Mitt Romney delivers important speech on foreign policy

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Posted By: James Rowles October 9, 2012

Governor Mitt Romney has delivered an important speech on his vision of U.S. foreign policy.

Pundits and Obama supporters have already criticized and rebutted the speech, revealing again that, with few exceptions, they cannot hear criticism and respond constructively to it.

See “SPEECH TEXT: Mitt Romney Delivers Foreign Policy Address to the Virginia Military Institute,” National Journal, October 8, 2012. The text of the speech can be found here.

The speech, which is well-written and at times eloquent, merits a close and direct reading.

Obama and his supporters would be well-advised to try to put down their defenses and really hear the essential criticisms contained in the speech, whether or not they agree with them.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of Obama and his foreign policy team has been that they have been unable to hear and respond to criticisms. Romney’s October 8 speech provides them with a new opportunity to do some deep thinking and self-examination.

If Obama has no more to offer in response to  Romney’s critisims than the  typical defensive statements (“you just don’t understand, these are the facts”), he will will be hurt by Romney in the forthcoming debate on foreign policy issues.

The Trenchant Observer

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About the Author

James Rowles
"The Trenchant Observer" is edited and published by James Rowles (aka "The Observer"), an author and international lawyer who has taught International Law, Human Rights, and Comparative Law at major U.S. universities, including Harvard, Brandeis, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Kansas. Dr. Rowles is a former staff attorney at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) of the Organization of American States OAS), in Wasington, D.C., , where he was in charge of Brazil, Haiti, Mexico and the United States, and also worked on complaints from and reports on other countries including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. As an international development expert, he has worked on Rule of Law, Human Rights, and Judicial Reform in a number of countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Russian Federation. In the private sector, Dr. Rowles has worked as an international attorney for a leading national law firm and major global companies, on joint ventures and other matters in a number of countries in Europe (including Russia and the Ukraine), throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Australia, Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Japan. The Trenchant Observer blog provides an unfiltered international perspective for news and opinion on current events, in their historical context, drawing on a daily review of leading German, French, Spanish and English newspapers as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and other American newspapers, and on sources in other countries relevant to issues being analyzed. Dr. Rowles speaks fluent English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and also knows other languages. He holds an S.J.D. or Doctor of Juridical Science in International Law from Harvard University, and a Doctor of Law (J.D.) and a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.=LL.M.), from Stanford University. As an undergraduate, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree, also from Stanford, where he graduated “With Great Distinction” (summa cum laude) and received the James Birdsall Weter Prize for the best Senior Honors Thesis in History. In addition to having taught as a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, Dr. Rowles has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs (CFIA). His fellowships include a Stanford Postdoctoral Fellowship in Law and Development, the Rómulo Gallegos Fellowship in International Human Rights awarded by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and a Harvard MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. Beyond his articles in The Trenchant Observer, he is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles on subjects of international and comparative law. Currently he is working on a manuscript drawing on some the best articles that have appeared in the blog.

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