Romney sets out his foreign policy

The Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney sought to differentiate his foreign policy from President Barack Obama’s in an address at the Virginia Military Institute yesterday. “Hope is not a strategy,” Romney said, lambasting Obama in a speech titled The Mantle of Leadership.

Romney claimed Obama’s weakness had left the world thirsting for American leadership. If elected, he promised to enforce a robust foreign policy that would “shape” events, particularly in the Middle East. The high-blown rhetoric about the US being “the best hope of humankind” seemed to confirm presidential adviser David Axelrod’s quip that Romney wants to return to the 1950s.

Romney quoted Winston Churchill and Gen George Marshall, men active in the middle of the last century. He said:

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 “The 21st century can and must be an American century.” The term “American century” was coined by Time publisher Henry Luce in 1941. Romney compared the Arab Spring to the second World War, saying: “We have seen this struggle before. It would be familiar to Gen George Marshall. In his time, in the ashes of world war, another critical part of the world was torn between democracy and despotism.”

Read more: Irish Times

Posted in: 2012, Foreign Policy, Presidential Candidate, Republican Party, Romney, US Elections