With Great Power…

“With Great Power comes great responsibility” is a well known phrase, which originated in the Spiderman comics. It also is apropos to the relationship of the USA to the rest of the world. When looking at the candidates for President it is important to remember that they will be the face and voice of the nation to the rest of the world for at least four years. In him or her we place the care taking of our national honor. Last time we saw how poorly the current administration has treated that honor now lets see who is best suited to restore it.

Michelle Bachman- often a presidential candidate must overcome the label of inexperienced as it relates to foreign policy.  Remember that is why we have Joe Biden as Vice President he had experience in foreign policy, he was wrong on nearly every major issue but hey he has experience. One of Rep. Bachman’ strengths is that she has experience and has been right on most major issues.

However, shipping companies don’t work for a dollar an hour either, I think most companies would rather make goods

Rep. Bachman’s emphasis on reducing the trade imbalances we currently are subject to is to lessen the strangleholds of taxation and regulation that push our businesses over seas. Lets be honest, most business does not want to go overseas, but Americans will not and cannot work for 2.50 an hour, this is not selfishness it is reality. However shipping companies do not work for free either. Most companies would prefer to make there goods here and it should be entirely possible to make a tax and regulatory structure that offsets those higher labor costs. A 9% business tax rate would have done the trick but alas Mr. Cain didn’t have the stomach for the fight, but Bachman’s proposals are good especially the elimination of capital gains, which would do much to keep businesses at home. As far as free trade treaties and agreements Rep. Bachman has been in support, of them in principle from the Foundry in 2008: Each day in Minnesota and all across the nation, billions of dollars worth of products begin their journey to be sold overseas. American farmers, manufacturers, and businesses rely on exports to strengthen and grow both their bottom line, as well as our economy’s.

Free and fair trade agreements help spur economic growth; improve efficiency and innovation; create better, higher-paying jobs for hard-working Americans; and increase the availability of lower-priced products here in the United

States.

Furthermore, the role of free trade as an expression of liberty and opportunity for all individuals signifies the very principles our country was founded upon. Yet, the free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia negotiated under the Bush Administration remain little more than words on paper. Despite having been carefully negotiated over a period of two and half years, these agreements have become bogged down by partisan divides. In the meantime, with an average tariff of 53% imposed on U.S. agricultural products by South Korea last year, for example, there is little wonder the United States International Trade Commission estimates U.S. sales of agricultural products could increase by as much as $3.8 billion once the U.S.–South Korea agreement is fully implemented.

And while Congressional leaders seem content to leave these agreements on the back burner, America’s fragile industries are left hanging in the balance. The impact of depressed exports is fully evident to those who make their livelihood from them. In fact, Minnesota’s manufacturing exports experienced a 19% decline during the first quarter of 2009, mirroring a similar decrease nationwide. And our agricultural sector, especially our ailing pork and dairy producers, certainly needs no reminder of the importance of expanded export channels to the survival of their farms.

Unfortunately, the closest we get to good news on trade these days is that the trade deficit, which reached $840 billion last year, may at least be plateau-ing. However, while the deficit seems to have steadied, at least temporarily, it is more the result of a sharper reduction in imports than of a steep rise in exports. Regardless, as one economist recently summarized, “the trade picture from the United States is cloudy right now.”

While I agree with this also in principle, I also think we need a president that will do a far better job of promoting America’s interests when negotiating treaties. Too often we give up too much and ask for too little for our own industries. I cannot find, though I have not watched all of them a debate question posed to all or any of these candidates about details of what would constitute a good agreement. Why do we have a dozen debates again?

On the touchy subjects of Iran and China "We are in debt up to our ears to China. Well over $1 trillion we owe to them. That means we're making substantial interest payments to China. When we send our hard-earned money to China, that's our tax money. And what that means is we have less money for our military. And we just saw this year because of the failure of the Super Committee, $1 trillion less will be available for national defense.

When we cut back on national defense a trillion dollars, we are, in effect, sending money over to China in the form of interest. When we send the money over to them, they're able to build their military up. So the greater our debt, the less money on our military, our military goes down. The more money for China, their military goes up. So we actually have the United States taxpayers paying for China's new naval aircraft carrier, new fighter jets, new cyberoptics. This is a very frightening proposition, and it's not good for the security of the American people."

On Iran the primary focus has been on Rep Bachman’s perceived gaffe about an American embassy in Iran, Bachman knows we don’t have an embassy there and has spoken extensively and eloquently on the subject; most importantly she sees the real threat Iran poses and supports an aggressive stance against them. I doubt Iran would thumb their noses at her the way they do Obama.

Rick Santorum: foreign-policy credentials: Santorum served for eight years on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Overview: Although best known for his conservative views on domestic social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, Santorum has emerged in this race as the unlikely defender of a neoconservative foreign policy, standing up for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, robust military spending, and democracy promotion. In debates, this has often made him a foil for the more isolationist rhetoric of Herman Cain and Jon Huntsman.

Advisors: Santorum's primary foreign-policy advisor is his former chief of staff, Mark Rogers.

On the issues:

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Santorum opposes Barack Obama's withdrawal plan for Afghanistan, saying, "We cannot leave the region when there is still a good chance the Taliban can take control. To leave leadership in the hands of a radical terrorist group, known for its horrific treatment of women and for carrying out unprovoked terrorist attacks on this country, ... is something I am unwilling to do." He has criticized his opponents for failing to emphasize the necessity of victory and trying to "to skirt this complicated issue for an applause line."

He has been relatively measured on Pakistan policy, maintaining in one debate that the United States needs to continue foreign aid to Pakistan and maintain good relations with the nuclear-armed country.

Military spending: Santorum's budget-cutting zeal does not extend to military spending. He describes Obama's defense cuts as "wrong signal, wrong effort, and wrong time." He has accused the Obama administration of "intentionally trying to degrade our military" and has defended robust U.S. military spending on the ground that it creates U.S. jobs.

Israel/Palestine: Santorum believes "it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, 'I support Israel.'" He has criticized Obama for   putting "Israel's very existence in more peril" and says Palestine's statehood bid at the United Nations is a sign that the Palestinians "feel weakness -- they feel it, they see it, they know it -- and they're going to exploit it."

China: It's not quite the new axis of evil, but Santorum says that China, along with Iran and Venezuela, is part of a "gathering storm" of threats facing the United States. During Oct. 11's debate, Santorum raised eyebrows by declaring, "I don't want to go to a trade war; I want to beat China!" He also said, "I want to go to war with China and make America the most attractive place in the world to do business."

My thanks to  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/rick_santorum/profile for compiling these quotes.

Rick Perry: Foreign-policy credentials: Perry lived in Germany and Saudi Arabia in the 1970s while flying cargo planes for the U.S. Air Force in Latin America, North Africa, and Europe. "I saw all of these different types of governments and I made the connections to how the people acted and looked, and it became abundantly clear to me that, at that particular point in time, that America was this very unique place and that our form of democracy was very rare," he told the Abilene Reporter-Newsin April. As governor of Texas, he has traveled abroad and worked particularly closely with Latin America.

Advisors: The campaign recently hired Victoria Coates, a research director for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with a Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance art and history, to advise Perry on foreign policy. The Texas governor told Sean Hannity in November that he also discusses international affairs with Liz Cheney and John Bolton -- people "who actually understand, intimately, where these countries are, why they think like they think."

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Perry wants to transfer responsibility to Afghan security forces and bring U.S. troops home, but he opposes President Barack Obama's withdrawal timetable and in September quickly walked back from an apparent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal. He thinks Pakistan isn't being "honest with us" and wants to cut off foreign aid to the country. "Their political people are not who are in charge of that country," Perry claims. "It's the military. It's the secret service."

Also from foreign policy.com.

Perry has dealt with China in seeking to bring investment dollars to Texas, there is an up and a down to this, states tend to make good deals that bring in revenue, so that experience is valuable, but a too friendly relationship with Beijing is not a good thing right now.

Mitt Romney- Foreign-policy credentials: As chairman of the organizing committee of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, Romney was credited with financially rescuing the scandal-tarnished event and restoring -- for a time -- the reputation of the International Olympic Committee. He lived abroad as a Mormon missionary in France while in college, and like Barack Obama before him, Romney has made a few campaign stops in Europe this time around.  

Overview: As one might expect from the primary front-runner and favorite for the nomination, Romney has stayed clear of controversial positions and doesn't deviate much from the Republican Party's standard talking points. He's in favor of robust defense spending, strong ties with Israel, bulking up border security, and getting tough with China.

As a former governor, Romney has virtually no official experience implementing foreign policy, but having gone through the primary process in 2008, he may be more prepared to handle tough national security questions.

Advisors: Romney has lined up a team of GOP national security heavyweights, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former Senators Jim Talent and Norm Coleman, and author Robert Kagan. Mideast advisor Walid Phares has proved a somewhat controversial pick, due to his past association with Christian militia groups during the Lebanese Civil War.

On the Issues:

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Romney shocked many party insiders with his remarks on Afghanistan during the June 14 debate. "It's time for us to bring our troops home as soon as we possibly can -- as soon as our generals think it's OK," Romney said. "One lesson we've learned in Afghanistan is that Americans cannot fight another nation's war of independence."

Of course, Romney's frequent reference to the advice of generals leaves him quite a bit of wiggle room on the question of when a drawdown should begin. He has attacked the current administration's position, saying, "I don't know of a single military advisor to President Obama who recommended the withdrawal plan that he's chosen, and that puts the success of our soldiers and our mission at greater risk."

Romney would continue the policy of drone strikes on terrorist targets within Pakistan, but is less willing to attack the country than some other candidates, saying he would "work with our friends in that country to get them to do some of the things we can't do ourselves." He describes the country as "close to being a failed state."  

Military spending: Romney has called for an additional $30 billion in military spending, including increasing active-duty forces by 100,000 troops. "If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president," is a common campaign refrain.  

China- Romney seeks to carry on a polocie of engagement with China hoping to influence the Chinese to a free and open society while securing a market for US goods. I used to agree with this philosophy but I can’t argue reality, the Chinese take our money to prop up their totalitarian government, and give us nothing in return. I think the one thing Trump had right when he flirted with a run for president is that China is not a good guy, they don’t want what we want and we need to deal with them accordingly.

Again I quote http://www.foreignpolicy.com/rick_santorum/profile

Newt Gingrich-  Foreign-policy credentials: As House speaker, Gingrich weighed in on the U.S. interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Haiti and was a key supporter of North American Free Trade Agreement and other major Clinton-era trade deals. Since leaving politics, he has researched, as an independent scholar, the roles of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in the closing days of the Cold War. He holds a Ph.D. in modern European history.  

Overview: Gingrich is often referred to in the media as the intellectual of the GOP field, owing to his post-speakership years as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and his numerous works of historical fiction. Gingrich is probably somewhat closer to the neoconservative, "national greatness conservative" end of the spectrum than the more isolationist strain favored by some members of the Tea Party. Gingrich takes his foreign-policy cues from the 1980s, particularly the "Reagan-John Paul II-Thatcher strategy" of aggressive, rhetorical democracy promotion.

Gingrich consistently uses Cold War rhetoric to describe current threats, for instance, comparing the influence of radical Islam within the United States to the domestic threat once posed by communism.

Advisors: Gingrich's foreign-policy team is led by Herman Pirchner, the American Foreign Policy Council, a Washington D.C. think tank. Other advisors include AFPC Vice President Ilan Berman and AFPC Senior Fellow for Asian Studies Stephen Yates, a former staffer for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Former CIA director James Woolsey, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace and former Central Command head Gen. John Abizaid are also reportedly advising the campaign.

Afghanistan/Pakistan: Gingrich has been downbeat on the U.S. effort in Afghanistan,predicting that it "is not going to end well." He believes that "we consistently underestimate how hard" it is to deal with an "Afghan culture that is fundamentally different" than America's and that counterinsurgency doctrine is ill-suited to a situation as complex as Afghanistan. Nonetheless, heopposes the withdrawal timetable proposed by Barack Obama's administration because it's "signaling to the world we are getting out."

Gingrich favors cutting aid to Pakistan and accuses the country's government of having "hid [Osama] bin Laden for at least six years in a military city within a mile of their national defense university."

Military spending: Gingrich characterizes the current budget debate as "historically illiterate politicians who have no sophistication about national security trying to make a numerical decision about the size of the defense budget." He has also, somewhat inaccurately, described current military spending as being at historically low levels. Nonetheless, Gingrich is open to cuts if waste and unnecessary spending can be found. "I'm a hawk, but I'm a cheap hawk," he said at the Oct. 18 debate in Las Vegas.

Israel/Palestine: Gingrich supports moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, effectively recognizing a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He has described Obama's suggestion that a peace process should begin with Israel's moving back to the 1967 borders as "suicidal" and believes that negotiating a peace deal with Hamas would be impossible.  

Thanks to my new best friends again at Foreign Policy . com

 China- Newt is also in the help the Chinese people through involvement and trade. He believes in dealing woth the Chinese people and not the government, though I don’t know how you do that in the world’s worst dictatorship.

Ron Paul- (Must We?)  yes we must.
 

Foreign-policy credentials: Paul served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s,spending time on the ground in countries like Ethiopia, Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, and Turkey. He also sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Overview: Paul's libertarian, noninterventionist, empire-shunning foreign policy is often described as Tea Party isolationist, but he seesit as defending and strengthening the homeland within budgetary and constitutional constraints. "Isolationism is -- is something that the protectionists want," Paul explained in June. "They want to close borders for people coming in, and they want to close trade, and I have no desire to do that all because I'm a free trader and I want as much travel and communication with other countries as possible. This is what the Founders advised. We were never given the authority to be the policemen of the world."

Advisors: The campaign hasn't released much information about who's advising the congressman on foreign policy, but it did announce in August that it had hired constitutional and international-law expert Bruce Fein to advise on legal matters and the "dangers to national security of an increasingly interventionist foreign policy."

Afghanistan/Pakistan: As part of a larger cessation of military operations abroad, Paul wants to swiftly withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and transfer power to Afghan officials. "We'll have less danger to us if we don't occupy foreign countries, because that's the top motivation for the desire to come here and kill Americans," he contends. He views the U.S.-Pakistan relationship as an "impossible situation" and worries that Pakistan will be the "next occupation." Paul also condemnsdrone strikes, which he says are inciting anti-Americanism and civil war in Pakistan. "For everyone you kill," he observes, "you probably create 10 new people who hate our guts and would like to do us harm."

Military spending: Military spending and defense spending are two different beasts, according to Paul. "We can spend money on defense -- that's OK -- but we just can't afford all these hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars we're spending on all these wars," he argues.

Israel/Palestine: Paul thinks the United States should stay "friends" with Israel but cut off foreign aid, which he says harms Israel's national sovereignty. In a floor speech reproduced in his book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship, Paul recommends staying neutral in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "[I]f we have solidarity with Israel, then we have hostility to the Palestinians," he explains.

China- Ron Paul: I would defer to saying it’s probably been pretty neutral. I don’t think it’s deteriorated, because things are so much better than what I remember in high school. We were fighting the Chinese and the Koreans. One of my teachers was sent to Korea and never came back. So that had an impact on me. So it’s so much better. I think Nixon did a lot of terrible things; I always criticize him about closing the [unintelligible: gold bin?] and all these things. But he opened up the door to China. I think we’re much better off talking to the Chinese and trading with the Chinese, and they have an interest in staying peaceful with us, as we have an interest on them, even though we have our differences on some of the trade and “Why do our companies go to China?” And in some ways, they embarrass us, because they’re more Capitalistic than we are. It’s easier for our businesses to go to China than it is to stay here. That aggravates me. But I blame ourselves for that.

I think Ron Paul’s views speak for themselves, he believes in the end that we are the problem in the world and if we just mind our own business there would be no aggression. I suppose he fails to realize that brutal Military dictatorships predate the USA by the whole history of mankind. America will never start a war by being too strong, but we will be in for a fight we may not win if we are weak. Ron Paul makes us weak if he wins. If we give the middle east to Iran, asia to the Chinese and Europe to the Russians, does that make us safer, if we withdrawal from every where, are all these powers going to just behave, are terrorists going to cease targeting people. Oh God No! Conquerors invade because they want to dominate their neighbors, terrorists kill because they want to force everyone into their way of life. Removing America from the world picture just makes it easy for them.

Again all of our candidates (save one) are strong, except on China and all (save one) would be an improvement over Obama but I think we may be best off with Bachman as she seems to be a little harder line on China.

Until next time keep on the firing line