expectations, saying “his campaign is filled with and surrounded by people convinced that Bush’s foreign policy was not poorly conceived so much as it was poorly executed. Romney will likely govern along the same lines as Bush in most things, but in his conduct of foreign policy, he will probably not be as diplomatic”. Others disagree, saying Romney will not act on “a gut feeling” and that he is less ideological than his Republican predecessor.

Even when it comes to Romney’s sturdy and unfaltering support of Israel, especially with regard to the perceived threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there are two interconnected views on the matter: One that sees the election of Romney as a reason that could significantly lower the threshold for a US military strike against Iran, according to Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post, coinciding with a provocative stand on Russia, which the Republican candidate has described as “our number one geopolitical foe.” The second view, an Israeli one, surprisingly opposes confrontation with Russia under Romney because, as Meir Javedanfar, an Israeli academic said recently, it undermines Israel’s interest. He said Obama’s Russia policies have been pro-Israel in the sense that they have helped secure Russian cooperation in sanctions against Iran.

On the Middle East peace issue, Romney will most likely adopt the Bush approach of doing very little to restart serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Worse still, Romney may even choose not to interfere if Israel, which is ruled today by a right-wing government that is hostile to the PNA [Palestinian National Authority] and the two-state solution, goes ahead with further unilateral steps to annex occupied East Jerusalem and West Bank colonies.

We know that Romney will take a more aggressive stand on Syria, Iran and Russia, if elected president. He will do so out of his conviction that “President Obama has allowed our leadership to diminish.” Whether he will repeat the Bush experience of confrontational politics abroad or not is the big question. But we can be assured that he will steer away from Obama’s course of cooperation and multilateralism, if not for his own beliefs then surely as a result of pressure from his ultra-conservative constituency.

Osama Al Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.