The Romney--Bush foreign policy!

It is becoming more apparent by the day that Mitt Romney has grasped on to a great deal of the George W. Bush foreign policy initiative. It has been said that 17 of Romney’s 24 foreign policy advisors are neoconservatives from the days when the second Bush ruled the White House and America’s foreign policy initiatives. Chief among Romney’s advisors on all things foreign is one John Bolton who is a very right wing neoconservative straight out of the Project for a new American century, the group who declared that “America is an empire now!� This group had been hanging out on the fringes of American politics and members of it had made an attempt to get the notice of the first George Bush, who thought that they were crazy. It is groups like these who have been dragging the Republican party further and further to the right as the years and the decades have passed by.

In point of fact, contrary to the Obama administration policy of attempting to work with the United Nations, The Project for the new American century does want the United States to use its resources to shape a new type of twenty first century manifest destiny where this nation controls and influences affairs that it deems to be in its national interest all around the world. This would be a great departure from what we have seen for the last four years where president Obama has tried to employee an even handed form of diplomacy that allows most nations the opportunity to shape their own destiny. It has been this approach that has gained the United States many new friends around the world, however, it is also this approach that has created things like the Muslim brotherhood being able to elect the first president in a post dictator controlled Egypt. Although the Project for the new American Century disbanded in 2006, its participants are still very much around and are inhabiting the Romney campaign and their ideas are substantially unchanged from the Bush era. It has always been a neoconservative hallmark to end or marginalize United States participation in the United Nations. For many years people like the late senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina led a successful campaign to prohibit American funding of much of the U.N.’s work.

It is interesting to note that Barack Obama’s message of hope and change has resonated far more greatly in other areas of the world than it has in the United States, mainly because of opposition of a cluster of groups that have been controlling the dialog and direction of the Republican party for decades now. The Project for the new American century is merely one among many of these groups and think tanks that the very wealthy on the ultra leaning right have been financing for well over thirty years. Chief among those financiers are the multi billionaire Koch brothers out in the state of Kansas who are a pair of libertarians who want the least amount of government in their lives that can be imagined. The one exception to that credo is in the arena of the United States military. Most right wing republicans stand united in the idea that we constantly need a continual and dynamic buildup of America’s military as they confront foes that, in many instances, are of their own creation. Chief among these foes is the former Soviet Union in its current manifestation of Russia. When one looks back toward the past, one of the great seeds of this current United States/Russian confrontation has been the United States persistence in trying to build a missile shield that America sees as a needed foil against terrorist states nuclear acquired missile launches against either Israel or eastern or western Europe. Among states that might be able to do this sort of event would be Iran and North Korea. North Korea already has a rudimentary rocket launch system that fails each time it is tried in a test while Iran is still working to enrich fissile materials as they strive to develop a launch system to use them with.

The neocons see threats to United States power and sovereignty all across the globe, stretching from Moscow to the Peoples Republic of China. This view is held by them even though the United States military budget as it currently stands is greater than the next fifteen military powers combined. They worry about Chinese attacks against American aircraft carriers in the South China Sea as well as the more well founded concerns about terrorism aimed against the American homeland.

What the neocons really want is a return to the days of Ronald Reagan when there was a great American military build up, particularly with the American navy. They do not seem to remember that that buildup was financed with the largest increase in the national debt that had ever been seen up to that time--3.3 trillion dollars over eight years. However, their truly glory days came about under the Second George Bush who used the excuse given him by the September eleventh attacks to greatly increase the American military forces. If that were not enough, then Bush took off on his adventure in Iraq. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, well over a trillion dollars, well over, was spent on things that, particularly in Iraq, had no basis for reality at all. If there is any basis for reality, it might be a coming war with China in ten to fifteen years. However, if China can keep its society and its economy together, there would really be no need to think that a war with them is any sort of real possibility. The key to all of this stability, which is the foe of war, is a booming world wide economy where no one can afford to go to war because there is too much money to be made in a time of peace. If the neocons get into power again, they could be a real threat to that stability if they take off on another arms race that might force the Russians and the Chinese to try to follow suit. Sources in the know state that right now, the Russian military is in a shambles and even its much vaunted space program is facing a crisis of identity that will require some leadership to pull out of. Where the United states has chosen, under Obama, to privatize its space program, the Russians are lagging far behind in this area and may become irrelevant if the American privatized program takes off. The Russians last relevancy is that, right now, they afford the only way for astronauts to get to the International Space Station. However, in a few years, American private carriers may even deprive them of that. The reason that space is important to this conversation is that it has been a source of national pride for the Russians for many years and they might be facing a crossroads where they have to make decisions that would carry them more toward international interactions or a drawback into something that their leader Vladimir Putin might like, a convenient confrontational period with a resurgently well armed United States. Among the flashpoints of that confrontation is the current crisis and slaughter in Syria.

Syria is interesting because it is the last Russian outpost of influence in the Middle East. Syria is a manifestation of the old client state methodology that persists from the Cold War and it is evident from the Syrian/Russian relationship that is very important to Putin and those in charge in Russia today. Russia, as is well known ,is blocking any United Nations attempts to intervene in Syria, along with the Chinese. This blockage is a rubbing point between the currently formed Mitt Romney neocons because they claim that the United Nations is ineffective and should be discarded or rendered irrelevant with a newly resurgent America taking sway over what is going on in Syria. Although Romney will not directly admit it, he and his advisors would probably like a war in Syria and even possibly a bigger war with Iran. Their two prior wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down and there might be little justification for a larger military buildup if there is no conflict somewhere to point to as reason for all of this spending. Obama has pointed the way to a new type of foreign policy in the way that he handled Libya by not putting American boots on the ground and by confronting the realities in Syria that the neocons have apparently not learned from that we need to know whom we are backing in these struggles before we plunge in. America faces a new type of twenty first century foe in the radical terrorists that know no real traditional national boundaries at all. They have become expert at infiltration as the attack on our embassy outpost in Benghazi has shown so well. When we look at Afghanistan and Iraq today, we are very uncertain where their loyalties lie and much American blood and treasure has been spilled and spent over a decade with a return of very dubious results. Romney and the neocons attack Obama over things like the terms of force agreement that could not be agreed to with the Iraqi’s that resulted in the United States withdrawing all of its forces from that country when they can offer no tangible proof that they could have done any better or achieved any different results. Terms of force is an agreement that allows for American military law to supersede local law when American military personnel are involved. What we do know is that Iraq is much more closely allied with Iran now than we ever would have thought that it would be after the deaths of over four thousand American soldiers and the maiming of over twenty five thousand others.

If there was ever a reason not to put Romney and the neocons back in power, Bush two’s adventures in the Middle East should suffice. We should never forget that these people who accomplished all of this now work for the Romney campaign and will take power in the areas of foreign policy if he should be elected in November. It could mean a radical and decisive turn in world affairs and undo all of the good that Barack Obama has done in those areas over the last four years. In the worst possible scenario under a Romney administration, the only friends that we might have in the world might be the state if Israel. The neocons are like bulls in a china shop and we may not be able to live with the wreckage of what they might do to us and the world over another four or eight year reign. Just as an example, Mitt Romney’s miscues in Britain over the Olympic games incident render him very questionable as a foreign policy leader and the world looks on him as nothing more than an Israel apologist.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.