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

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Romney attacks Obama foreign policy

Mitt Romney and his Republican allies assailed President Barack Obama's foreign policy on Monday, expanding their attacks beyond his economic record in the run-up to the first of three debates.

Romney arrived in the battleground state of Colorado two full days before the high-stakes face-off Wednesday, telling supporters "I look forward" to the presidential debates as a chance to lay out a grand vision for the country.

During a boisterous rally here late Monday Romney largely kept to his standard stump speech laying out how his policies would break the US economy out of its rut and create 12 million jobs.

But earlier in the day Romney had cast beyond US borders, suggesting that after weeks of turmoil sparked by an anti-Islam Internet video foreign affairs might get more attention in the final sprint to the November 6 vote.

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He accused Obama of downplaying deadly violence in the Middle East and warned that the president's policies have "heightened the prospect of conflict and instability."

Read more: My Sinchew

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