Nicholas Kristof on Romney, foreign policy "empty shell"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In over his head. Way, way, way over his head.

From yesterday's Times:

DIPLOMACY is a minefield, and Mitt Romney spent the last week blowing up his foreign policy credentials to be president. He raised doubts about his capacity to deal with global crises, and we were left hoping that if that 3 a.m. call ever went to him, he'd have set up call forwarding.

A great line. But of course this is serious:

The essential problem is that every time Romney touches foreign policy, he breaks things.

And not just by embarrassing himself in England:

The Republican Party is caught in a civil war on foreign policy, and Romney refuses to pick sides. In contrast to his approach on the economy, he just doesn’t seem to have thought much about global issues. My hunch is that for secretary of state he would pick a steady hand, like Robert Zoellick, but Romney has also surrounded himself with volatile neocons.

With China, Romney seems intent on a trade war. In the Middle East, it appears he’d like to subcontract foreign policy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And it gets worse:

Most dangerous of all is Romney's policy on Iran, which can't be dismissed as an offhand misstatement. As my colleagues David E. Sanger and Ashley Parker note, Romney muddles his own position on his nuclear red line for Iran. Plenty of candidates don't write their own foreign policy position papers, but Romney is unusual in that he seems not to have even read his.

According to clarifications from Romney's campaign, he apparently would order a military strike before Iran even acquired a bomb, simply when it was getting close. For anyone who has actually seen a battlefield, that's a blithe, too-light embrace of a path to yet another war. It's emblematic of a candidate who, on foreign policy, appears an empty shell.

I repeat the narrative that has emerged regarding Romney's quest for the presidency:

UNQUALIFIED.

UNPREPARED.

UNFIT.