Romney and Obama do not differ much on foreign policy issues

The U.S. election focuses mostly on domestic issues such as the economy even though the U.S. is the prime global power. On foreign policy issues Romney and Obama are often not far apart although there may be some difference in tone.

While the U.S. remains a global power there is relatively little campaigning on foreign policy issues. No doubt Americans are more interested in issues that they see as having an immediate impact on their own lives such as the economy, jobs and health care. Yet foreign policy is also significant. There are still casualties returning from Afghanistan. There are still huge costs of fighting the war on terror. The U.S. spends almost as much on the military to support the U.S. global power presence as the rest of the world as a whole. Another reason why foreign policy issues may not be discussed often is that Romney and Obama do not differ all that much on policies. The two contenders want to illustrate the difference between them and use that difference as a means of attracting votes. Since they have few differences on foreign policy talking about those issues would not differentiate the two in the minds of voters.
An article by Frida Ghitis on CNN shows that there are considerable similarities between Obama and Romney on foreign policy. Both Romney and Obama are strong supporters of Israel. Romney however is often shown as being more pro-Israel and even criticized for the extent to which he has supported Israel. Yet both court the support of the Israeli lobby in the U.S. and both agree that Israel is a key ally and that Israeli security is a non-negotiable part of U.S. foreign policy. The rhetoric may differ but the substance is on the whole the same. Given that Romney is not in power it is easier for him to up the rhetorical tone on Middle East issues.
Recently in order to highlight his differences with Obama on Israel, Romney said that Jerusalem was Israel's capital. Romney was criticized for his statement. However as the featured video for this article shows Obama said the same thing and went even further saying:
"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
Even on Iran whereas Romney tries to up the rhetorical heat his proposals are for more economic sanctions. Both he and Obama take the position that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons and that all options are on the table to deal with the problem.
Both Romney and Obama cheer on U.S. greatness although on this issue Obama had to learn his lessons. At first back in 2009 he was less bombastic in his praise of America and American exceptionalism noting that the Greeks probably believe in Greek exceptionalism and the British in British exceptionalism. He learned his lesson.
Romney tried to take advantage of Obama's relative humility and realism but even he after all his rhetorical flourishes about the U.S. as world leader and promoting U.S. moral principles adds that policy must be "tempered by a healthy humility about the extent of our power."
About the war in Afghanistan where Americans are still dying almost nothing is said during the campaign. While Romney has made vague criticisms of Obama on the war he is on record as supporting Obama's withdrawal plan. Actually the withdrawal plan is combined with another long term agreement that will keep the U.S. in Afghanistan until at least 2024. There seems to be no discussion of this. General Allen has noted that 68,000 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after the summer fighting season is over.
There are differences between Obama and Romney on the defense budget. Obama plans to cut the budget by 500 billion over ten years. Romney would spend more to expand the navy and looks at China as a looming rival. However Obama too sees China as a rival and is adjusting his strategy accordingly to post more troops in Southeast Asia and also naval support. Overall there is basic agreement between Obama and Romney on foreign policy. Obama has even moved closer to a hawkish policy. He has extended the range of drone attacks considerably from the Bush era and is also beginning to challenge Beijing in the South China Sea. Perhaps neither side sees any value in discussing foreign policy when Americans are interested in domestic issues and differences between Obama and Romney are not that great.

Bush's Third Term? You're living it.

If nothing else this article should shock Obama groupies because it shows how much of the Obama policy, especially with respect to foreign policy, is simply carrying on that of Bush. However this should not come as too much of a surprise since on issues such as Afghanistan Obam made it clear that he would actually accelerate the war there as compared to Bush. Bush was actually more cautious when it came to the Af-Pak conflict. Obama is going to face real problems with his imperialist adventures in Af-Pak at a time when his reform plans for health care and other domestic policies are being attacked with the opposition seeming to have the momentum going forward. Even a portion of the right which up to now has been mostly on his side in Af-Pak is turning sour towards the mission as a recent article by George Will advocating withdrawal illustrates.


http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2009/090309Swanson.shtml
Bush's Third Term?You're Living It
by David Swanson
Originally published September 1, 2009
In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restorethe rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish inplace what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far,President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen thelatter course.It sounds like the plot for the latest summer horror movie. Imagine,for a moment, that George W. Bush had been allowed a third term as president, had run and had won or stolen it, and that we were all nowliving (and dying) through it. With the Democrats in control ofCongress but Bush still in the Oval Office, the media would certainlybe talking endlessly about a mandate for bipartisanship and theimportance of taking into account the concerns of Republicans. Can'tyou just picture it?There's Dubya now, still rewriting laws via signing statements. Stillcreating and destroying laws with executive orders. And stillviolating laws at his whim. Imagine Bush continuing his policy ofextraordinary rendition, sending prisoners off to other countries withgrim interrogation reputations to be held and tortured. I can evenpicture him formalizing his policy of preventive detention, sprucingit up with some "due process" even as he permanently removes habeascorpus from our culture.I picture this demonic president still swearing he doesn't torture,still insisting that he wants to close Guantanamo, but assuring hissubordinates that the commander-in-chief has the power to torture "ifneeded," and maintaining a prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistanthat makes Guantanamo look like summer camp. I can imagine himcontinuing to keep secret his warrantless spying programs whileprotecting the corporations and government officials involved.If Bush were in his third term, we would already have seen himpropose, yet again, the largest military budget in the history of theworld. We might well have seen him pretend he was including warfunding in the standard budget, and then claim that one finalsupplemental war budget was still needed, immediately after which hewould surely announce that yet another war supplemental bill would beneeded down the road. And of course, he would have held onto hisSecretary of Defense from his second term, Robert Gates, to run thePentagon, keep our ongoing wars rolling along, and oversee the betterpart of our public budget.Bush would undoubtedly be following through on the agreement he signedwith Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for all U.S. troops to leaveIraq by the end of 2011 (except where he chose not to follow through).His generals would, in the meantime, be leaking word that the UnitedStates never intended to actually leave. He'd surely be maintainingcurrent levels of troops in Iraq, while sending thousands more troopsto Afghanistan and talking about a new "surge" there. He'd probablyalso be escalating the campaign he launched late in his second term touse drone aircraft to illegally and repeatedly strike into Pakistan'stribal borderlands with Afghanistan.If Bush were still "the decider" he'd be employing mercenaries likeBlackwater and propagandists like the Rendon Group and he might evenbe expanding the number of private security contractors inAfghanistan. In fact, the whole executive branch would be packed withdisreputable corporate executive types. You'd have somebody like John("May I torture this one some more, please?") Rizzo still serving, atleast for a while, as general counsel at the CIA. The White House andJustice Department would be crawling with corporate cronies, peoplelike John Brennan, Greg Craig, James Jones, and Eric Holder. Most ofthe top prosecutors hired at the Department of Justice for politicalpurposes would still be on the job. And political prisoners, likeformer Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former top Democratic donorPaul Minor would still be abandoned to their fate.In addition, the bank bailouts Bush and his economic team initiated inhis second term would still be rolling along -- with a similar crowdof people running the show. Ben Bernanke, for instance, wouldcertainly have been reappointed to run the Fed. And Bush's third termwould have guaranteed that there would be none of the monkeying aroundwith the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that theDemocrats proposed or promised in their losing presidential campaign.At this point in Bush's third term, no significant new effort wouldhave begun to restore Katrina-decimated New Orleans either.If the Democrats in Congress attempted to pass any set of neededreforms like, to take an example, new healthcare legislation, Bush,the third termer, would have held secret meetings in the White Housewith insurance and drug company executives to devise a means to turnsuch proposals to their advantage. And he would have refused torelease the visitor logs so that the American public would have no wayof knowing just whom he'd been talking to.During Bush's second term, some of the lowest ranking torturers fromAbu Ghraib were prosecuted as bad apples, while those officialsresponsible for the policies that led to Abu Ghraib remaineduntouched. If the public continued to push for justice for torturersduring the early months of Bush's third term, he would certainly havegone with another bad apple approach, perhaps targeting only low-ranking CIA interrogators and CIA contractors for prosecution. Bushwould undoubtedly have decreed that any higher-ups would not betouched, that we should now be looking forward, not backward. And hewould thereby have cemented in place the power of presidents to grantimmunity for crimes they themselves authorized.If Bush were in his third term, some of his first and second termsecrets might, by now, have been forced out into the open by lawsuits,but what Americans actually read wouldn't be significantly worse thanwhat we'd already known. What documents saw the light of day wouldsurely have had large portions of their pages redacted, and the vastbulk of documentation that might prove threatening would remain hiddenfrom the public eye. Bush's lawyers would be fighting in court, withever grander claims of executive power, to keep his wrongdoing out ofsight.Now, here's the funny part. This dark fantasy of a third Bush term isalso an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In followingBush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule oflaw and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place whatwere otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obamahas, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course.Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the effortsto hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to theassertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidencyin its first seven months.Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. Forone thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expandedpresidential powers and even -- in the case of wars, military strikes,lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and theobstruction of justice -- presidential crimes. In addition, in the newDemocratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have beenstrikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Manyprogressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the presidentand his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to hisdoorstep.If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far moreactive and outraged. There would already be a major push to really endthe wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democratsstill wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to votehim out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of himwouldn't make all that much difference.David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing theImperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union (Seven StoriesPress, 2009). He holds a master's degree in philosophy from theUniversity of Virginia and served as press secretary for Kucinich forPresident in 2004. Swanson is just beginning a book tour of 48 citiesand hopes to see you on the road. Check out his tour schedule byclicking here.Copyright 2009 David Swanso

Obama the Interventionist

It is probably impossible for many liberals to give up their ecstacy and illusion about Obama but here is a reminder from the past of what he represents in foreign policy. It is the same hubris and moral posturing that one finds in the Bush administration.
First there was Christian Right-Wing Evangelism and now we have Liberal Evangelism. The latter is no better than the former.

[Washington Post - April 29, 2007

Obama the Interventionist
By Robert Kagan

America must "lead the world in battling immediate evils and
promoting the ultimate good." With those words, Barack Obama put an
end to the idea that the alleged overexuberant idealism and America-
centric hubris of the past six years is about to give way to a new
realism, a more limited and modest view of American interests,
capabilities and responsibilities.

Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week was
pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John Mearsheimer. It had a
deliberate New Frontier feel, including some Kennedy-era references
("we were Berliners") and even the Cold War-era notion that the
United States is the "leader of the free world." No one speaks of the
"free world" these days, and Obama's insistence that we not "cede our
claim of leadership in world affairs" will sound like an
anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who even in the 1990s
complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow and Beijing it
will confirm suspicions about America's inherent hegemonism. But
Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we restore our
worthiness to lead. Personally, I like it.

All right, you're thinking, but at least he wants us to lead by
example, not by meddling everywhere and trying to transform the world
in America's image. When he said, "We have heard much over the last
six years about how America's larger purpose in the world is to
promote the spread of freedom," you probably expected him to distance
himself from this allegedly discredited idealism.

Instead, he said, "I agree." His critique is not that we've meddled
too much but that we haven't meddled enough. There is more to
building democracy than "deposing a dictator and setting up a ballot
box." We must build societies with "a strong legislature, an
independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant civil society, a
free press, and an honest police force." We must build up "the
capacity of the world's weakest states" and provide them "what they
need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities,
develop markets, . . . generate wealth . . . fight terrorism . . .
halt the proliferation of deadly weapons" and fight disease. Obama
proposes to double annual expenditures on these efforts, to $50
billion, by 2012.

It's not just international do-goodism. To Obama, everything and
everyone everywhere is of strategic concern to the United States. "We
cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger
unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and
not to destroy." The "security of the American people is inextricably
linked to the security of all people." Realists, call your doctors.

Okay, you say, but at least Obama is proposing all this Peace Corps-
like activity as a substitute for military power. Surely he intends
to cut or at least cap a defense budget soaring over $500 billion a
year. Surely he understands there is no military answer to terrorism.

Actually, Obama wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add
65,000 troops to the Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To
fight terrorism.

He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti
to Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the
ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks
we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the
strongest, best-equipped military in the world."

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a
last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever
hesitate to use force --unilaterally if necessary," not only "to
protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect
"our vital interests" when they are "imminently threatened." That's
known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around
the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a
"vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened."

Nor will they be comforted to hear that "when we use force in
situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to
garner the clear support and participation of others." Make every
effort?

Conspicuously absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are
four words: United Nations Security Council.

Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular
alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks
about how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin
the world anew." This is realism? This is a left-liberal foreign
policy?

Ask Noam Chomsky the next time you see him.

Of course, it's just a speech. At the Democrats' debate on Thursday,
when asked how he would respond to another terrorist attack on the
United States, Obama at first did not say a word about military
action. So maybe his speech only reflects what he and his advisers
think Americans want to hear. But that is revealing, too. When it
comes to America's role in the world, apparently they don't think
there's much of an argument.

Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall
Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His latest book is
"Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy. He has been
advising John McCain's presidential campaign on an informal and
unpaid basis.