Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney laid out a foreign policy on Friday guided by American exceptionalism, drawing a stark contrast to Obama’s view that the U.S. should consider partnerships before leadership.
“God did not create this country to be a nation of followers,” Romney said in a speech from The Citadel, a military academy in South Carolina. “America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world, or someone else will.”
Romney criticized Obama’s handling of the Arab Spring as muddled and inconsistent and said the U.S. should rely less on multilateral partnerships, such as the United Nations, and instead take on a more dominant role in affecting the outcome of revolutions around the world.
“It is far too easy for a president to jump from crisis to crisis, dealing with one hot spot after another,” he said. “But to do so is to be shaped by events rather than to shape events.”
His vision contradicts the view of some Tea Partiers, who believe the U.S. should become isolationist and leave crisis-wrought countries to fend for themselves.
“This is America’s moment,” he said. “We should embrace the challenge, not shrink from it, not crawl into an isolationist shell, not wave the white flag of surrender.”
Ticking off a list of America’s greatest threats, Romney emphasized China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.
Though he spoke on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Afghan war, Romney offered no details of how he would handle it once in office. Instead, he said he would conduct a “review” of the American mission during his first 100 days in office. Also within that time frame, Romney said he would restore cuts to defense spending, increase the shipbuilding rate and strengthen the country’s missile defense system.
“I will not surrender America’s role in the world,” he said. “This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president.”
