Real Conservative Foreign Policy

As you have probably noticed Republican/conservative foreign policy has been taken over by the neoconservatives.  What you may not know is that until about 1972 the neoconservatives were part of the Democratic Party - the Scoop Jackson wing.  The "real" conservatives over at The American Conservative magazine would like to bring back the old conservative foreign policy.
The cover story of the magazine this month is by Andrew Bacevich,  Counterculture Conservatism where he writes as one of his bullet points:

Exposing the excesses of American militarism and the futility of the neo-imperialist impulses to which Washington has succumbed since the end of the Cold War. When it comes to foreign policy, the conservative position should promote modesty, realism, and self-sufficiency. To the maximum extent possible, Americans should “live within,” abandoning the conceit that the United States is called upon to exercise “global leadership,” which has become a euphemism for making mischief and for demanding prerogatives allowed to no other nation. Here the potential exists for conservatives to make common cause with members of the impassioned antiwar left.

Now Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol aren't going to like this very much but Daniel Larison, a blogger at the same magazine, does.

In practical terms, it should go without saying that this rules out preventive war. Few things better reflect the belief that the U.S. should enjoy “prerogatives allowed to no other nation” than the idea that the U.S. has the right to attack other countries for what they might do in the future. The U.S. should also be less involved in supporting other states’ internal political opposition, which is often the very definition of “making mischief” and meddling where we aren’t wanted by most of the people in these countries. The U.S. should be reducing how much it spends to subsidize the defense of countries that can readily provide for their own defense, and it should be cutting back on the overseas commitments it already has instead of adding to them. Specifically, that would mean no more NATO expansion, no new security guarantees to other states elsewhere in the world, and a review of the existing guarantees that the U.S. has made to determine whether or not they are outdated and irrelevant to American security today. Conservatives in the U.S. should be interested in trying as much as possible to get the United States back to the position of being at least a normal major power that has no special obligations and assumes no special authority or rights.

I think this is right, our interventions since WWII have brought us nothing but blow back and pain.  When talking about why we are so hated in the Middle East Pat Buchanan, said it best:

They don't hate us because of who we are they hate because of where we are.

Now I don't agree with Buchanan on much of anything but he called that right.  bin-Laden himself said the reason for 911 was American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.  Most of our foreign policy difficulties today are the result of meddling to protect the interests of multi-national corporations since the end of WWII.  Case in point is Iran where the CIA overthrew a Democratically elected prime minister because he was going to nationalize the country's oil resources.  They put the much hated Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in charge and helped him create his secret police to hold onto his power.
Being the world's bad cop is not something that benefits the citizens of the United States and in addition we can't afford it anymore.

Etch A Sketch Debate

Yesterday I said:

 So what does Romney do tonight?  Do an etch a sketch and alienate his neocon supporters or stay to the right and scare off 72% of the Independents, 65% of the Democrats and 53% of the Republicans?

 Well he did do a complete Etch A Sketch but what I should have anticipated was his neocon masters would assume he was lying.
Juan Cole documents a few of Romney's Etch A Sketch Moments:

On Israel-PalestineRomney said Monday,
But in a secretly videotaped fundraiser in Boca Raton last May, Romney had said about the Israel-Palestine conflict:

“So what you do is, you say, you move things along the best way you can. You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem….and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.”

So in public Romney is criticizing Obama for lack of progress in the peace process, without mentioning that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has in the past actually boasted about derailing the Oslo peace accords. But in private he admitted that likely under these circumstances, no progress is likely, and that the ball would have to be kicked down the field.
Verdict: Flip-flop.
On Afghanistan
Romney on Monday said

“Well, we’re going to be finished by 2014. And when I’m president, we’ll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014. The commanders and the generals there are on track to do so. We’ve seen progress over the past several years. The surge has been successful, and the training program is proceeding apace.”

Although Romney had earlier generally given an impression of concurring with the 2014 withdrawal date, he had earlier hedged it by saying:
“I will evaluate conditions on the ground and solicit the best advice of our military commanders . . .”
So before, he implied that Obama was riding roughshod over the Joint Chiefs of Staff in high-handedly making Afghanistan policy, whereas he, Romney would defer to them. Now he has withdrawn that objection, acknowledging that the Pentagon is on board with this withdrawal timetable.
Verdict: Flip-Flop.

Will it work?  Only time will tell!

Update:
Jeffery Goldberg asks a question:
Did the 'Neocon Puppet Masters' Get Outflanked by Romney?
The answer is Goldberg is not sure.

But this wasn't a debate: It was a moment for Obama to show himself to be all commander-in-chiefy, and for Romney to show himself to be sane, responsible and uninterested in foreign entanglements (Iran, of course, being the bipartisan exception). My assumption is that the so-called neoconservatives close to Romney didn't lose an argument about how to approach these issues, my assumption is that these people read polls, too, and know that Americans profess to be tired of the Middle East, and that therefore, it is best, two weeks before the election, not to recommend to their candidate that he push for greater involvement in the Syrian crisis, for example. Neocons, like everyone else in politics, are interested in winning.
Does this mean that Romney, if he wins the White House, will shed his moderate cloak and embrace the agenda of the interventionists? Maybe, maybe not. I tend to think of him as more of a pragmatist than an interventionist. I'm not suggesting that he was hiding anything last night. I'm suggesting only that he accentuated his non-interventionist impulses, and I'm also suggesting that his neoconservative advisers happily went along with this less muscular approach.

Daniel Larison - Fair and Balanced

Daniel Larison has spent a great deal of time criticizing Mitt Romney's foreign policy.  Today he spends some time on Barack Obama.

Questions Obama Should Have to Answer, But Won’t Be Asked

1) Your administration has presided over an intensified sanctions policy against Iran. This policy has imposed onerous economic burdens on the Iranian people without causing any apparent change in Iranian regime behavior regarding its nuclear program. Isn’t your Iran sanctions policy ineffective on its own terms as well as needlessly cruel and harmful to the civilian population?
 2) The Libyan war was justified primarily on humanitarian grounds and has been held up as an example of the “responsibility to protect” in action, but its effects have contributed directly to serious security and humanitarian crises in the Sahel, especially in Mali. If you knew then what you know now about the consequences of the Libyan war, would you still have ordered military action? If so, why?
 3) You have ruled out the possibility of containing a nuclear-armed Iran. Is there any reason to believe that the U.S. does not have the ability to contain a nuclear-armed regional power? Doesn’t the decision to rule out containment make war with Iran much more likely than it has to be?
 4) Weapons supplied to Syrian opposition forces with U.S. help have reportedly ended up in the hands of jihadist groups. Wasn’t it a mistake to agree to assist Saudi Arabia and Qatar in providing arms to the opposition?
 5) One of the results of the Libyan war has been that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is now able to operate freely in northern Mali. When are the costs of humanitarian intervention to international security too high to make it worthwhile?

All good questions that won't be asked.  I'm not too fond of Obama's foreign policy but I have every reason to believe that Romney would be much worse.

Romney's Foreign Policy Trap

Daniel Larison has an interesting PEW survey "Most Want The US Less Involved In The Middle East".

As you can see according to this survey Obama is probably to the right of not only most Americans but a majority of Republicans.  Thanks to his reckless neoconservative advisers Romney has placed himself to the right of Obama.  So what does Romney do tonight?  Do an etch a sketch and alienate his neocon supporters or stay to the right and scare off 72% of the Independents, 65% of the Democrats and 53% of the Republicans?
Larison:

While the candidates do not differ from one another on policy questions as much as their campaigns want the public to believe, there does appear to be a significant difference between the incumbent, whose response to political upheaval in North Africa and the Near East is frequently faulted for its “passivity,” and the challenger, who seems to think that the U.S. needs to be even more assertive and involved in these developments than it already is. If most viewers perceive Obama and Romney that way, it is difficult to see how Romney’s message will be very appealing to most of them. The survey results clearly show that the public doesn’t favor a candidate pushing for a more activist and hard-line approach, and it’s not even a close contest. After the last decade, the only thing that is surprising about this survey result is that there is still any support for more involvement.

Romney has said that we should not have left Iraq and that we should stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014.  In addition he has been very hawkish on Iran.  All of these positions are contrary to public positions.  As I said here Romney Foreign Policy sounds a lot like Bush 2.0. While Romney studies Neoconservative talking points I would hope that Obama is prepared with Romney's past Foreign Policy pronouncements.

Update:
Romney knows he's not going to win tonight according to Politco. Larison's reaction:

The greatest danger for Romney is that he sabotages himself by repeating attack lines that only hawkish ideologues find credible. That would show that he is either just mouthing their phrases or so intent on proving that he is a hawk that he doesn’t care how politically harmful their hard-line policies are. For example, if he returns to dated, nonsensical complaints about the Green movement protests or missile defense, he wouldn’t land any hits on Obama’s record and he would demonstrate how much he relies on the movement conservative echo chamber for his arguments. The less that he sounds like the candidate who delivered the VFW and VMI speeches, the better it will be for him politically. A reliable standard for judging how well or badly Romney has performed is to see how the most ideological neoconservatives respond to what he says in the debate. If they are extremely pleased by his performance because he echoed their views, Romney will have lost the debate very badly indeed.

Update II
When The Former Head Of Mossad Calls You a Moron…Or Why You Don’t Hand Over Foreign Policy To An Out-Of-His-Depth-Hack Guided By The Worst People In The World
Read it and Romney should too but he won't!

General Tommy Franks?

Let's suppose you are running against a President that ordered the operation that resulted in the Death of Osama bin Laden what general would you chose to endorse and advise you?  If you are Mitt Romney it would be the general that lost Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora.

If you're a presidential candidate looking to establish your national security cred with a war-weary American public, who might be the worst frontman you could choose for your cause? How about the guy who oversaw the campaign that lost Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, then bungled planning for war in Iraq? In a news release Wednesday night, Mitt Romney announced the 300-plus members of his "Military Advisory Council," and that man led the list of endorsements:

"I'm proud to be supporting Mitt Romney in this critical election about our nation’s future," said General Tommy Franks, USA (Ret.), Past Commander, U.S. Central Command. "Governor Romney is committed to restoring America's leadership role in the world. Instead of playing politics with our military, he will strengthen our defense posture by reversing the President's devastating defense cuts. The fact of the matter is that we cannot afford another four years of feckless foreign policy. We need level-headed leadership which will protect our interests and defend our values with clarity and without apology."

Few living Americans can speak with as much authority about "years of feckless foreign policy" as can Tommy "Rumsfeld's water boy" Franks, who comes in at No. 4 on a Foreign Policy list of worst US generals ever. As readers of our lie-by-lie Iraq timeline will recall, Franks oversaw CENTCOM from 2000 to 2003 and scripted the initial conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

This just goes to show how wedded Romney is to the failed foreign policy of George W. Bush. It is also obvious that Romney is in favor of maintaining the welfare to the military industrial complex.

Debate Three

Apparently Romney will be spending the next few days preparing for the Foreign Policy debate on Monday. Since he has little knowledge and no experience that prep will probably consist of memorizing neoconservative talking points.  When it comes to foreign policy Obama himself is to the right of the country and Romney will have to go to the right of Obama to please his neocon advisers.  

Daniel Larison:

This [Foreign Policy] has remained one of Romney’s biggest weaknesses for a few reasons, the most important of which is that he simply hasn’t spent enough time or paid enough attention to these issues to be as well-versed in them as he should be. There are many things that aren’t Romney’s “natural” subjects, but he doesn’t struggle with any other kind of policy as much as he struggles with this one. As a former governor, it is understandable that he prefers talking about domestic policy issues, but favoring this preference has caused him to neglect foreign policy to a remarkable degree for someone who has been running for president since 2006. Until now, most voters likely haven’t noticed the result of this neglect, but they will see it in Monday’s debate.

As Larison points out when it comes to Foreign Policy Romney sounds a lot like Bush 2.0, not something the war weary citizens of the United States are ready for.  The lesson most Americans take from the Libyan incident is we simply shouldn't be there not that we should have hundreds of armed guards or Marines.  So he has to please is neocon masters and at the same time not scare the American people - not an easy task. 

It would be reasonable for the questioner and the public to conclude from his response that there aren’t any major differences between Romney and Bush on foreign policy. That is what all of the other evidence to date confirms, and given the opportunity to distinguish himself on foreign policy Romney opted to talk about other things. Romney could correct that oversight in Monday’s debate, but I wouldn’t count on it. If losing the foreign policy debate means that Romney “probably won’t win” the election, as Kristol says, then Romney probably won’t win.

Still More On Romney's Foreign Policy Speach

A couple of new reactions to Romney's speech at VMI yesterday.  Like everything Romney says is vague and lacking substance Juan Cole found some disturbing hints:
Romney's Five Wars

Mitt Romney’s speech at VMI on foreign policy has been widely condemned as vague and lacking in substance, sort of like the man who gave it. But the speech is also full of suggestions and criticisms of the Obama administration that are simply not realistic. The speech is Romney’s “Mission Impossible,” only without the cool theme music and also without a prayer of being actually achievable short of launching a series of 5 wars. I’ve decided that my initial assumption that a businessman of Romney’s experience must know something about the world was dead wrong. Apparently it is possible to sit in cushy big offices in companies like Bain, and to remain completely ignorant of foreign affairs. Romney’s speeches are all just a replaying for us of the prejudices of CEOs when they play golf together and complain vaguely about the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, and so forth. Or, maybe Romney has gotten so many campaign contributions from arms manufacturers that he can’t help see foreign affairs through the lens of new wars he wants to fight.

So what are Romney's five wars?

1. He wants to return to Iraq although of course that would be illegal.
2. He want's to become more involved in Syria.
3. He want's to attack Iran in spite of the fact that would destabalize the Middle East and probably destroy the world economy.
4. He hints at staying in Afghanistan past 2014
5. The small wars: Intervention in Yemen, Somalia, perhaps even Libya in a ‘war on terror.’

Go to the link for details.

Doug Mataconis calls out Romney's misrepresentation of the status of the navy.

During his foreign policy speech yesterday at Virginia Military Institute, Mitt Romney made a claim that he’s repeated several times in the past:

“The size of our Navy is at levels not seen since 1916. I will restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year, including three submarines.”

Doug does a good job at pointing out that this is at best comparing apples and oranges and at worst utter bull shit.  Once again go to the link for details.

I'm Going To Pound My Chest Harder

Mitt Romney gave another foreign policy speech today and it was like all the speeches and Op-Ed's before it - a lot of false platitudes about apologies and weakness. What policy there was sounded just like what Obama is already doing but apparently Romney is going to pound his chest harder.
Romney:

In Syria I’ll work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and then ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks helicopters and fighter jets. Iran is sending arms to Assad because they know his downfall would be a strategic defeat for them. We should be working no less vigorously through our international partners to support the many Syrians who would deliver that defeat to Iran, rather than sitting on the sidelines. It’s essential that we develop influence with those forces in Syria that will one day lead a country that sits at the heart of the Middle East.

Of course this is pretty much what Obama is doing.  We are working with other gulf States to arm the Syrian rebels including CIA agents on the border.  So what is Romney going to do differently - pound his chest harder.

Iran:

I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran and will — and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf. And I’ll work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination. For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions, not just words, that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated.

This sounds a lot like what the Obama administration has been doing for three years. So what is Romney going to do differently - pound his chest harder.

Daniel Larison:

Perhaps the most striking thing about Romney's speech was that it was even less specific than some of his previous statements. He was content to rule out "flexibility" on missile defense with Vladimir Putin, but neglected to mention that his own preferred policy toward Russia is one aimed at undoing all of the gains of improved relations with Moscow. Romney would like to benefit from the appearance of taking a harder line without having to address the likely consequences of that position, which could include reduced Russian cooperation in supplying the war in Afghanistan.

Romney like his FP advisers are still locked in  a cold war mindset.

Like George W Bush Romney has little knowledge and even less interest in Foreign Policy and has surrounded himself with many of the same advisers that brought us Iraq and Afghanistan.  There is every indication that he would let the tail, Israel, wag the dog, the U.S., once again.  Even if he had plans to fix the economy it would be for naught since his probable Foreign Policy adventures would make them irrelevant.