Romney’s aggressive foreign policy

I’m sorry, but what year is this-—1982? asked Artur Blinov in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Russia). Republican candidate Mitt Romney and his coterie may have barely touched on foreign policy at their vapid convention last week, but what little they said was appropriate to the Cold War. They kept making derisory references to Russian President Vladimir Putin and invoking Ronald Reagan as an inspiration. Romney had already designated Russia as America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe,” and if elected he would apparently “use foreign policy recipes dating back 30 years.” For some reason the man “wants to turn America back” to the time when the Soviet Union was its archenemy. Has nobody clued him in that the evil empire no longer exists?

Romney’s rhetoric is patently ridiculous, said Vedomosti (Russia) in an editorial. But his platform contains no specific “action strategy” toward Russia, and he would be unlikely to change U.S. policy, however much he ramps up the bellicose language. Still, words do matter. A Romney win would be “a boon to Kremlin hawks, who aim to maintain a siege mentality among Russian citizens.” Expect the Kremlin media machine to relentlessly hype any harsh remarks by Romney and play up the Republicans’ support for building missile defense in Eastern Europe. It will be easy for Putin to portray a Romney-led U.S. as a dangerous enemy trying to weaken Russia from within—and that would provide him with an excuse for even harsher treatment of dissidents.

Romney’s “outdated manifestation of Cold War thinking” isn’t limited to Russia, said China Daily. He has already recklessly threatened China’s sovereignty over Taiwan by promising to stuff the island with advanced military aircraft, and pledged to send other U.S. equipment to Asia to prevent what he called “any aggressive or coercive behavior by China.” Need we remind the Republican that his own country has been the coercive one, overtly and covertly backing China’s neighbors in territorial disputes over the South China Sea that are none of America’s business? “Any U.S. attempt to more deeply involve itself in these disputes will result in a head-on confrontation between the two countries.” A rational foreign policy demands both political vision and a profound knowledge of Sino-U.S. relations. “Romney apparently lacks both.”

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Even so, China could simply shrug off a Romney win, said the Global Times (China), because the U.S. “matters less than before.” China doesn’t need its permission to conduct affairs in its own backyard. And even if a President Romney were to deliver on his threat to label China a currency manipulator on his first day in office, the resulting trade war shouldn’t alarm China. Such a clash would hurt the U.S. far more than it would us. Blustery Republicans may not want to admit it, but “it makes no difference to the majority of Chinese, including many Chinese strategists, who wins the U.S. presidential election.”