US candidates have ‘identical’ foreign policies

WASHINGTON - Hürriyet Daily News

Crowley says major changes shouldn’t be expected in US foreign policies.

The difference over foreign policies between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney is very narrow when compared with the race between George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry in 2004, a former spokesperson of the U.S. State Department has said.

“What was interesting about the last debate is that it demonstrated that there is a significant continuity in U.S. foreign policy. We are clearly not going back to the election of 2004,” said Philip J. Crowley in an interview with the Hürriyet Daily News after the foreign policy debate on Oct. 22.

Crowley was in office from 2009 to 2011, and now teaches at George Washington University, following his resignation from the government after his comments criticizing the Pentagon over their treatment of Bradley Manning, the alleged Wikileaks whistleblower. He argues that there was a very dramatic difference between President

George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry over the war in Iraq eight years ago, but that now foreign policy differences between Obama and Romney are essentially rhetorical.

Defense spending

“At the end of the day, I don’t think that in the areas from Syria to Afghanistan, to Iran, the Romney foreign policy would be dramatically different from the existing Obama foreign policy,” Crowley said. The Romney campaign’s emphasis on similar foreign policy principles to the Obama administration is a deliberate calculation, according to Crowley. “Romney fully understands that in an election turned on national security, Obama has a very significant advantage. He wants to diminish the importance of national security and make the election about the economy instead,” he said. In the third and last debate before the presidential election on Nov. 6, both candidates said they saw military intervention as a last option on Iran, and they also both came out against having boots on the ground in Syria.

They are also both competing to be the candidate closest to Israel.

Crowley thinks the biggest difference between the two was on defense spending. “Romney said he would not cut our military budget, but Obama said the contrary. This is what sets the election of 2012 apart from elections over the past 20-25 years. Support for the military has always been a traditional Republican strength. And yet here, Obama has very significant advantage.

Romney is running up against the same challenge that Ronald Reagan had when he came to office in 1980, claiming that he could raise defense spending, lower taxes, and balance the budget,” Crowley said. When asked about the likely consequences of the election in terms of the regional developments around Turkey, he said: “Romney criticized the president by saying that Iran was four years closer to having a nuclear weapon, but when asked what specifically he would do he focused on sanctions, as the current administration has already done. Notwithstanding his rhetorical attacks, it is not clear that Romney’s bottom line differs significantly from the Obama bottom line.”

According to Crowley, there will essentially be a continuation in American foreign policy in
the region if Romney is elected. “In the Middle East, both men indicated that they did not see
U.S. military intervention as being feasible. In fact, Romney was more categorical in ruling out U.S. military intervention. Both men also emphasized coordinating with allies, particularly Turkey,” he said.