Posted by Tina Grazier
The Council on foreign Relations publication Foreign Affairs published the article, Rising to a New Generation of Global Challenges, by Mitt Romney. Below you will find a summary and a few excerpts; follow the link for the complete text.
Washington is as divided on foreign policy as it has been at any point in the last 50 years. As the “greatest generation” did before us, we must move beyond political camps to unite around bold actions in order to build a strong America and a safer world. We must strengthen our military and economy, achieve energy independence, reenergize civilian and interagency capabilities, and revitalize our alliances.
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Change will require sacrifice from the American people. But I believe America is ready for the challenge. To meet it, we need to focus on four key pillars of action.
BUILDING U.S. MILITARY AND ECONOMIC STRENGTH – First, we need to increase our investment in national defense. This means adding at least 100,000 troops and making a long-overdue investment in equipment, armament, weapons systems, and strategic defense. ** A team of private-sector leaders and defense experts should carry out a stem-to-stern analysis of military purchasing. Accounts need to be thoroughly scrutinized to eliminate excessive contractor and supplier charges and prevent deals for equipment and programs that do more for politicians’ popularity in their home districts than for the nation’s protection.
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE – Second, the United States must become energy independent. This does not mean no longer importing or using oil. It means making sure that our nation’s future will always be in our hands. Our decisions and destiny cannot be bound to the whims of oil-producing states. ** Energy independence will require technology that allows us to use energy more efficiently in our cars, homes, and businesses. It will also mean increasing our domestic energy production with more drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, more nuclear power, more renewable energy sources, more ethanol, more biodiesel, more solar and wind power, and a fuller exploitation of coal. Shared investments or incentives may be required to develop additional and alternative sources of energy. ** We need to initiate a bold, far-reaching research initiative — an energy revolution — that will be our generation’s equivalent of the Manhattan Project or the mission to the moon. It will be a mission to create new, economical sources of clean energy and clean ways to use the sources we have now. We will license our technology to other nations, and, of course, we will employ it at home.
RETHINKING AND REENERGIZING CIVILIAN CAPABILITIES -Third, we need to dramatically and fundamentally transform our civilian capabilities to promote peace, security, and freedom around the world. After World War II, America created capabilities and structures — such as the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Agency for International Development — to meet the challenges of a world that was radically different from that of the 1930s. In the Reagan era, the Goldwater-Nichols Act helped tear down bureaucratic boundaries that were undermining our military effectiveness, fostered unified efforts across military services, and established “joint commands,” with an individual commander fully responsible for everything going on within his or her geographic region.
REVITALIZING AND STRENGTHENING ALLIANCES – Finally, we need to strengthen old partnerships and alliances and inaugurate new ones to meet twenty-first-century challenges. The inaction, if not the breakdown, of many Cold War institutions has made many Americans skeptical of multilateralism. Nothing shows the failures of the current system more clearly than the UN Human Rights Council, an entity that has condemned the democratic government of Israel nine times while remaining virtually silent on the serial human rights abuses of the governments of Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, and Sudan. In the face of such hypocrisy, it is understandable that some Americans would be tempted to favor unilateralism. But such failures should not obscure the fact that the United States’ strength is amplified when it is combined with the strength of other nations. Whether diplomatically, militarily, or economically, the United States is stronger when its friends stand alongside it. ** I agree with former Spanish Prime Minister Jos Mara Aznar that we should build on the NATO alliance to defeat radical Islam. We need to work with our allies to pursue Aznar’s call for greater coordination in military, homeland security, and nonproliferation efforts. ** Merely closing our eyes and hoping that jihadism will go away is not an acceptable solution. U.S. military action alone cannot change the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims. In the end, only Muslims themselves can defeat the violent radicals. But we must work with them. The consequences of ignoring this challenge — such as a radicalized Islamic actor possessing nuclear weapons — are simply unacceptable.