The Republican primaries are effectively over, and gone with them is the sharp-edged rhetoric on U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Gone is Rick Santorum’s pledge to strike Iran. Gone is Newt Gingrich’s reference to the Palestinians as an “invented” people.
In the end the candidate left standing is Mitt Romney, who has tended to be relatively cautious in his foreign policy pronouncements, has emphasized the importance of America’s international alliances, and has drawn his foreign policy advisers from past Republican administrations.
Dan Senor, a Romney foreign policy adviser who was an adviser to the George W. Bush administration during the Iraq War, said Romney stands by principles that date back to the Truman presidency.
“America will stand by its allies, it will help dissidents fighting for freedom around the world, it will maintain a large enough defense budget to help the U.S. defend its own national security interests, defend its homeland, and advance these principles shared by America and its allies around the world,” he said, describing Romney’s foreign policy.
President Barack Obama, Senor said, has embraced these principles only after failing in his efforts to appease adversaries. As an example, he cited the administration’s emphasis in its first years on Israel freezing settlements, as well as the president’s outreach to Iran and his alleged refusal to back pro-democracy activists in that country.
“It was this effort to stand equidistant between traditional American allies and American adversaries,” he said.
Romney, he said, would have made clear to the Palestinians that preconditions were off the table and acted sooner to isolate Iran through sanctions and other measures.
Romney supporters say his hands-on problem-solving approach would clear away the hesitancy and lack of resolve that they say has marked the Obama presidency.
Noam Neusner, another Bush administration policy adviser, helped shape Romney’s foreign policy during his 2007-08 run for the GOP nomination. Romney, he said, is more assertive than Obama and less inclined to rely on rhetoric as a diplomatic tool.
“When everyone was talking about sanctions” five years ago, Neusner said, “he was looking at what kind of sanctions would work. He was looking beyond the rhetoric.”
The candidates have had their policy differences. Romney called for comprehensive sanctions targeting Iran’s economy months before Obama said he was ready to embrace them late last year. And Romney blasted Obama’s call a year ago for Israel and the Palestinians to use the 1967 lines as the basis for their negotiations, saying the president had “thrown Israel under the bus.”
But on their overall goals there is common ground. Both are publicly committed to preventing Iran from going nuclear, using pressure and diplomacy while emphasizing that a military strike as a last resort is definitely an option. Both favor a return to Israeli-Palestinian talks without preconditions, and both adamantly oppose Palestinian efforts to obtain statehood recognition without the talks.
That has left the opposing sides to define their foreign policy differences along lines of personality and governing style. Romney’s backers describe a can-do, successful businessman who revels in solving problems. Obama’s team depicts a leader who has restored the American credibility they say was eroded by Bush’s adventurism.
Romney has portrayed Obama as a sellout and as weakly deferring to lesser powers. Most recently, referring to a failed North Korean rocket launch, Romney’s campaign accused Obama of trying to “appease” that country through food aid and of “undermining” U.S. security.
Some, however, think that Romney’s criticism is more about campaign rhetoric than genuine differences in policy approaches.
At least when it comes to the Middle East, the Romney team has mounted a campaign that implicitly acknowledges that he and Obama share similar policies — but that Romney came about them honestly, while Obama did so reluctantly.
A Romney campaign sheet distributed last month after Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee set up a narrative in which Obama instituted hard-hitting sanctions against Iran, but only after being led to this approach by Congress and by Europe.
On Iran, Romney would not be as patient with Tehran as Obama, Neusner said.
Romney’s campaign has made much of the president’s tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A recent front-page story in the New York Times outlined the decades-long friendship between Romney and the Israeli leader, dating back to their days in the 1970s as investment analysts at the same Massachusetts firm.
Aaron Miller of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars said such relationships can have an impact on policy, particularly when it comes to an Israeli decision on when and if to strike Iran.
“Barack Obama does not come from that place” of an emotional connection with an Israeli leader, as does Romney with Netanyahu, or Bill Clinton with Yitzhak Rabin and George W. Bush with Ariel Sharon, Miller said.
Romney would be likelier to elicit trust from the Israeli leadership, Miller said.
“You will have a different emotional response from a Romney presidency,” he said. “Romney will give the Israelis the benefit of the doubt because that’s the way he feels.”