Republicans used their convention on Wednesday to attack US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, blaming him for drastic cuts in military spending and policies that they said have allowed US influence in the world to wane.
The blitz came as foreign policy took a central role at the nominating convention set to crown former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney the party’s presidential nominee.
After 2008 Republican flagbearer Senator John McCain issued a scathing assessment that Obama had let US allies down, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice took the podium to make the case that Romney would be a far more capable leader of the free world.
The multimillionaire businessman has little actual overseas experience other than his stint in France as a Mormon missionary, and the speech by Rice, 57, to the Republican National Convention shed some light on his foreign policy vision and prerogatives.
The former top US diplomat charged Obama’s foreign policy failures span the globe “from Israel to Colombia, from Poland to the Philippines.”
However, unlike the Democratic president, Mitt and his running mate Paul Ryan “know what to do. They know that our friends and allies must again be able to trust us,” Rice said.
For his part, Romney made a brief foray away from the convention where he told members of the American Legion that Obama had allowed global hotspots like Iran, North Korea and Syria to fester during his administration.
“The world continues to be a dangerous place. Major powers are rapidly adding to their military capabilities, sometimes with intentions very different from our own,” he said at a veterans’ event in Indiana.
He said Iran was closing in on nuclear weapons capability, and warned of “horrific violence in Syria” among other international concerns, and said that Obama has made a dangerous world more so.
“President Obama has allowed our leadership to diminish,” Romney said.
He later returned to Tampa, where McCain — the party’s presidential nominee in 2008 and a Vietnam war hero who is known for his tough foreign policy stands — echoed his concerns.
“For four years, we’ve drifted away from our proudest traditions of global leadership,” McCain said.
“We can’t afford to stay on that course any longer. We can’t afford to cause our friends and allies, from Latin America to Europe and Asia, to the Middle East and especially in Israel, a country under existential threat, to doubt America’s leadership,” he said to welcoming applause.
Romney said his trip last month to Britain, Israel and Poland, gave him an “even firmer conviction” that the US must take a preeminent security role in the world.
And he lashed out at the 10-year, US$1 trillion across-the-board budget cuts that are due to kick in early next year if Congress does not act. Those are in addition to the US$487 billion in Pentagon cuts over the next decade that Congress already committed to making.
He said that a Romney administration would slash federal spending, but not on the military.
“There are plenty of places to cut in a federal budget that now totals well over $3 trillion a year, but defense is not one of them,” he said.
In a nod to the Jewish vote, a short video played at the convention highlighted Romney’s visit to Israel and showed footage of the candidate as he wrote a prayer and placed it in a crack in the Western Wall.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese