Mitt Romney, who in the
past was considered a moderate Republican, has surrounded himself with
neoconservative foreign policy advisors. Romney’s chameleon
approach to politics is to simply say, and sometimes do, whatever would
appeal to his current audience. To win the governorship of Massachusetts,
Romney had to be something of a liberal. To win the Republican
presidential primaries, it was essential for Romney to place himself
on the Right. In foreign policy this meant an appeal to the Christian
Zionists and hard-line American nationalists who identify with the aggressive
foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration, which especially
focused on the Middle East, with Iran now being the major target. And
all the major Republican presidential candidates took this position
with the exception of Ron Paul.
Romney has gone as far as to threaten military action to stop Iran’s
alleged nuclear weapons program. This naturally appealed to supporters
of Israel, Iran being Israel’s foremost enemy, and it paid off bountifully
for Romney in June, when multi-billionaire Zionist Sheldon Adelson,
who had single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich in the Republican presidential
primary race, pledged to spend $100 million or more to help Romney defeat
President Obama.
Romney’s foreign policy advisors include such neocon luminaries as Robert
Kagan, a contributing editor of the neocon “Weekly Standard” and scholar
at the Brookings Institution; Eliot Cohen, a Johns Hopkins University
professor of strategic studies, who coined the term “World War IV” for
the war against Islamic “terrorists” (i.e., essentially against Israel’s
Middle East enemies); Dan Senor, former spokesman for the Coalition
Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer in Iraq and a former intern
for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Eric
Edelman, an advisor to Vice President Cheney in George W. Bush’s first
term and undersecretary of defense for policy in the second; and John
Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security
and UN ambassador during the younger Bush’s administration.
Kagan, Edelman, and Senor have served as directors of the Foreign Policy
Initiative (with “Weekly Standard” editor, Bill Kristol), which is considered
a successor to the now-defunct Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
that promoted the war on Iraq. Among its hawkish policies, the
Foreign Policy Initiative has advocated a US military strike on Iran’s
nuclear program along with support for regime change, and military intervention
in Syria.
John Bolton especially stands out since his name has been mentioned
for the position of Secretary of State. In a recent piece, “The
Negotiation Delusion” in the “Weekly Standard,” Bolton asserts that
neither negotiations, sanctions, computer virus attacks, targeted killings,
nor anything short of an actual military attack will stop Iran from
continuing its alleged “decades-long effort to build deliverable nuclear
weapons.” Moreover, he goes so far as to state that Iran because of
its alleged cheating does not have the right “even to ‘peaceful’
nuclear activities without fundamental regime change.” In short,
the only option for the US to take is war. And he does not sugarcoat
the ramifications of such a war as was done by the neocons in the build-up
for the war on Iraq. For he holds that “Russia and China have
a strategic national interest in preventing us from succeeding” because
they see it as a “test case in limiting American power.” If Russian
and Chinese strategic national interests are involved, it would seem
unlikely that these countries would sit on the sidelines while the US
bombarded Iran in order to achieve “regime change.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/negotiation-delusion_648231.html?page=1
http://bit.ly/PcRr07
As an aside, let me add that there are also old-line Republican realists/pragmatists
(of the Brent Scowcroft-James Baker variety) listed among Romney’s advisors
who reportedly are at loggerheads with the neocons. But official campaign
pronouncements and Romney’s speeches indicate that the neocons are clearly
dominant. In fact, Republican foreign policy stalwarts such as Henry
Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft have yet to endorse Romney. “I don’t
think I’ve changed my views at all,” Scowcroft stated. “I think the
party has moved.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/us/politics/republican-foreign-policy-establishment-slow-to-embrace-romney.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
http://nyti.ms/JVLXAo
Given that Romney’s identification with the neocons and their hardline
policies is likely motivated by opportunism rather than conviction,
shouldn’t he now be expected to change to a more moderate position for
the general election, which he would continue as President?
Furthermore, should he become President, would he really want to harm
his own popularity at home and abroad by launching a war that would
be apt to devastate the economy just to placate the neoconservatives
and other segments of the Israel lobby?
These factors must be considered, but Romney has gone so far in his
involvement with the neocons that it would be very difficult for him
to extricate himself from their war agenda without serious negative
repercussions for himself. The neocons and their wealthy supporters
expect him to pursue a policy in line with their thinking, at least
in key areas such as Iran, Syria, and Israel. It must be remembered
that the neocons are very influential in the conservative media, best
represented by Fox News. Should they turn on him for deserting
their Middle East agenda, their criticism of him would likely resonate
with the Republican base, which was never too keen about him in the
first place, and thus undermine his administration. Since it is
doubtful that Romney would be able to attract substantial support from
independents and Democrats by a more moderate foreign policy stance,
his alienation of the neocons, with their power over the Republican
base, could leave him with virtually no significant support. It
would thus seem that Romney, out of personal self-interest, would need
to keep his wagon tied to the neocons, trying to ameliorate some of
their most extreme positions. This approach definitely would mean
that much stronger measures would be taken against Iran than have been
implemented so far, and if the United States did not actually initiate
war over Iran’s nuclear program, it would engage in belligerent
tactics that would inevitably lead to war.
Romney’s identification with the neoconservatives also helps to reveal
something about Obama’s likely future Iran policy. It is an ominous
sign that the Obama camp refrains from criticizing Romney’s choice of
pro-war advisors who had pushed for the unpopular war on Iraq, while
it is quite willing to make all kinds of extreme charges against him,
including the inflammatory claim that he is a felon. Furthermore,
Obama’s campaign website does not tout any effort on his part to resist
the war hawks’ demand for war. Rather, it features more militant
positions. For example: “President Obama has been clear that he
is determined to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Under
President Obama’s leadership, the United States gained the support of
China, Russia, and other nations to pass the most comprehensive international
sanctions regime that Iran has ever faced.”
Moreover, it claims that “The President is working to address Israel’s
security needs and ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish state and the
homeland for the Jewish people.” Added to this is Obama’s
continuing mantra that “all options are on the table,” which implies
that if the sanctions and other short-of-war measures that have been
used so far don’t stop Iran’s alleged program to develop nuclear
weapons, the United States would initiate a military attack. Since
there is no valid evidence that such a program to build nuclear weapons
exists, there can be no valid evidence that it has actually ceased.
So sometime in his second administration the neocons and other war hawks,
using Obama’s very words, could pressure him into launching an attack
on the grounds that the alleged nuclear weapons program continues to
operate despite the sanctions and all the other short-of-war measures
that have been taken. And, of course, there is a good chance that his
short-of-war measures could lead to an incident to bring about a full
scale war.
http://www.barackobama.com/record/national-security?source=primary-nav
http://bit.ly/NRVygZ
Best,
Stephen Sniegoski
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal
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