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Romney's Campaigning on Foreign Policy

Deacon923 said:
I have yet to hear a credible argument that Obama has done a poor job at foreign policy, certainly not in this post. I agree that the Saudis are important. How exactly has Obama mismanaged that relationship? You have identified two possible issues, but you have not identified the alternative that would have been more palatable to the Saudis, while simultaneously being no less palatable to other important geostrategic actors, while simultaneously being satisfactory to a domestic political audience, while simultaneously being within the scope of our substantial but not unlimited resources. Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but it's pretty hard to chip Obama on his foreign policy record. Romney keeps trying, but despite being backed by the full power of the GOP attack machine he just makes himself look stupid doing it.
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I identified the Saudis as an example. That post was just a response to yours. Here is a post I made earlier about why I think the Obama administration's foreign policy has been subpar at best:

"...the Obama administration has no coherent strategy for dealing with the Middle East. The Arab Spring caught them completely with their pants down, and they had no idea how to react. At first they stuck with the tried and true strategy of supporting the Arab nationalist dictators. Once they started falling, they went with the momentum and they supported those revolting. But they were rightly horrified by the idea of Islamists coming to power again, so they tempered their support and largely stood by the sidelines. Going with popular opinion doesn't take any foresight or skill. The result of their Middle East "policy" has been that all sides have been alienated. Our allies in countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain look at us with supreme distrust, seeing how their counterparts were treated. Mubarak was a key U.S. ally. He was instrumental in negotiations in Gaza, and he stuck by us in 1990 by leading a coalition of Arab countries against Iraq. That was not by any means a popular decision in his country. The Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II administrations worked tirelessly to build a relationship with him, and we threw it away at a whim. Bush senior had his family over for dinner regularly and took him to baseball games at Yankee Stadium. Was the decision not to back him wrong? Not necessarily, but the manner in which they played it was horrific. Half-measures all around. If you are going to shift U.S. policy in the Middle East, you actually have to do it. You will burn some bridges along the way, but that's the price you pay. The Obama administration was not willing to pay the price, and now we have alienated all sides. The evidence of this failure is clear cut. We are just as disliked in the Middle East as we were under the Bush administration, and now we've lost the trust of the leaders as well. So yes, Obama and Clinton's Middle East policy has been a disaster. On the other hand, there have been promising developments in Burma, Africa, and elsewhere. Small steps, but important steps. And the overall pivot of our geostrategic focus to the Far East has been encouraging, although the foreign policy community has been calling for that for years now. "
 
seventwofour said:
Maybe you're missing the legitimate governments that the United States has helped overthrow and the hundreds of thousands of people who have died as a result of the US pushing forward its foreign policy.
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I can think of the two I pointed to in the earlier post. Neither of those regimes are still in power. Now I'll point to the incalculable benefit reaped by the global population from the WTO, the IMF, the UN, and the dozens of other multilateral agreements and institutions established by the United States.
 
The Arab Spring caught everybody with their pants down. And history should have taught us that you can't just ally with Arab rebels without really knowing what you're getting into.
 
PhDeac said:
The Arab Spring caught everybody with their pants down. And history should have taught us that you can't just ally with Arab rebels without really knowing what you're getting into.
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No it didn't. There were many policy analysts who detected rumblings and predicted disorder. But that's beside the point, they should have at least been prepared for the contingency. They should have examined the risk with the understanding that economic slowdowns generally coincide with civil unrest. That's the reason we saw Occupy in America and Europe. That's why we saw civil unrest in Europe in the 1930s and in 1848.
 
All civil unrest isn't created equal. The organic nature of the Arab Spring, it's quick spread, and immediate effectiveness particularly in terms of drawing attention from the West was definitely a surprise. Regardless, this isn't something the US should have just stormed in and taken over even by arming the rebels.
 
PhDeac said:
All civil unrest isn't created equal. The organic nature of the Arab Spring, it's quick spread, and immediate effectiveness particularly in terms of drawing attention from the West was definitely a surprise. Regardless, this isn't something the US should have just stormed in and taken over even by arming the rebels.
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Didn't say that. I just wish that they had had a coherent plan. Hell, even if you ignore the fact that it took them by surprise, they still should have been able to formulate an overarching response on relatively short notice. Almost anything would have been better than the feckless vacillation we saw.
 
TR1982 said:
Didn't say that. I just wish that they had had a coherent plan. Hell, even if you ignore the fact that it took them by surprise, they still should have been able to formulate an overarching response on relatively short notice. Almost anything would have been better than the feckless vacillation we saw.
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When you start from a position that anything Obama does is doomed to failure and every post TR makes is "Obama failed at X", how can anything he says be taken seriously regardless of how many words he uses?

Virtually every non-extreme RW publication in the world have lauded Obama's foreign policy successes.
 
This idea that the US has to babysit the entire world is one of the problems with US foreign policy. I'm glad Obama didn't try to micromanage an organic uprising. Probably would have made things worse. This didn't really involve the US outside of our responsibilities with the UN with respect to peacekeeping.

I'm curious what you would have preferred Obama do.
 
TR1982 said:
I identified the Saudis as an example. That post was just a response to yours. Here is a post I made earlier about why I think the Obama administration's foreign policy has been subpar at best:

"...the Obama administration has no coherent strategy for dealing with the Middle East. The Arab Spring caught them completely with their pants down, and they had no idea how to react. At first they stuck with the tried and true strategy of supporting the Arab nationalist dictators. Once they started falling, they went with the momentum and they supported those revolting. But they were rightly horrified by the idea of Islamists coming to power again, so they tempered their support and largely stood by the sidelines. Going with popular opinion doesn't take any foresight or skill. The result of their Middle East "policy" has been that all sides have been alienated. Our allies in countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, and Bahrain look at us with supreme distrust, seeing how their counterparts were treated. Mubarak was a key U.S. ally. He was instrumental in negotiations in Gaza, and he stuck by us in 1990 by leading a coalition of Arab countries against Iraq. That was not by any means a popular decision in his country. The Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II administrations worked tirelessly to build a relationship with him, and we threw it away at a whim. Bush senior had his family over for dinner regularly and took him to baseball games at Yankee Stadium. Was the decision not to back him wrong? Not necessarily, but the manner in which they played it was horrific. Half-measures all around. If you are going to shift U.S. policy in the Middle East, you actually have to do it. You will burn some bridges along the way, but that's the price you pay. The Obama administration was not willing to pay the price, and now we have alienated all sides. The evidence of this failure is clear cut. We are just as disliked in the Middle East as we were under the Bush administration, and now we've lost the trust of the leaders as well. So yes, Obama and Clinton's Middle East policy has been a disaster. On the other hand, there have been promising developments in Burma, Africa, and elsewhere. Small steps, but important steps. And the overall pivot of our geostrategic focus to the Far East has been encouraging, although the foreign policy community has been calling for that for years now. "
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That's an interesting critique but it relies on a whole bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking. A whole bunch. First of all, I don't know of anyone who wasn't surprised by the Arab Spring. Maybe you know some Peter Schiff like savant who saw all this coming but I have not heard of him.

So, once the surprise happened and unexpected events started unfolding, I think they did pretty well under the circumstances. The first step in Egypt was a lot of calls for peaceful negotiation and transfer of power. What should they have done instead? Immediately issued a statement for Mubarak to step down? That would not have helped your concerns over the Saudis. Immediately declared full support for the Mubarak regime and condemned the protesters? That would have been immensely unpopular with Congress and the domestic audience, and was not in line with the position of many of our allies. The Republicans would have been jumping all over Obama for not supporting those brave freedom fighters.

Looking at your post, I do not see a single unequivocal statement about what should have been done differently. I see a lot of complaining about "indecisiveness" and "half-measures". You say maybe we were right not to back Mubarak, but we just did it wrong, whatever that means. You also contradict yourself. One the one hand you say Obama has failed by alienating the Saudis, on the other hand you say he has failed by not making a dramatic decision to burn all the bridges. Which is it?

Bottom line, I simply do not buy your argument. I don't believe it reflects the reality of Middle East diplomacy in the 21st century. It looks to me like the administration made the best of a difficult situation by steering a very difficult middle course, trying to facilitate peaceful outcomes that avoid civil war while also maintaining relationships with key allies like the Saudis. I don't see how making a more dramatic decision would have had a better outcome. Nobody in this country could control the outcome in Egypt, and trying to control it probably would have made the outcome worse. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight and declaring that this or that decision should have been made in an extremely complex and rapidly developing situation is not a serious critique of any president's foreign policy.
 
Romney is a fucking idiot for doing anything to break away from the economy as the main issue in this election. His only chance of winning is to convince swing voters that he can do a better job working with Congressional Republichildren at turning around the economy than Obama can.
 
Deacon923 said:
That's an interesting critique but it relies on a whole bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking.

No kidding. That's kind of the nature of a critique.

A whole bunch. First of all, I don't know of anyone who wasn't surprised by the Arab Spring. Maybe you know some Peter Schiff like savant who saw all this coming but I have not heard of him.

So, once the surprise happened and unexpected events started unfolding, I think they did pretty well under the circumstances. The first step in Egypt was a lot of calls for peaceful negotiation and transfer of power.

No, the first step was support for the transfer of power to Mubarak's son. Then, as events spiraled out of control, they called for Mubarak to hold elections after his term was over. When things got even worse, they called for him to step down immediately.

What should they have done instead? Immediately issued a statement for Mubarak to step down? That would not have helped your concerns over the Saudis. Immediately declared full support for the Mubarak regime and condemned the protesters? That would have been immensely unpopular with Congress and the domestic audience, and was not in line with the position of many of our allies. The Republicans would have been jumping all over Obama for not supporting those brave freedom fighters.

Looking at your post, I do not see a single unequivocal statement about what should have been done differently. I see a lot of complaining about "indecisiveness" and "half-measures". You say maybe we were right not to back Mubarak, but we just did it wrong, whatever that means. You also contradict yourself. One the one hand you say Obama has failed by alienating the Saudis, on the other hand you say he has failed by not making a dramatic decision to burn all the bridges. Which is it?

I don't think you understand my argument. My problem with Obama is not singularly that he alienated other Middle Eastern despots. My problem is that he did it for no gain, and more generally, that he has no overarching philosophy for how to deal with the Middle East. He's running an ad hoc foreign policy over there. If you want to alienate Arab dictators and get fully behind the pro-democracy movement, that's fine. I don't know whether or not that would benefit us more in the long-run, but it's certainly a viable strategy. If you do that though, you have to accept the fact that you are going to face hostility from those despots that survive. That means no more buying oil from Aramco. On the other hand, those nations that topple their dictators are more likely to be friendly towards the United States. This is the strictly neoconservative approach.

If you want to play the purely geostrategic game and prop up the dictators, that's fine too. Obviously you aren't going to send in Black Hawks to mow down protestors; the logical course of action would be just to remain silent on the issue and let the chips fall as they may, while continuing to send foreign aid. This is the strategy I would have adopted. Unpalatable? Maybe. But you don't have to actively support the dictators in the face of revolution in order to keep the confidence of the others. You just have to avoid dicking them over. The problem with Obama's "strategy" was that he tried to have his cake and eat it too, and ended up alienating all parties involved.

Bottom line, I simply do not buy your argument. I don't believe it reflects the reality of Middle East diplomacy in the 21st century.

How so?

It looks to me like the administration made the best of a difficult situation by steering a very difficult middle course

If you have two options, and both have significant drawbacks, the correct answer isn't necessarily to just pick a point in the middle and go with it.

trying to facilitate peaceful outcomes that avoid civil war while also maintaining relationships with key allies like the Saudis. I don't see how making a more dramatic decision would have had a better outcome. Nobody in this country could control the outcome in Egypt, and trying to control it probably would have made the outcome worse. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight and declaring that this or that decision should have been made in an extremely complex and rapidly developing situation is not a serious critique of any president's foreign policy.

Are you serious? So should I just agree with everything he did and say "Aw shucks, hindsight is 20/20! He couldn't have known any better"? Under the definition you've set, what would be a serious critique?
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Romney went from having a 20% of getting my vote, to 0% after this. Just absolutely no excuse to act like this. It just reeks of desperation and is the opposite of presidential.
 
TR, you don't have any facts, although you are trying your best to present as fact an alternative timeline of how things would have worked out if Obama had propped up Mubarak. You are also trying to present as fact the argument that the administration has no overarching philosophy for the Mideast. More to the point, you have created in your mind two possible overarching philosophies, and then declared that these are the only two possible philosophies. Thus, this comment:

If you have two options, and both have significant drawbacks, the correct answer isn't necessarily to just pick a point in the middle and go with it.

is ridiculously reductive. It has no basis in fact. This is why I say that your argument does not line up with reality. You are taking a complex situation and trying to distill it down into two choices. Then you create an argument by stating that IF and ONLY IF the administration chooses one of the two choices you have created, will the administration be sufficiently decisive, and any other choice makes them indecisive. On what basis are you arguing that the two options you are presenting are the only options? the Arab Spring was and remains a complex multinational event that has been lurching along for over two years. To state that any administration only had "two options" in dealing with the various developments in this ongoing regional disturbance is nothing more than a rhetorical device employed in an attempt to support your argument that the administration has been weak or waffling.
 
Liquid Karma said:
Romney is a fucking idiot for doing anything to break away from the economy as the main issue in this election. His only chance of winning is to convince swing voters that he can do a better job working with Congressional Republichildren at turning around the economy than Obama can.
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Vote D downballot and you don't need to worry about that
 
Deacon923 said:
TR, you don't have any facts, although you are trying your best to present as fact an alternative timeline of how things would have worked out if Obama had propped up Mubarak. You are also trying to present as fact the argument that the administration has no overarching philosophy for the Mideast. More to the point, you have created in your mind two possible overarching philosophies, and then declared that these are the only two possible philosophies. Thus, this comment:

If you have two options, and both have significant drawbacks, the correct answer isn't necessarily to just pick a point in the middle and go with it.

is ridiculously reductive. It has no basis in fact. This is why I say that your argument does not line up with reality. You are taking a complex situation and trying to distill it down into two choices. Then you create an argument by stating that IF and ONLY IF the administration chooses one of the two choices you have created, will the administration be sufficiently decisive, and any other choice makes them indecisive. On what basis are you arguing that the two options you are presenting are the only options? the Arab Spring was and remains a complex multinational event that has been lurching along for over two years. To state that any administration only had "two options" in dealing with the various developments in this ongoing regional disturbance is nothing more than a rhetorical device employed in an attempt to support your argument that the administration has been weak or waffling.
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Jesus. You need to stop assuming things. It makes an ass out of you an me, and all that. I brought up the "two options" argument to illustrate that the moderate course isn't necessarily the best course. I'm not actually saying that there were only two ways to deal with the Arab Spring. There were many ways to deal with it, those are just the two I think would have been most successful, and would have harnessed the energy of the events towards furthering U.S. policy. Another option would be to completely withdraw from the Middle East. We could also carpet bomb the entire region. But yeah, you are correct. I am absolutely trying to present as fact the idea that the Obama administration has no overarching strategy for the Middle East. Feel free to disprove me.

You were asking me to provide an example of what I would have done. I did. Now you say I have no facts. I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you mean I can't prove the counterfactual, you are correct, but that doesn't make my argument unsound. I also can't prove that if the United States had backed Britain and France during the Suez Crisis, France wouldn't have withdrawn from NATO. Generally most critiques involve assumptions. Mine is no different. It's a petty intellectual copout if you are going to arbitrarily invalidate my entire argument over the fact that I can't prove the counterfactual.
 
Backing Mubarak would have been a monumentally stupid position to take. There was no way for Mubarak to retain power. Being seen to support a regime that was destined to go would have harmed us much more than our actions did.
 
RJKarl said:
Backing Mubarak would have been a monumentally stupid position to take. There was no way for Mubarak to retain power. Being seen to support a regime that was destined to go would have harmed us much more than our actions did.
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I really don't see how you can argue with this statement. Backing a dictator against a overwhelming public uprising in a massively populous Muslim nation was never a tenable position to take. Not anymore. Such a stance is pretty much Exhibit One as to why the Muslim world feels so much anger toward the US. We like to meddle in their internal affairs, backing dictatorships or democracies as it suits our national interests (read: retaining global energy hegemony). We can't go down that road again -- can't actively stand in the way of even incremental democratic reform -- even if the short-term outcomes aren't great. The Obama administration seems to get this, which is fundamental. No more flaming, hypocritical rhetoric spewed mainly for domestic consumption. No more cavalier high-handedness with an entire region of the globe. We've started giving respect, and showing (gasp) a degree of humility, while repairing our image (slowly, and admittedly with setbacks). It's a long road, but thank god we're on it now.

The Romney position of blithe disrespect and aggressive condescension to a seething region with billions of people is archaic and dangerous. It doesn't work now, never really worked in the past, and won't work in the future. We have to treat the Middle East as a partner going forward, not as chattel. The GOP is still miles behind on this, mainly because they still think that treating Islam as some dastardly and unknowable enemy ideology makes sense. Until the GOP updates its social positions, they'll be hampered by their own prejudices in foreign policy. And we can't have that as the backdrop to how the US deals with the Arab Spring in the next four years.
 
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