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Opinion: Romney’s worldview: Common sense and cheap shots

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivered his first major foreign policy address Friday, and it was a mixture of platitudes, sensible positions and some cheap shots at the Obama administration. Overall, Romney outlined a mainstream foreign policy that he promised to pursue in a more muscular fashion.

Overarching his comments was a cloying insistence on American exceptionalism. ‘God did not create this country to be a nation of followers,’ he said. ‘America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers.’

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Romney pledged himself to making sure that this was an ‘American century,’ in furtherance of which he would prosecute American foreign policy ‘with clarity and resolve.’ Yet the goals he espoused to a great extent mirrored those of the Obama administration: preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb, combatting Islamic fundamentalism and securing the border with Mexico. In the pursuit of those and other objectives, Romney expressed a preference for ‘soft power’ over military action.

Romney offered a few novel proposals: He would increase the construction of ships for the Navy and beef up missile defense. He would strengthen the alliance with Israel, which he wrongly accused the Obama administration of treating with ‘ambivalence.’ He would enhance the deterrence against Iran by stationing aircraft carrier task forces in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. He would appoint a czar to handle ‘all of our diplomatic and assistance efforts in the greater Middle East.’

On Afghanistan, Romney hinted that he might slow the withdrawal of U.S. forces, saying he would ‘receive the best recommendation of our military commanders’ about the pace of withdrawal. President Obama, Romney suggested, has allowed politics to influence his withdrawal decisions.

Despite his insistence on American exceptionalism, Romney said that the United States under his leadership would participate in multilateral organizations and alliances, a commitment not likely to endear him to tea party conservatives. (Nor will his promise to open talks with Mexico about drugs and border security.)

Inevitably, a challenger for the presidency will accuse the incumbent of ineptness or worse in the conduct of foreign policy. Romney’s speech was generous with such criticism, but his differences with Obama mostly concerned execution, not policy.

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